I mean like I mentioned in the other thread this film debuted here in NZ, where is was filmed, basically playing g third fiddle to Beauty and the Beast and Power Rangers. It was actually a struggle to find a session on the biggest screen here in Wellington. That was a shock to me frankly. For that to happen here...In the city it's filmed in, where basically anything with even the slightest association to the town gets pumped like hell. I can only imagine this might not even had a release here with out a name like hers attached to it.
Maybe nz isn't the best example...But I'm sure it applies. Hell even John wick 2 didn't get a NZ release...Well...It kinda has...But people had to cry out for it and I think we get it in may... Freaking ridiculous.
I don't see how whitewashing controversy keeps you from getting movies or having movies filmed in New Zealand.
1. Two of the biggest movie trilogies ever were filmed there.
2. The movie didn't bomb just because of the whitewashing. The controversy didn't help, but the ice berg that sank it was the middling reviews and poor marketing.
3. No one is blaming New Zealand for the movie bombing domestically so I don't even know why that would affect anything
Because the reality of it is, maybe sadly, that with out a big name assigned to the role the cash simply isn't there. And basically scarjo was the closest fit when looking at it from all perspectives. She does actually look similar to the character as presented. She's had some big action blockbusters to her name, but she also has roles like lost in translation so can hopefully bring a more diverse audience to seats. It's not always about race.
It can be business motivated and about race. Why do people struggle to come up with any big name Asian stars? The reason there aren't any bankable international Asian stars isn't because Asians are inherently bad actors.
You saw it that way...I took it as underlining of like the most important theme of the original, she's a ghost in a shell...Her body is just a mechanical accessory. What better way to highlight that fact her discovering what she did. They could have gone even further and had her find out she was a male back in her real previous life.
Hell they pretty much expanded on the scene with the garbage truck camo guy in the original discovering his life as he knew it was a lie thanks to implaneted memories.
The film is a mash up of ideas drawn from the original movie,and the series . That's pretty obvious to me anyways.
They could have gone even further, but my problem is that they didn't. They didn't go far enough for me to buy that they were sincere about their themes. I could buy it if, at the end of the movie, they made it so they had to transfer her body over to an asian body, or a black body, or latina/latino body. But they don't. Because it might be a series and they wanna keep Scarjo. It's really hard to buy their sincerity when they still put a business decision first at the end of the day.
And you know what? They are completely entitled to make a business decision. But don't play it off as a clever twist that I'm supposed to take as some deep message about race and how that relates to our identity.
Using a white actress to be the face of the message that "skin color and race doesn't matter" is tone deaf. Is it malicious? No. But it is tone deaf and totally worth criticizing.
Nobody can stop the outrage Borg, resistance is futile. And it probably was not even about the movie. Also impressive the amount of misogyny in this thread.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=233283528&postcount=249
So, people start to get on the outrage train because of the white is purity thing. Something which is no issue, because white is purity for pretty much the whole history of humanity already and also in pretty much every culture. So it uses one of the most ancient color associations we have.
So it starts lose steam, because the outrage train can only run on outrage and people find something 6 year old to get it started again. I know some 30-50 year old beauty commercials which are very sexist, that should add some steam again to keep this rolling for at least another few pages.
You're really gonna stick with that huh?