MJW has always been careful to choose movies that don't pigeon-hole him. He confirmed what I always said about him in the past: he wants to be known as an actor first, then a martial arts actor second. He's done many roles that require acting as opposed to action. He had a role in The Dark Knight, a Tyler Perry movie, lots of tv roles from Living Single and Martin to playing a doctor and a few romocoms and comedies. He wants to show his versatility as opposed to just throwing a kicks.
Van Damme and Seagal became immediately typecast by introducing themselves as action stars first. Whatever other acting talents they may have are automatically overshadowed by people's perception and expectations of them as martial arts action stars. Nobody would go see a romantic comedy with Jennifer Aniston and Jean Claude Van Damme, if VD wasn't throwing any kicks.
White bucks that trend by making you see him as a versatile journeyman actor first, the same way Wesley Snipes did with New Jack City, Jungle Fever and White Men Can't Jump. Even after Spawn, he continued to take unconventional, non-action roles (remember him as the gay street kid in 2 Days in the Valley ?). Now he's got the best of both worlds. He's shown he can act so he gets good character roles in big budgets like Dark Knight and he still gets to make action movies and show his fighting chops on his own terms.
Also he teaches martial arts being a black belt in 7 different styles so I imagine he derives more pleasure from teaching than churning out assembly line straight-to-video movies like Seagal and VD.
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