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[kunonabi]

ra's al ghul in the batman trilogy was portrayed as white, and no one seemed to complain about that

I did but I was drowned out by all the best movie ever talk when it came out.

 

[george_us]

This can't be right. Hollywood told me this movie needed white people to succeed.

 

[Dash_Riprock]

Glad it bombed, though whitewashing had little to do with it. Marketing just sucked.

Still, this is the like the 4th Hollywood blockbuster that used the "Whites are more bankable!" excuse and it still bombed.

 

[Arjayes]

Dragonball Evolution
The Last Airbender
Exodus
Stonewall
Gods of Egypt
Ghost in the Shell

When has whitewashing actually benefited a movie?

Passion of the Christ?

 

[Bronx-Man]

They give a shit about good movies. There have been plenty of examples brought up in this thread, you're just choosing to ignore them.

That's what I'm saying. If you make a good anime movie, people will come out to support it. America doesn't have some wide dislike of anime, just shit movies.

 

[jWILL253]

For anyone that has seen the original GitS, it probably translates a lot better to a live action adaptation than most anime.

The failure of this film has nothing to do with the source material. It has everything to do with the controversy surrounding it, which has created bad press from the moment the casting was announced. Not a single ounce of positive press.

Stop blaming the source material. Not like the film is based on GitS Arise. But even if it was, that wouldn't change the fact that ScarJo is playing a Japanese woman inside a White body. The controversy caused this to fall, not anime adaptations as a whole.

 

[The Artisan]

I did but I was drowned out by all the best movie ever talk when it came out.

i feel you. to be fair though, maybe liam neeson was portraying a man of middle eastern descent.

edit: and i guess that does still fall under whitewashing coz why the fuck wouldn't you get a middle eastern actor for the role

 

[marrec]

Alright gang, no more anime movies

Thank god.

 

[Oxn]

Wouldnt have even made the 19mil if not for Scar. Prolly wouldve been like 11 or 12.

 

[jack_package_200]

And now Paramount is banking on the success of Transformers 5 and Baywatch.

 

[TDLink]

All of this is true but that said, GitS was probably the best franchise to make a Western movie out of. All the other IPs I can think of won't translate over as well. It's just uphill from here.

Lupin the 3rd

 

[UnemployedVillain]

Wouldnt have even made the 19mil if not for Scar. Prolly wouldve been like 11 or 12.

Wouldn't have cost 110mil if they didn't hire Scarlett either...

 

[Kite]

I think the lesson to be learned from this is that adapting an anime so closely bring no advantages since there is no large built in fanbase here (compared to something like LotR or most of these comic book movies whose heroes have name recognition. I may not have read any recent Spiderman stuff but I damn sure know the name), and many things that work in 2d looks plain goofy in 3d. And being inferior to the original while being so similar is going to turn off any fans that exist plus the white washing thing..

The way forward with anime adaptations by Hollywood is to either be inspired by a show like Matrix + Ghost in the Shell, or mine an anime/manga/novel for ideas but change things up enough and change the names like Edge of Tomorrow.

 

[KarmaCow]

Well hopefully it hits Netflix sooner rather than later, I'm still curious to see it but not enough to actually go to the theatre for it for various reasons. Everything I've read made it seem like Zack Snyder lifting scenes from different adaptations but worse, especially since it's removed from the context that made it work in the original version. It would explain how anyone thought the "twist" was a good idea.

 

[kswiston]

will this failure be the end of scarjo as a massive box office pull???

nah, that will still be trotted out as an excuse to not hire lesser-known actors

Scarlett actually has the highest cumulative domestic box office gross of any actress ever. Even if there is an easy argument that any number of people could have pulled off Black Widow, it will be awhile before she is hurting for work.

 

[Megalosaro]

I honestly feel like a Gundam universe based on the Universal Century story would be really easy to pull off, plus it already has a super diverse cast built into it to avoid controversies like this movie had.

Yup. Especially first gundam.

Amuro - Canadian
Bright - British
Mirai - japanese
Kai ?
Ryu Jose - hispaic
Frau - German
Hayato- japanese

 

[Razgriz-Specter]

ra's al ghul in the batman trilogy was portrayed as white, and no one seemed to complain about that

I think Ra's gets a break because for many he was a pretty shit character to them before that.
Suddenly people all on the Ra's bandwagon.
He was advertised as Japanese

However when Arrow cast a white-ish actor people had a problem with it.

 

[iRAWRasaurus]

I want a live action Berserk movie starring Chris Evans as Guts

Doesn't berserk take place in some type of middle age European settings? Or inspired by.

