Michael B. Jordan may only be 28, but he’s already established a solid career. He delivered a nuanced, heartbreaking performance in Fruitvale Station. He was the only worthwhile part of an otherwise awful movie in Chronicle. Now he’s going blockbuster by playing Johnny Storm (a.k.a., “The Human Torch”) in a Fantastic Four reboot.

Chris Evans originally played the Torch role and has thrown his full support behind Jordan. But not every fan is happy. When the casting news came down for this movie, no one paid any attention to the rest of the cast. The only bit of news that mattered was Jordan’s casting. Much of the attention was pointlessly negative. People were stupidly whining about how the Torch will be played by a black man. Jordan shouldn’t have to answer to those trolls, but he did. Here’s Jordan’s powerful essay for Entertainment Weekly and EW also has a photo of him in character:

You’re not supposed to go on the Internet when you’re cast as a superhero. But after taking on Johnny Storm in Fantastic Four–a character originally written with blond hair and blue eyes–I wanted to check the pulse out there. I didn’t want to be ignorant about what people were saying. Turns out this is what they were saying: “A black guy? I don’t like it. They must be doing it because Obama’s president” and “It’s not true to the comic.” Or even, “They’ve destroyed it!”

It used to bother me, but it doesn’t anymore. I can see everybody’s perspective, and I know I can’t ask the audience to forget 50 years of comic books. But the world is a little more diverse in 2015 than when the Fantastic Four comic first came out in 1961. Plus, if Stan Lee writes an email to my director saying, “You’re good. I’m okay with this,” who am I to go against that?

Some people may look at my casting as political correctness or an attempt to meet a racial quota, or as part of the year of “Black Film.” Or they could look at it as a creative choice by the director, Josh Trank, who is in an interracial relationship himself–a reflection of what a modern family looks like today.

This is a family movie about four friends–two of whom are myself and Kate Mara as my adopted sister–who are brought together by a series of unfortunate events to create unity and a team. That’s the message of the movie, if people can just allow themselves to see it.

Sometimes you have to be the person who stands up and says, “I’ll be the one to shoulder all this hate. I’ll take the brunt for the next couple of generations.” I put that responsibility on myself. People are always going to see each other in terms of race, but maybe in the future we won’t talk about it as much. Maybe, if I set an example, Hollywood will start considering more people of color in other prominent roles, and maybe we can reach the people who are stuck in the mindset that “it has to be true to the comic book.” Or maybe we have to reach past them.

To the trolls on the Internet, I want to say: Get your head out of the computer. Go outside and walk around. Look at the people walking next to you. Look at your friends’ friends and who they’re interacting with. And just understand this is the world we live in. It’s okay to like it.

[From EW.com]

Jordan pretty much wiped the floor with the bigots who have the audacity to complain about race and try to justify themselves with “continuity” rationales. It sucks that an actor has to defend his own casting after producers (including Stan Lee) decided he was the right one for a role. Now Johnny Storm will be a stepbrother to Sue Storm (a.k.a., “The Invisible Woman”), and it shouldn’t matter at all! I understand that some fanboys will always complain about something, but they should be ashamed of themselves for creating this “controversy.” Anyway, Jordan wrote a fantastic essay.

Photos courtesy WENN