Younger Actors Should Have Been Cast "Judas and The Black Messiah"

The movie staring Daniel Kaluuya as as Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton was a deeply impacted trull movie. Director Shaka King did a magnificent job of telling a story that was marked change in the Civil Rights movement on the landscape of an America that was ready to change. The one flaw in the casting of the movie is how the actors who portrayed the pivotal characters are actually years beyond them in age.

Hampton was 21 when he died, a decade younger than Kaluuya is now. O'Neal was a little younger, 20 to Stanfield's 29 — and only 17 when he was first approached by the FBI.

Comparable gaps also exist for characters like fellow victim Mark Clark (22), played by Jermaine Fowler (32), and Hampton's girlfriend Deborah Johnson (19), played by Dominique Fishback (29). But you'd never glean any of this from watching the film, which makes little reference to the characters' ages. You'd assume all of them were in their late 20s and early 30s, because that's the age the actors are — when in reality, they'd have been closer in age to actors like Caleb McLaughlin (19), Marcus Scribner (21), or Jacob Latimore (24).

The story may have been more powerful if the actors would have been the same age. Perhaps the perception of the portray would be more intense and sensitive of their circumstances and plight. Moreover an even deeper appreciation to the commitment to the struggle at such young ages.