Nick Fury, Mace Windu; Same Stereotypes, Different Dude
Dunno how to tell people this but just cause two characters are played by the same actor doesn’t mean they’re the same character.
Honestly I’d be a lot less annoyed about people trying to use traits from the MCU’s Nick Fury to inform their interpretation of Mace Windu if half the interpretations of Nick Fury I’ve read weren’t at best completely oversimplified and at worst simply racist caricatures. (I know this because I’m not even half this irritated when people do the same thing with David Tennant characters)
Literally at no point does Nick Fury have anger issues. He talks sternly sometimes—yk when he’s giving orders and needs to be heard; he’s sarcastic—yk when he’s sassing the Security Council; he says fuck sometimes—yk cuz he’s an adult in the 21st century.
And all of that is deliberate flare—not like it’s untrue, I think he is using it in a way that comes naturally to him—this man was a spy, and is some cross of a diplomat-politican-spymaster (or yk his actual title: Director of SHEILD). He is not doing anything by accident. Having a strong personality, not being willing to be pushed around by everyone who wants something is deeply necessary to doing his job.
You want to know Nick Fury’s actual character flaw?
Thats why he falls for Project Insight when Steve Rogers and Natasha Romannoff don’t. Fury wants the control that information and those helicarriers would give to ensure security, to be able to stop threats in advance. But it’s a trap—taking too much control lets authoritarians flourish. That’s why Natasha has to release all of SHEILD’s data—no matter the intentions it’s gathered under, it’s impossible to have so much control without someone (or the system in general) abusing it.
But it’s also why his choices in Avengers are such a victory! Giving the fate of the world to a bunch of random wackjobs with superpowers? Trusting in the thrown together team of the Avengers? That is giving up control—that is the opposite of nuking New York to stop an invasion. That is overcoming his character flaw, and it's why its cool that after Project Insight, he becomes at bit more of a rogue agent, running around and showing up last minute to save people or to call for help. (And why the avenegers movie bothered with “given the council has elected to make a stupid decision…”—it’s the completion of his character arc)
That’s a character I could I could see people actually comparing to Mace Windu. I mean the result of such a comparison is still that they’re really pretty different characters—especially in terms of this whole wanting control thing—but you could at least make the comparison in good faith.
