Arnold is still playing the terminator at 70, Stallone is still Rambo at 65, so why do we need a new Xena: Warrior Princess? Lucy Lawless is only in her 40s, ffs.
Reminded of people saying Katee Sackhoff, Katheryn Winnick, and Anna Torv are “too old” to play Carol Danvers becase they’re >35.
RDJ is 50, assholes.
Okay, this is the sixth time this has crossed my dash and I could no longer resist:
Carol Danvers is a Colonel in the United States Air Force. The average age of USAF officers, full-stop, is 35*, and only 14% of all USAF officers are younger than 26*. The average age of a Colonel is 49.** Even if we assume they’re introducing an earlier-career Carol, a Lieutenant Colonel averages 45** and a Major 39**, so technically just about every actress I’ve seen suggested is more than a decade too young for the role.***
Not that that’s out of the ordinary for women on screen, who are routinely cast as younger than is even remotely feasible for their stated professions, particularly in military stories (unless you count Star Trek, though since a) the human lifespan in the Federation is drastically longer than ours and b) THAT IS A SCIENCE FICTION SERIES SET IN THE DISTANT SOCIALIST UTOPIAN FUTURE it’s probably not super-relevant; the closest-to-reality portrayal - Stargate won awards for its faithful representation of the USAF - I can actually think of right now is Sam Carter, who makes Major at ~32, Lieutenant Colonel at 36 and full-bird Colonel at 39, BUT THEN AGAIN she is part of a super-rarefied secret program and one of the four smartest people on the planet so adjust for sanity.****
Anyway tl;dr: Hollywood’s ageist/sexist casting double standards are ridiculous and offensive and bad for verisimilitude which is something you’d think an industry founded on convincingly portraying the fictional would care more about, Dear Hollywood, Katee Sackhoff and Katheryn Winnick are great but I would prefer it if you cast a more mature lady as Carol Danvers, please and thank you
, obviously I would prefer Amanda Tapping because then you could cast Claudia Black as Jessica Drew and I would EXPIRE FROM JOY but I can learn to live with disappointment.—
*From the Air Force Personnel Center website.
**These particular statistics are from 1997, but I cannot imagine age ranges have changed as much as gender distribution; someone feel free to correct me. As I understand it, mostly promotions are based on years of service, so they’re unlikely to have changed much above Captain. Consider, too, that USAF officers generally have a shit-ton of advanced education in addition to military training. 60.8% of officers have advanced or professional degrees and 48.6%* have master’s degrees and anybody hoping to make Colonel one day is all but required to have a master’s degree (or equivalent). So assuming you’re being sensible and getting that out of the way up-front while maybe the USAF will pay for it, that’s - start at age 18, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree - your average starting age for active, post-degrees service would be 22-24 depending on what combo of education/training you go with. PROBABLY NOT A LOT OF 25-YEAR-OLD CAPTAINS IS WHAT I’M SAYING.
***All of this is, of course, irrelevant if they do something unpardonably stupid like write out Carol’s military backstory, in which case of course I will burn down the fucking world and salt the earth.
****I will not pretend that the overwhelming majority of my casual knowledge of American military ranks does not come from Stargate or my over-researching because I was writing Stargate fic at the time. Whatever.*****
*****I am so sorry about all the confusing asterisks. My footnotes aren’t even funny like Pratchett’s.
P.P.S. HOW DARE ANYONE EVEN SUGGEST RECASTING LUCY LAWLESS SHE IS THE FLAWLESS AND ETERNAL WARRIOR PRINCESS OF MY HEART AND IF YOU THINK IT’S HARD TO GET PROMOTED ABOVE THE ZONE AS A LADY IN THE REAL WORLD IMAGINE HOW LONG IT TAKES TO BUILD A TERRIFYING REPUTATION CONQUERING SWATHES OF GREECE IN AN ERA BEFORE COMPUTERS OR AIR TRAVEL FIGHT ME OH WAIT NEVER MIND XENA WILL TAKE CARE OF THAT FOR ME
With rumours circulating re: Brie Larson (who is 26) being considered for Captain Marvel, I see it’s time to post this again, because honestly, the research is done and I don’t want to go and do it again.
The thing is, I know they’re going to do it. They’re going to cast someone who is younger than I am to play a character who by all rights, in accordance with her experiences, should be nearly a decade my senior. Even if they write us up a Carol who is a decade earlier in her career than in comics canon (not that that’s any better), 26 is still too young to play a Major, or a Lieutenant-Colonel, or even, IMHO, a Captain, anywhere near convincingly.
I have a problem with the possibility that this suggests, that they’re writing a Carol who is over a decade younger than the majority of our current cast of white male superheroes, rather than their contemporary. I have a problem with the likelihood that this will mean that her rank will be inferior to the characters that have a rank. Honestly, I have a problem with Carol Danvers calling anyone Sir (especially Captain America), which is partly my thing but honestly is mostly in keeping with her character. And I have a real, serious problem with the outside possibility of them ignoring/wiping out her decades of military service.
I won’t lie: I will watch this movie. Probably more than once, because let’s be real: I’d just be too pathetically grateful that they’d made it at all to do anything else. But I will also criticize the fuck out of anything that disrespects Carol’s history and what she represents.
I mean… if they ever actually make it. I try not to pay too much attention to “updates” on “progress” any more. It’s just too frustrating.
(Source: mysharona1987, via yea-lets-do-this-shit)
