Michael B. Jordan is tapping into his real life superhero sensibility in a courageous and bold response to critics about his casting in the movie Fantastic Four.
Since the 2013 announcement of Jordan as Johnny Storm, the 28-year-old actor has been slammed by comic enthusiasts who find that he isn’t the right fit for the “Human Torch” character who has blond-hair and blue eyes in the comic strip.
Yesterday, the actor fired back in an written piece on EW addressing the “trolls on the internet” saying, “Some people may look at my casting as political correctness or an attempt to meet a racial quota…But the world is a little more diverse in 2015 than when the Fantastic Four comic first came out in 1961.”
In his brief, yet candid article, Jordan confronts the issue of race in Hollywood head-on by saying, “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.”
He goes on to say, “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.'”
In the meantime, the resilient actor admits he isn’t bothered much by angry fans anymore. Instead he says, “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.”
Fantastic Four is set to hit theaters this summer.