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Their switch-over of Liet-Kynes to a random black woman for diversity points alone shows how badly the Director's understanding of the Dune universe works; a very wide but shallow puddle that completely misses the mark.
I didn't see the first one, won't see the second one. Don't even get me started on them showing off the Sardaukar homeworld.
Fun aside; None of the movies ever get the Padishah Emperor right. In the books he's described as a youthful, thirty-something redhead. Yet they always have him as an old man past his prime. Pity.
I'm pretty sure they cast the character as an African woman because the actress playing Chani (Zendaya) is biracial, and if her father is going to played by European Javier Bardem, one African parent is necessary for her ethnicity to make sense.
Although frankly I'd have preferred if they'd recast all the Fremen with Arab actors. It may not be canon, but in my head the Fremen are Bedouin, damnit!
The Fremen canonically originally roughly from the Nile area. While there should have been more Arabic Fremen (i wonder if they're saving Rami Malek for Part 3?), having black Fremen is in no way against the canon, and there's nothing wrong as such with casting Zendaya as Chani.
I know the Fremen have a lot of Islamic imagery, but I'd thought this in particular was a Jewish reference? They came out of Egypt, they were slaves on Salusa Secundus, they were persecuted and chased from planet to planet, all the while preserving their ancient beliefs (or at least, they think they did, but getting actual Reverend Mothers on Arrakis probably helped). And look, they're waiting for a Messiah!
There are explicit Jews in the sequels, so they are separate.
Well, yes, but the themes can be reused repeatedly? This is literature (or about as close as sci-fi gets), there doesn't have to be a one-to-one mapping to the real world. The Fremen are clearly a mashup of a lot of things, most especially Arabs and Islam, but why not toss in certain elements of Jewish history, too? (As distinct from "Judaism", which I don't think the Fremen borrow much from. They've got various private rituals, and hold themselves apart from other people, but that may be as far as it goes?)
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As I understand it, the Fremen were once pilgrims of the Zensunni religion fleeing persecution (there is a vision/flashback in the book mentioning how the Empire denied them the Hajj), so there's definitely a lot of Islamic coding there.
And the Glossary:
What I find interesting about that "They denied us the Hajj" phrase, is that it's clarified to mean that it was denying them the freedom to go wherever they want. It seems to have lost the significance of a pilgrimage to a specific place (although Muad'dib's religion recreates that in the next book), and instead means something more like what a nomad or one of the traveling people might hold important, as one of the fundamentals of life.
Oh, that makes sense, so there is still some plausible deniability in the "literal Space Arabs" department.
That being said, the idea of people still making the journey to Mecca many centuries in the future (edit: and across many lightyears!) did fascinate me.
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That still boils down to diversity, hence my critique and criticism of the movie as a whole.
And yes, the Fremen should have been Arabic.
I really don't think Zendaya was mere diversity casting. She's a popular actress and her character is described in the books as being 'skinny, with an elfin face' and having 'darkly elfin features'. When I heard she was being cast as Chani, I immediately thought she was the perfect choice. And if we're in agreement that the Fremen should have been Bedouins, well, here's what a real Bedouin girl looks like. You can hardly claim Zendaya is too dark to play the sci-fi version of her.
Doubt. While my experience with most modern movies is fairly limited, everything I've seen of her is the metaphorical equivalent of a cudgel - an ambiguously brown women/girl they can shoe-horn and pretend everyone finds attractive, and if you point out the obvious race-switching, they make the typical noises about racism.
She's not even that good an actress, from everything I've seen.
I don't suppose anyone in this thread is going to consider the idea that attractiveness is largely subjective? This discussion feels like reading "Bananas are delicious, if you disagree get your head checked!" "What are you saying? Bananas taste vile, you idiot".
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You can slide Zendaya into the Taylor Swift bucket of "let's have meaningless barbershop conversations about how hot/overrated she really is" if you'd like. We can do the same for her talent. I love those discussions as much as anyone.
She's undoubtedly "hot" in the sense of being a prominent, respected young actress.
Clout-wise she fits with the rest of the cast. (Except maybe Chalamet who's pulling away from the pack. Pugh is very talented but she hasn't anchored a big one and, well, the current state of Marvel doesn't augur well for her first go)
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I've only seen Zendaya in the Spiderman movies and Dune, so I can't speak to her acting chops, but I can't disagree more on the idea that people are pretending that she's attractive. IMHO she's easily the most attractive prominent Hollywood actress right now. Maybe Rebecca Ferguson and Gal Gadot might come close? In any case, purely based on looks and ignoring any acting skills, her apparent popularity seems entirely justified to me.
I can't even think of there being any particular hubbub about her race in casting decisions. Even in the super hero movies she was in - a genre notorious for filmmakers accusing fans of bigotry in recent years - her casting as the character-equivalent to the traditionally red-headed white woman Mary-Jane was basically a non-issue, similar to Sam Jackson being Nick Fury.
