If this is written right, it can absolutely make sense, and I’m sure he’ll do a bangin’ job – but I don’t want to spend my time wondering how a Norse god can be black. I want to get absorbed by the movie. So unless they have a specific reason for portraying Heimdall as black, I think it’s a bad casting call.

Its a marvel comics superhero inspired by them. Those enthusiasts would also be the first to point out that Thor doesn’t speak in olde english, or have blonde hair.

All cultures describe their gods with their own cutural likeness. It doesn’t mean they have to be.

And in case you missed it, this is an adaptation of the MARVEL comics characters who are inspired by (but not exactly like) the fictional gods of norse mythology.

There is nothing defining the character by his description that means he MUST be white.

No, a white guy could very well play Black Panther, all they would have to do is to turn him into a Tarzan type character and there you have a white guy growing up in Africa then moving to America. Any other aspect of the character could be ignored because, hey, its just an adaptation of a comic book character so what is the big deal? To say that Heimdall’s ethnicity isn’t important is like saying Buddha’s ethnicity doesn’t matter.

(tryin’ to lightin’ up all the fussin’)

And no… no one remembers the uproar when Peter Sellers was cast as Fu Manchu and that is exactly my point. People might cry about it or disagree based on some narrow viewpoint that a character MUST be a certain way, but in the end no one will care and the world still turns.

And casting a white guy as Black Panther would be incorrect because so much of who and what the Black Panther is involves his ethnicity. There is nothing in any of these character’s ethnicity that defines them. So its not a big deal.