Tom Hardy. Jared Leto. Bad Bunny? The music superstar is joining the ranks of actors with a lead role in a Marvel-Sony superhero flick.
Bad Bunny will star as El Muerto, a super-powered luchador who made his first comic book appearance in 2006, in which he fights Spider-Man at a charity event and later teams up with him to fight a villain known as Dorado.
News broke Monday night (April 25) about Bad Bunny’s latest project, and the internet did one of two things: shrieked with an overabundance of happiness or shared their disapproval. It all depended on several elements, including opinions on Bad Bunny’s body build, acting abilities, wrestling skills, and how superhero fans ultimately feel about Marvel-Sony movies like Venom and Morbius.
Those excited about the collaboration called the casting “huge” and a “Major W.”
Many others were upset that a Mexican actor wasn’t cast to play a Mexican character.
“‘El Muerto’ is a Mexican Lucha Libre fighter,” wrote one Twitter user. “Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican, he’s a singer not an actor, they should understand that not because we speak Spanish we are the same and that we have excellent actors who have prepared their whole lives for an opportunity like this.”
And well, some didn’t want anything to do with Bad Bunny’s upcoming movie as others were pessimistic about Sony backing this.
For others, it wasn’t so black and white. For example, one twitter user shared that although they love Bad Bunny as a music artist, they weren’t too keen about seeing him starring in a movie with all the other actors Marvel-Sony could have chosen.
“I love Bad Bunny as an artistic exponent, but this is not to be celebrated when we have so many good actors with better capacity and acting training for such roles,” the user wrote in Spanish. “We continue to settle for crumbs.”
In the end, it’s not surprising to see such strong reactions, whether positive or negative, given the loyal fandom surrounding Marvel heroes. Some folks are remaining hopeful that Bad Bunny will do right by the character’s background and the responsibility ingrained within this opportunity. On the other end, they will likely remain discontent about this not only due to the Sony marker but also all the conversation around our communities being viewed as a monolith given Benito’s Puerto Rican background.
There’s still plenty of time to unpack how you feel about this casting and what’s to come of it. Bad Bunny’s El Muerto movie won’t hit theaters until January 2024.