La Ron S. Readus
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Why Mileena Is Black (VIDEO SCRIPT)
🕑 Added 2021-03-03 21:01:00 +0000 UTCHey Readers. So, the Mortal Kombat reboot is coming out in March 2021, right?
And from what I’ve seen in the comment section of the video I made on who Lewis Tan’s Cole Young might actually REALLY be, you’re either just as on board the Kuai Liang train as I am
Think that a British Chinese actor is going to play either the son or a descendant of a Japanese ninja-turned revenant based on a second-long scene from a trailer
Or think that he’s going to be a rebranded Johnny Cage, along with a few other theories regarding some other characters I’m not that familiar with.
But you wanna know what else I saw in the comment section when the video started to take off? Racism! (pause) So let’s talk about it!
So as I’ve stated in my previous videos on the upcoming reboot, one of the things I was happy to see was that casting director Rich Delia took the actors’ heritages and lineages into heavy consideration when approaching them for roles.
Chinese Indonesian actor Joe Taslim is playing Bi-Han, the first Sub-Zero who later dies and becomes Noob Saibot, and a member of the Chinese-inspired Lin Kuei clan.
Hiroyuki Sanada -- the modern-day mainstream face for Japanese DILFS -- is playing Hanzo Hasashi himself Scorpion; one of the last representatives of the Japanese-inspired clan Shirai Ryu.
And both Chinese Canadian actor Ludi Lyn and Chinese German actor Max Huang are respectively playing Mortal Kombat’s Shaolin Monk equivalents of Ryu and Ken, Liu Kang and Kung Lao
Yes, I know that Scorpion and Sub-Zero ALSO represent Street Fighter’s Ryu and Ken dynamic. But you understand the point I’m trying to make, which is the important part.
Now with me bringing up this fact in my latest video -- especially when I made the point of Lord Raiden finally being portrayed by a Japanese actor because part of the inspiration for his character -- other than visibly being John Carpenter’s racist ball of Asian stereotypes that is the movie “Big Trouble in Little China” --
Is Raijin, the Japanese god of thunder, and that I’m glad that element of inspiration is finally going to be visibly depicted in the character by having him being portrayed by a Japanese actor
The two main racist comments I saw in the section were in regards to specifically countering my points regarding a Japanese actor playing Raiden
And -- while I will admit that there were some who genuinely wanted to hear my opinion on the matter and weren’t actively screaming from the mountaintops for me to block them from ever commenting on my shit again -- those who countered my point of Delia wanting proper representation to reflect the casting, with the fact that Mileena -- a fan-favorite character of the franchise who’ll be making her big screen debut in the 2021 reboot -- is played by Sisi Stringer, a black australian actress.
So as you can imagine -- and from what I’ve researched myself regarding whether or not it would be in my benefit to make this video -- there are a handful of people who are trying to capitalize on playing the “Get Woke Go Broke” card regarding why the decision was made to cast a black actress to play Mileena.
And some of these individuals -- as I’ve seen and REPLIED to in my recent Mortal Kombat video -- are only mad about it just to BE mad about it.
Because from the way they phrased things, they know NOTHING about either Mortal Kombat lore, how other games in the series have handled certain characters, or both at the same time.
So for those of you who have SEEN my replies to both the troll comments and the ones who commented because they genuinely wanted to know my opinions on the matter and already know everything I’m about to say: Thanks for sticking around, I really appreciate it; y’all some of the real ones.
For everyone ELSE, however...(cracks knuckles), here are some of the reasons why Mileena in the Mortal Kombat reboot can be black.
The first reason is...the obvious one. MILEENA IS A FUCKING CLONE.
Okay, let me get specific before y’all claim I’m a fake gamer girl or some shit.
Yes. Mileena is a clone. Specifically, Mileena is a clone of Princess Kitana of Edenia and Outworld.
She was created by Shang Tsung by commission of Shao Kahn -- the tyrannical ruler of Outworld and the Big Bad to Shang’s Dragon in the case of the upcoming movie -- once he started getting paranoid that Kitana, his stepdaughter, would learn about the truth of her Edenian lineage and betray him.
