Entertainment

Best Petition Of The Day? This Lupita Nyong'o One

by Alanna Bennett

It was just a matter of time, and not that much time at that: There's a campaign going around to get Lupita Nyong'o cast as Storm in X-Men . Is anyone surprised? Nyong'o's been making what we'll call the JLaw Rounds these past few weeks — AKA the time in a star's career when she's followed around by lots and lots of very admiring press, flattering tweets, and effusive facebook posts from people dying to be her BFF — leading into and out of her Oscar win for 12 Years A Slave. She's stunning, she's brilliant, she's incredibly talented, and she's very aware of the social impact her fame can have. She's won the public over, and hard.

Cue superhero desires. This is a superhero franchise world, folks, and we just live in it. It's also an awards show world and we just live in it. And an It Girl world and we just live in it. Combine all that with the desire to see someone as awesome as Nyong'o — who is also a member of a race not exactly thoroughly represented onscreen, let alone in comic book movies — and with the fact that we still don't know what her career move will be? Yep, cue the petitions.

This one was started on twitter — shoutout to Jamie Broadnax — and got a hell of a lot of retweets, and them moved to a petition. As Broadnax notes in the petition, "She has the accent, the look, and the acting chops to play Storm as the comic book intended.”

This is true. But what about Halle Berry, who's already been playing Storm in the X-Men films? I'm all for Nyong'o playing a superhero — the very thought makes me very pleased — but let's find her a different one. Maybe even one who — gasp! — isn't necessarily already black, and/or one that wouldn't involve pushing an over-40 actress (also an Oscar winner) out of a gig. Then we'd be increasing the population of black women playing superheroes by, well, a big percentage.