This is a dispatch from an alternate reality. The multiverse is leaking and those of us in our reality are staring at conclusive proof of the exist of other timelines where up is down, backwards is forwards, and Zendaya is gorgeous.
She's a would for me, but yes, she's fairly mid by Hollywood standards. Decent face (even stunning sometimes) when fully dolled-up, but often looks frumpy otherwise and has training bra-level tits. At least she's slim, but in a rare case for modern women, I'd say she's too slim.
Her role in movies is to serve as an everygirl, and a marketing item for progressives promoting a mulatto America.
If she weren't a famous actress, she'd be far from the first pick from a top tertile sorority or a decent nightclub. If we want to restrict to mulatas only, nor would she be from a non-barrio nightclub in Santiago or Santo Domingo, DR.
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If you think Zendaya is hotter than Gal Gadot you need to get your eyes checked. She's not unattractive, but she has a very underdeveloped body for an adult woman. She's mid-pubescent for a healthy, on track to be very attractive, woman.
Gal Gadot has a very similar body, i.e. very flat, no?. She also has a very similarly 'needs proper angle to be attractive' face. Gadot's side profile is awful, for instance. I was under the impression she was only considered so attractive because she expresses a lot of jewish phenotypic traits very attractively. Unlike someone like Natalie Portman who is very attractive but in a very gentile way.
Both Gadot and Portman look extremely Jewish. Actually Portman looks more Jewish, because Gadot could theoretically be like half-Greek, half-Levantine or perhaps even half-Balkan.
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Gadot has much more developed breasts and more of the overall hourglass figure through the hips. She also makes the design choice with her characters to select outfits that accentuate the hourglass figure, while Zendaya chooses to make herself look more like a young teenage boy.
Compare their two most famous roles.
A. Wonder Woman https://hype.my/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/gal-gadot-wonder-woman-640x968.jpg B. Chani
https://images.bauerhosting.com/legacy/media/6123/929b/e39a/a111/4c7b/baca/dune-3.jpg?ar=16%3A9&fit=crop&crop=top&auto=format&w=undefined&q=80
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Maybe that's true, I'm not much for the movies or Hollywood. But I'd then say that there is a dire lack of actually attractive 'prominent Hollywood actresses' right now.
Hollywood has been ethnically cleansing its movies of redheads for a while now. A quick Google search will reveal that there is plenty of discussion on the topic. If there hasn't been any hubub in 'recent years' then it would only be because it's an old culture war that was has been completely lost by 'team red'. More and more of those.
Over time one would expect the red headed population of the United States to decline (excepting further mass immigration from Scotland and Ireland), surely?
I'm failing to see the relevance. The decline of the total red headed population in the country would not need to have any bearing on how Hollwood casts a comic book character drawn in the 1950's. If anything it would seem like a great opportunity to represent a desperately underrepresented minority.
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The ginger genocide (aside: this phenomenon + the anagram is probably the strongest evidence for the simulation hypothesis I've encountered) is a fair point, but my perception of this is that even the very phenomenon is little known outside of fairly niche circles of people who pay attention to this kind of thing, and even those who know don't often realize that this is endemic in the industry, with Zendaya's MJ being just one example. It's not nothing, but I don't recall it rising to even the level of Tilda Swinton's Ancient One in Doctor Strange (aside: any sort of race/sex swapping is justified if it's to get Tilda Swinton to play the character), much less, say, Ariel from The Little Mermaid (another example of the ginger genocide! And generally talked about on its own instead of part of the larger trend). Maybe MJ's case is due to the complete victory by one side, but honestly I thought it was more like Nick Fury where people just didn't care much since it's a supporting character whose race isn't much of a factor in the story.
Nick Fury was cast by Samuel L Jackson due to a version of the Comic having the character be a blatant Samuel L Jackson expy.
Jackson then basically went 'I get to play him in any movies that happen and won't sue'.
And here you are.
The original character of Nick Fury was white, but when he was effectively 'recast' was before alot of the culture war blew up in a big way, so it was seen more of a 'huh, neat' among comic circles than an active purging of whites.
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I don't think people are pretending, but I don't understand how anyone can say she's attractive either. I actually think she's mildly ugly. But there's no accounting for taste, I suppose.
Also I definitely disagree that her casting in Spider Man was a non-issue. Basically everyone I know thinks it was complete bullshit to cast her as Mary Jane, and a clear example of hamfisted diversity.
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She had red hair, I think. I can only remember three fremen hair colours, liet was 'sandy', chani was red and stilgar had a black beard. No one reacts to liet or chani as being atypical. I vaguely remember some mention of darker and lighter skin colours too. The fremen definitely seem to be culturally inspired by the bedouin, but generically, perhaps more diverse.
Paul has a vision of brown skinned fremen girls roasting coffee. In Dune Messiah one fremen has sandy blonde hair. They are a mix of various slave populations moved from planet to planet before being left on Dune. I suppose they are a rather racially diverse group.
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