Michael B. Jordan Hits Back At The Trolls Who Are Angry Over His 'Fantastic Four' Casting

Fantastic Four star Michael B. Jordan has spoken out against the internet trolls who have objected to his casting as Johnny Storm aka Human Torch in the upcoming superhero reboot. In an essay published in Entertainment Weekly Jordan gave a clear message to those who object to a black actor being cast in the role.

Michael B. Jordan as The Human Torch.

“You’re not supposed to go on the Internet when you’re cast as a superhero,” Jordan began. “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!”

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The actor went on to say that the criticism used to bother him but it doesn’t anymore. “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,” he added.

“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,” Jordan continued.

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“Sometimes you have to be the person who stands up and says, ‘I’ll be the one to shoulder all this hate,” he wrote. “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.”

But when it comes to the internet trolls, Jordan has some clear words of advice, “To the trolls on the Internet, I want to say: Get your head out of the computer,” he wrote. “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.”