But unlike cloning in its “purest” form -- whatever that means -- Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn took the Superboy approach.
Like how Conner Kent was a clone created by Cadmus that spliced together DNA strands from two different individuals to make him -- Superman and Lex Luthor in this case -- Shang Tsung did this with Mileena in his flesh pits
The first strand is -- of course -- Kitana herself. However, the second strand that was spliced with it belongs to the Tarkatan race, previously conquered by Shao Kahn. Basically, they’re the race that Mortal Kombat’s favorite jobber Baraka belongs to.
So not only is that strand of DNA also how Mileena inherited her trademark teeth that she hides underneath her mask, but it’s also where things start getting a bit less defined regarding how to not only interpret Mileena in this movie, but also eventually Kitana.
You see, because Mileena is a clone that was spliced together using Kitana’s DNA and Tarkatan DNA, she’s NEVER going to be a perfect copy of Kitana. She’s going to inherit her traits, sure. But the ones she ALSO has from the Tarkatan genetics that went into making her are going to mix in order to become more of an amalgamation of the two.
Basically its the reason your mom always took out her aggression on you growing up. Y’know, just because you look too little like her and too much like your dad.
Oh, no, that wasn’t my life. MY parents didn’t split up until I left for college. Although I think they should’ve split sooner; they probably would’ve been a lot happier if they didn’t stay together for my sake...
Anyway, we also have to consider that, despite us wanting her in it, Kitana isn’t going to be in the Mortal Kombat reboot. Meaning that because Mileena IS in it -- along with the fact that this will be the first time we’ll see traces of Tarkatans on screen through her -- Sisi Stringer’s Mileena will act as the visual representation of what both Edenian and Tarkatan lineages mixed together will look like in this upcoming movieverse. And because Sisi is playing -- for lack of better words -- a mixed clone, Kitana can be cast for an upcoming sequel based on matching the likeness of Stringer to show that they’re truly cut from the same cloth.
Because -- and this is my second point -- KITANA ISN’T ASIAN, SHE’S EDENIAN.
No, Readers, I’m serious; this was LITERALLY the point that people thought they were making when they challenged Sisi Stringer’s casting of Mileena to me.
They were all like “Well, if they really cared about how they cast the Asian roles, then why did they make Mileena black if she’s Kitana’s clone?”
And while my explanation about how Mileena was spliced together is my main reasoning first and foremost, I had no choice but to look at that response as nothing but a racist troll comment that doesn’t know and doesn’t CARE to know how the Mortal Kombat lore operates outside its Earthrealm characters.
Because while the game developers did make an active choice to give her more physical features commonly found in asian lineages starting in Mortal Kombat X, there’s very little evidence that the individuals from the realm of Edenia follow the same ethnic group structure as we do in the real world.
Especially if you take into the equation, that Sindel -- Kitana’s Edenian-ass birth mother -- looks like the Edenian version of a white woman. Even when Netherrealm brought her back in Mortal Kombat 11, which, coincidentally enough, is also the same game they comfortably made Kitana look the most Northeast Asian to date.
Also, there’s Jade. She’s a born and raised Edenian, and she’s black as fuck! We can’t set a race of people that exist in an entirely different dimension than ours to our same sets of standards
Which is why when I read that comment left on my video claiming that Sisi Stringer couldn’t play Mileena because she’s black and her character is a clone of an asian character, knowing what I know about how many colors and creeds make up the people of Edenia over the course of multiple games in the history of Mortal Kombat, I had NO CHOICE but to translate that as a racist troll
Which I properly dealt with.
Just like I’ll deal with the ones that appear in the comment section of THIS video.
So by all means.
But, I digress Readers. Your homework assignment for the day:
Write in the comment section below how YOU initially reacted to the casting of Sisi Stringer as Mileena in the upcoming Mortal Kombat movie.
Or, if you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, write in the comment section below if you wanna eventually watch me rip “Big Trouble in Little China” a brand new asshole (pauses). Because I’ve been meaning to do it for a WHILE...
Whichever you decide to answer, I’d love to know your thoughts!