 

[jack_package_200]

Lupin the 3rd

It would lose all of its personality in live action. The animation gave Lupin the 3rd so much of its charm.

 

[Dynomutt]

Did anyone expect otherwise? It's a live-action movie adaptation of an anime, it WILL be hated by fans of the original, ignored by people who never heard of the original, and only seen by those who are curious or bored.

Change the Name and dumb it down...

Chrysalis...

In the near future, Anna is the first of her kind: a human hybrid who is a cyborg perfected to be a soldier devoted to stopping the world's most dangerous criminals. When a virus reaches a new level that includes the ability to hack into people's minds and control them. Meanwhile Anna is dealing with dreams and new found abilities she cannot explain nonetheless she is uniquely qualified to stop it. As she prepares to face a new enemy, Anna discovers that her life was stolen instead of saved. As she emerges changed and empowered from her Chrysalis she will stop at nothing to recover her past while punishing those who did this to her.

 

[Maxim726X]

That's what I'm saying. If you make a good anime movie, people will come out to support it. America doesn't have some wide dislike of anime, just shit movies.

My mistake, I misunderstood your point.

I agree with you.

 

[PinkyMonkey]

What if Johansson wasn't in this movie, imagine how much worse it would have done!

 

[GuitarAtomik]

All of this is true but that said, GitS was probably the best franchise to make a Western movie out of. All the other IPs I can think of won't translate over as well. It's just uphill from here.

Full. Metal. Alchemist.

Non-Asian centric. Unique setting. Room for lots of humor and action. Simple premise to sell (Ed wants to get his brother's body back). Lots of room for sequels.

 

[- J - D -]

No, I meant the opposite. Asian—especially Asian-American—actors are not even given a single chance to headline a major motion picture like this.

What you're saying is that if they gave this to an Asian lead, and it bombed, then that actor's career would be over. That's not wrong, per se, but that actor's career never began because she was never given a chance at a role like this anyway.

So, yes, even a one-time starring role that fails would be miles better than just never being given the opportunity.

I didn't say their careers would be over, but the climb would be even harder. Just think about Asian actors like the lead from Ninja Assassin or The Warrior's Way. Where have their careers gone in Hollywood? Did those movies jumpstart other Asian-lead films?

I feel like things have dovetailed from my initial post saying that I want Asian American actors to get a chance at lleading actual good movies instead of being handed shyte projects from Hollywood.

 

[Betty]

anime is box-office poison

Technically Transformers is anime in origin.

 

[UnemployedVillain]

All of this is true but that said, GitS was probably the best franchise to make a Western movie out of. All the other IPs I can think of won't translate over as well. It's just uphill from here.

Mobile Suit Gundam would translate over incredibly well. CG has already reached the point where it can be done and look good, but you know it would be dumbed down and awfully done. Hell, if they didn't want to make it huge budget with space battles, they could keep it on Earth and make it a smaller scale story like 08th MS Team of War in a Pocket

 

[Dark Ninja]

Wouldn't have cost 110mil if they didn't hire Scarlett either...

Well yeah it wouldn't get quarter of that budget without her IF it were even gotten the ok to be made. Since people have been trying for almost 2 decades to make it.

 

[PrivateWHudson]

Now that it's out, could someone clear up that sneak peak segment that was released the other week? In the final cut, did she fall vertically from the roof top and then burst into the room horizontally, or was there a transition shot where they show her on a balcony or something? Weird editing like that killed the action for me.

 

[3N16MA]

The general audience simply didn't care to see it and I doubt most people had any clue about the source material.

 

[marrec]

The failure of this film has nothing to do with the source material. It has everything to do with the controversy surrounding it, which has created bad press from the moment the casting was announced. Not a single ounce of positive press.

The failure of this film is that it had bad marketing, bad reviews, and Scar Jo can't propel a movie to box office bank all on her own.

The general movie going audience has probably never heard of the term "whitewashing".

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

I'm sure this will make 40M in China for reasons unknown.

 

[Hagi]

Wouldnt have even made the 19mil if not for Scar. Prolly wouldve been like 11 or 12.

Probably would have been cheaper to make without her though so ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

 

[Hari Seldon]

So basically they should have made a completely different show

Yeah that is what I'm getting at (and what I would rather have lol). This is getting too OT for this thread. Netflix should be commended for having a show where 95% of the cast is Asian. I'm just salty that the show was cancelled lol.

 

[Joni]

Should have utilized Japanese actors and should have been a hard R.

