Michael Jai White on Fusing Action With Acting, And Which of His Two Bronze Tigers Would Win a Fight

In January, Spawn and Arrow veteran Michael Jai White will voice Ben Turner, the superhero known as Bronze Tiger, in Batman: Soul of the Dragon. The character is familiar to him, since it’s the same guy he played — albeit with a very different attitude — in Arrow. In Soul of the Dragon, a relatively young Batman teams with Turner, Richard Dragon, and Lady Shiva to battle an army of ninjas and organized crime in an homage to ’70s kung-fu and James Bond movies. And, when pressed, White is pretty sure he knows which version of Bronze Tiger would win, if the two versions he’s played in the last decade somehow came to blows.

With the multiverse taking root everywhere, it’s entirely possible (although wildly unlikely). Heck, White even told ComicBook that he hopes to get another live-action superhero movie, where he can use his martial arts skills while he’s still in the physical shape to do it.

“Oh, the Arrow guy,” White said when asked which Bronze Tiger would win. “Because he’s a lot more vicious.”

He was also surprised to find out that his on-screen pal, Richard Dragon (here played by Marc Dacascos), is a version of Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo), the villain he teamed up with Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) to battle on Arrow. He looked back on episodes from his last season of Arrow, and forward toward what he thinks he could bring to a role that most actors can’t in the superhero space.

“I know what I’d be able to do with the lead superhero role, that is not in the genre at all,” White told us. “Most people don’t fuse the action and the acting together. This is something that I’ve honed for a very long time, so there is a level of action that has not been in any of these superhero genres, that I would be dying to portray. I got a chance to do a little bit of it in Arrow, but the schedule on a television show is punishing, plus I’m not the lead character. What I’d be able to do as a lead character, week-to-week, or in a film, it would be something that Hollywood hasn’t had in a long time.”

He also noted that he’s got a kind of strange career trajectory, where every ten years or so he has a big, recognizable role, so that when you look at actors capable of doing crazy martial arts stuff, there aren’t many who can go to a convention and meet parents and kids who both have distinct experiences with White’s career they bring to the table.

Batman: Soul of the Dragon is scheduled to be released on Digital platforms in January 12, 2021 and DVD on January 26, 2021.