Birds Of Prey Movie: Fan-Casting Every Major Role

2. Shiva - Rinko Kikuchi

Rinko Kikuchi Pacific Rim
Warner Bros.

Rinko Kikuchi's profile has increased massively in recent years, with appearances in Babel, 47 Ronin and Pacific Rim having seen the actor attain a new onscreen prominence. Kikuchi already starred in Pacific Rim: Uprising this year, and with another appearance in Westworld soon to air, 2018 is sure to continue the actor's rise.

In the comics, Lady Shiva is the DC Universe's most proficient fighter. She's been an assassin, an anti-hero and a mentor, and Kikuchi has all the talents to make that work on the big screen, with all aspects of the character sure to feature in live action in some form or another.

Although most audiences will be familiar with the star for their part in Pacific Rim, where she played a hero through and through, Kikuchi has illustrated massive range in her other roles. She was nominated for a whole host of awards for her part in 2006's Babel, and while 47 Ronin was a fairly forgettable film, Kikuchi's performance as one of the film's villains stood out.

Shiva is one of the DCU's most ambiguous - and deadly - characters. Kikuchi is more than up to the task of nailing everything about her.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.