Wouldn't have worked. There have been a lot of anime movies with Japanese actors. None of them are big.

 

[Clockwork]

I think the real problem is releasing a live action adaptation 20+ years after it even mattered.

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

At least this means the bluray will be a cheap as hell addition to my movie collection 🙃

The blu-ray is already cheap. You can get it for $8 on Amazon.

 

[Haly]

Change the Name and dumb it down...

Chrysalis...

This, as unappealing as it sounds, was what they should've done from the start.

But I suppose the GITS license was burning a hole in their pocket and they really wanted to do something with it, they just went about it in the dumbest way possible.

 

[Maxim726X]

Technically Transformers is anime in origin.

Pacific Rim is basically an anime as far as I'm concerned.

That movie enjoyed more than 400 million worldwide.

 

[Slacker]

The general audience simply didn't care to see it and I doubt most people had any clue about the source material.

Yep that's me. I'm not familiar with the source material at all, and the trailer made it look dumb as hell to me.

 

[kswiston]

Wouldn't have cost 110mil if they didn't hire Scarlett either...

There's a more than decent chance that it wouldn't have been made without Scarlett (or someone comparable). Too bad for Paramount, "never been made" would have been the smarter choice.

 

[marrec]

I honestly don't think the whitewashing had much if anything to do with it's BO numbers but, if that's the lesson they take from it, I'm ok with that.

I think they lesson they'll take is that putting a recognizable name and face on a poster won't save a bad movie from getting bad returns.

Which will give them less excuses to replace minority characters with white leads.

 

[Plum]

Why make it then? Just make some generic Western space western. This is the problem. They need to STOP adapting anime if they're going to scrap the elements that make it what it is and just banking on name recognition to trick fans into watching it

So Cowboy Bebop without the exact same Ed and the main storyline is "just some generic space western"? The show's episodic by nature and even its own film has nothing to do with the main storyline, its style, characters and themes are what makes it. The movie shows that those can be translated to feature-length quite nicely, why couldn't a Western team do it?

 

[KarmaCow]

I'm sure this will make 40M in China for reasons unknown.

Well there are over a billion people there, even a fraction of that many people being mildly interested in it is significant.

 

[FinalStageBoss]

Nice

 

[kmax]

It's a bad film with unforgivable white washing elements.

I actually had hopes for this film once. Shame on me.

Oh, right I said this in the beginning.

Today's Hollywood + Ghost in the Shell?

Yeah, that's not gonna work.

 

[ferr]

Blackwashing? I don't know. Honestly, L should be white and Light should be Asian.

And I guess in the Japanese live adaptations L should have been white instead of Japanese?

 

[Maxim726X]

Yep that's me. I'm not familiar with the source material at all, and the trailer made it look dumb as hell to me.

I also have no familiarity with the source material, but the trailers looked utterly joyless.

I waited for reviews, and they were mostly negative. Downgraded to maybe a rental.

 

[jack_package_200]

The general audience simply didn't care to see it and I doubt most people have any clue about the source material.

Most of my friends and family (most of them white) were baffled by the trailers and marketing. "I don't get what this is supposed to be." Maximum confusion was achieved during the GitS Super Bowl ad.

Huh, A Cure for Wellness had a Super Bowl ad as well and it bombed at the box office. That isn't related to GitS but its just kinda interesting to think about.

 

[_Ryo_]

Good. Start learning, Hollywood.

 

[Angelus Errare]

I think if the creator says it's not whitewashing then it's not whitewashing.
Also, DB Goku isn't even from Earth so kinda confused there.
Avatar is set somewhere other than Earth as well... Japanese people made the source material so they have to be Asian?
DiCaprio in Akira would be whitewashing. I think Light Yagami being white in Death Note is whitewashing.

I mean someone correct me if I'm wrong and maybe I misunderstand what whitewashing is. I tend to be ignorant in current American social issues.

Your Avatar argument doesn't make any sense (Assuming you're talking about the Last Airbender). The show is HEAVILY influenced and borrows many cultural norms from various Inuit cultures as well Chinese (the writing within the world is stylized Hanzi, not to mention the fighting styles are all Chinese martial arts) and South Eastern/Pacific Islander cultures. One could argue it's very insulting to heavily use their cultural norms as the centerpiece of your fictional work (and invoke real cultural references in nearly every episode) but make all the characters white in the movie.

And I'm willing to wager your argument as to why DiCaprio in Akira is whitewashing is the same as why people aren't happy with GiTS, doubly so given the ending of the movie.