1) He Isn’t Actually Asian
When news broke that Finn Jones was playing this martial arts themed superhero, there was an outcry on social media that the character had been whitewashed. While we agree that there are still too few superheroes of colour around, this claim about Iron Fist is just false. The character isn’t Asian in the comics.
As with pretty much all of Marvel’s heroes (shout out for the Canadian Alpha Fight and Captain Britain!), Danny Rand is American. He was raised in the US until, as we know, his parents died whereupon he was brought up in K’un Lun. Only after becoming Iron Fist did he return to the US where he is based for the rest of his crime-fighting career.
They could have recast the role as an Asian-American, but a lot of people are agreed that the character would then probably be guilty of cultural stereotyping. So let’s be happy with the Iron Fist casting and hope that Marvel bring some more actually Asian super-characters to the screen. How about Shang-Chi or Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel?
Published: Mar 2, 2016 10:10 am