Kevin Feige regrets pulling off one of the rarest most controversial MCU castings ever.
Kevin Feige divided a huge section of the MCU fandom by casting Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in 2016’s Doctor Strange. At that time, Feige and director Scott Derickson clarified that it was a decision to subvert stereotypes. However, after the release of 2021’s Shang-Chi, Kevin Feige acknowledged that they went wrong with Ancient One’s casting.
Tilda Swinton’s Ancient One, introduced in Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange, was a significant addition to the MCU. However, contrary to what we see in films, the Ancient One in Marvel Comics is an Asian Man.
Kevin Feige had to admit his mistake with the Ancient One casting
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has recently made a name for promoting diversity and inclusion. Projects like Black Panther and Shang-Chi have been widely appreciated. But Tilda Swinton‘s casting of Ancient One brought accusations of whitewashing on the superhero studio.
On Doctor Strange‘s release in 2016, Kevin Feige stated to Deadline that they did not want to follow the stereotypes of the age-old comics. Feige felt that making the “wisest bestower of knowledge in the universe” a woman “opened up possibilities” and added a fresh take on the “old and very typical storyline“.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, released in 2021, was the first MCU film helmed by an Asian director and a predominantly Asian cast. Surprisingly, during a chat with Men’s Health at that time, Kevin Feige confessed that casting Swinton instead of an Asian Man to avoid following negative stereotypes was a bad decision.
We thought we were being so smart, and so cutting-edge. We’re not going to do the cliché of the wizened, old, wise Asian man. But it was a wake-up call to say, ‘Well, wait a minute, is there any other way to figure it out? Is there any other way to both not fall into the cliché and cast an Asian actor?’ And the answer to that, of course, is yes.
Besides clarifying that their plan to not follow the stereotype went wrong, the Marvel Studios President also ensured that they would give more faithful on-screen adaptations going forward. With hordes of projects planned to come out before Avengers: Secret Wars, it will be exciting to watch how the new castings play out in the MCU.
Scott Derrickson defended Tilda Swinton’s casting as Ancient One
To differentiate from the source materials, the MCU’s Ancient One was shown as a woman of Celtic descent. At the time of the controversy, Tilda Swinton said in an interview with Indiewire– “There’s a kind of misunderstanding, which I hope the film will make clear when people see the film.“
After Feige and Swinton, the director Scott Derrickson also entered the picture when he had a chat with Daily Beast. He said that writing the characters of Ancient One and Wong was a challenge from the very start. He described them as examples of bad racial stereotypes which he did not want in his film.
It was a challenge from the beginning that I knew I was facing with both Wong and the Ancient One being pretty bad racial stereotypes—1960s versions of what Western white people thought Asians were like. We weren’t going to have the Ancient One as the Fu Manchu magical Asian on the hill being the mentor to the white hero. I knew that we had a long way to go to get away from that stereotype and cliché.
Derrickson decided to make the character a woman even before a script was written. He wanted a mature good actress to play the Ancient One. They even decided to cast an Asian actress for the role. But interestingly, it made way for another prominent Asian stereotype of a Dragon Lady.
To avoid contributing to the Dragon Lady stereotype, the MCU decided to let go of Ancient One’s Asian origin and take a new approach. The filmmaker even executed a unique plan to not disappoint anyone-reinvent Wong’s character. Unlike the comics, Wong became more prominent in Doctor Strange’s story in the MCU and acted as his “intellectual mentor” instead of a mere sidekick.
Although Scott Derrickson’s plans to popularize Wong worked, unfortunately, the fans could never get over the transformation of Ancient One’s character in the MCU.
Doctor Strange can be streamed on Disney+.
