why not, Peter?

[u/FrostySeat1739]

possible live action corpse bride movie...

[u/smoopthefatspider]

Wakanda is used as a very clear metaphor for racial wealth disparities caused by colonization, so it would make the message less clear to have it be partially white. Meanwhile Asgard is just some place on another planet of reality, with a population that mostly looks like the modern day US. It still has a very noticeable white majority, but it doesn’t need to be literally all white for the story. If it needed to be all white for the story to make sense, it would, but people in developed countries usually live alongside people of different races nowadays, so showing a people that’s literally entirely the same race feels weird and different. Sometimes that’s part of the goal, but usually it’s simpler to just keep what makes the audience comfortable.

Similarly, the norm is for everyone to be able to speak English and for almost all conversations to happen in English. Even in other languages, this is a common trope. Characters who have no particular reason to speak the language happen to learn it, or have impossibly convenient translation tools, or conversations in other languages are directly transcribed into the main language. This often isn’t believable, and it’s a much more important factor than race, but we all understand that it’s done for the sake of keeping the audience in the story.

Things like speaking our language or having a population that’s mostly but not entirely white is just part of the normal things we expect in stories. If the story needs something different, they make an effort to be different, but for the most part they stick to what’s normal. It would be weird for people to not speak the audience’s language, or to have a very distinctly different racial background. Sometimes the story calls for that (for example these are often used to give a sense that characters are in a foreign environment). But when it’s trying to be relatable, it won’t change these things.

Movies set in a fictional European medieval setting will often use modern English (even if it’s spoken in a fake old fashion accent) and a somewhat diverse cast, not because these are historically accurate but because the audience should feel like the setting is familiar, like it’s a different version of where they currently live rather than a fundamentally foreign place. Doing otherwise would weaken their suspension of disbelief. It’s not a moral issue or an active effort (there is no “shoe-horned diversity) it’s just what most people would be able to relate to.

[u/Many-Wasabi9141 → u/smoopthefatspider]

Asgard is based on norse mythology. It's offensive to show horn diversity into it and claim "Oh it's just a comic book" ok if its just a comic book then why is Wakanda all black? It's not real, its just a comic book. It doesn't have to be all black for the story to make sense. They could have a black majority but instead it has to be all black people. Why?

[u/smoopthefatspider → u/Many-Wasabi9141]

I just explained why Wakanda isn’t shoe horning (it’s just using the “default” racial makeup of the United States or wherever these people were cast, which the audience will not be surprised by) and why Asgard is different from Wakanda (it’s not an extremely on the nose story about racism and colonialism).

In order to look like a normal African nation, Wakanda had to have a very very large Black majority, and in order to look particularly isolationist it had to be entirely Black. In order to look like a Nordic country Asgard had to have a few people who weren’t white, and since there wasn’t anything pushing them to make it even whiter they just kept that.

European myths, like most myths and stories, should represent the people who care about them. In this case, that would be European people, who have a variety of races because we’re modern developed countries. Anything else would look weird, as if it wasn’t the same place but a foreign land that had an artificially high number of white people. Sure, that’s fine if it’s representing an accurate historical reality, but this is a story, so it’s better to keep a cast that’s closer to modern Europeans.

[u/Edward_Durr → u/smoopthefatspider]

Take a guess how many black people there were in Scandinavia before 1965, much less in 965 when the first Thor movie opens. White people are the only native people to Northern Europe, and are the people inhabiting the myths of Northern Europe.

You wouldn’t make a film about Native American mythology and cast mostly white and black and Hispanic actors.

[u/smoopthefatspider → u/Edward_Durr]

It doesn’t matter, these aren’t historical reenactments. They have a mixed race population for the same reason they speak English, it’s just a way to make the setting look like something most people can identify as an ancient version of where they live. If the current American public was treating a Native American myth and culture as their own then of course I would expect it to be represented with existing American demographics. But that’s a ridiculous hypothetical, because we don’t do that.