ScarJo in Ghost in the Shell

Exactly my point. The lesson is, GITS better not be mediocre.

This is my rule of thumb. If we're talking about some fictional character, then cast whatever race you want. Black Superman? Fine. We had Black Nick Fury and Black Perry White and dozens of others, the world did not end.

Fantastic Four tanked, but not because of Black Johnny Storm. That was the least of the film's issues.

If we're talking about historical characters, it still doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things but it would probably service the story better to find someone who resembled the part. And race is just one aspect of that. A black, female, balding midget playing Abraham Lincoln would probably not be very convincing.

The line gets a little blurry when we're talking about fictional characters whose race is an important aspect of the character. For example Black Panther. Or Red Skull. He's a member of the white supremacist Nazi party. A Chinese actress would probably not be a good fit for either of those parts.

Whatever, Danle.

Loved that moment in Batman v Superman when

Fair point, and I'll take it with that grain of salt. I just get why some folks get frustrated. Personally, I love Scarlett Johannson, but it would have been cool to see someone like Lucy Liu, Devin Aoki, Zhang Ziyi, or Mao Inoue take the role.

We keep using the word "Asian," but how would, say, an Indian actress be more "authentic" than Scarlett? Do we really mean "Japanese?" If so, then Chinese actresses would be every bit as "inauthentic."

Not necessarily, no. The Chinese and Japanese ethnotype is very close, and their cultures are rather intertwined. The manga is a Japanese manga but, culturally, the character could be Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Vietnamese, et. al. while still maintaining internal consistency. It's also contextual: Here in the U.S., we have a long history of fucking over minorities. An example above was shown, with Mickey Rooney playing a Japanese man to a point beyond caricature. More recently, we had Johnny Depp, a man of English descent, play the role of Tonto, a character who was supposed to be of the Potawatomi Native American tribe (though some think he may have been Comanche). I love Johnny Depp, and I loved his performance (but that's because I love Johnny Depp), but even so it still didn't sit well with me.

Still, your mileage may vary, and this is just my opinion on the subject.

Heh, I don't think many Chinese or Japanese would agree with you. Some people would say you're claiming that Japanese and Chinese are interchangeable.

And this is my point. The complaint is that the actors in GitS aren't "Asian;" but, really, the problem some people have is that they're WHITE. If a Chinese actress had been cast instead of Scarlett Johannson, there would be no complaints about "white-washing," even though a Chinese actress is no more authentic. The real gripe is that a white actress got a role that someone thinks--for some reason--should be reserved for a non-white person. It's silly.

Why couldn't the character be white or Indian or Australian aborigine? How does the story not work if the character isn't from the Far East?

Why? Depp gave a good performance, the character was not any kind of demeaning stereotype, and there's not exactly a long list of Comanche actors who are good bets at the box office.

Meh, to each their own. Seriously, this isn't a deep enough issue for me to expend too much on it. I just prefer that whitewashing stop being a thing.

Rumour is, the actual Japanese don't really care.

http://kotaku.com/the-japanese-internet-reacts-to-scarlet-johansson-in-gh-1771544034

Asian roles are almost always played by Asians. Growing up I used to love Kung Fu to watch the Chinese guy.

Really, because I was having enough trouble getting to the keyboard as it was, due to my attention whore of a cat, so I went with the tabloid version of her name, rather than worrying about trying to get the spelling of it right.

Mostly I agree. FF tanked because it was an incoherent mess of a movie that had almost no respect for the source material . . . and changing the Storm family dynamic was part of that.

The Major has tits.

I think we can blame JLo for that. Was she the first? It got popular after that. I've seen Jennifer Lawrence referred to as JLaw, and I've heard Patrick Stewart called P-Stew (which is a disgusting mental image).

The whole thing actually originated with New York real estate listings. South of Houston became SoHo, and when that area became fashionable, so did the style of abbreviation.

And while we're on the subject of cultural appropriation, there's this.



I'm guessing they're Japanese, so their choice of cosplaying as Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter is an "interesting" choice.

It's only racist when white people do it.

Patrick Stewart goes by @SirPatStew on twitter, so it's partially his own fault.

I got it - Chloe Bennet as Kusanagi. She's half Chinese, which in Hollywood is the same thing as half Japanese. She's shown insane acrobatic martial arts skills on SHIELD.

For that matter, is Kelly Hu still acting?

Yup.

The TRIangle BElow CAnal st. disagrees ! Oh, wait, no it doesn't, it totally agrees.

[But I don't, I think it was Howard Johnsons.]

So the internet is really butt hurt over this. Is she meant to be Asian, because she doesn't look distinctively Asian. Also, does rainbow brite here have a point?

Well, yes, she is supposed to be Japanese. I would have thought the name would have made it that much more obvious. I'm willing to give it a chance, though I think they should set it in an American city as more of a follow-through on adapting this.

I think the guy in the video I posted has it right, there just aren't any big name Asian actresses in Hollywood. Lucy Lui is too old and I'm sorry, but Grace Park isn't going to get people to the theater. If she's meant to be Japanese, then they should have gotten an Asian actress, but just like JJ Trek, they don't really give a shit about the fans, they want a larger audience and are probably looking for a franchise. As a fan of scifi, it looks like an awesome concept, I just don't like anime. I would probably love a live action version of this, but I wasn't a fan, so I'm not really hung up on the details. As a Trek fan, I can see how this would be frustrating. I doubt Paramount will scrap the movie though. What they are doing is even more rediculous.
http://screencrush.com/ghost-in-the-shell-whitewashing-scarlett-johnasson-vfx/

The thing I blame the studio for is failing to remember all the times movies have done well with an unknown lead actor. People seem to have short memories for some reason.

Just because X happens, it doesn't mean X is common or usual.

Big budget movies are a numbers game. You're better off paying for a "name" that can open a picture. Scarlett may cost the producers, say, $20 million more than an unknown, but her ability to attract an audience is pretty well established, reducing the risk the producers are taking.

I don't disagree with that, though much like with the more recent prevalence of reboots being produced by Hollywood and and the prevalence of moe by the anime industry, that doesn't mean I'm really going to cease criticizing them for going with "safe". "Safe" would have kept us from getting the adaptations that have already been made from the original source material to begin with, and frankly the Stand Alone Complex series is one of the best anime series that have ever been made. "Safe" would have kept us from getting a lot of great movies and tv shows in the past. I'm not going to condemn it out of hand, but that doesn't mean I'm not already someone disappointed by it and that I won't criticize it, even if it's not from the stupid "cultural appropriate" angle that the SJW crowd has taken (and completely ignores one of the premises of the source material), but rather from an artistic "your story or their story" standpoint. I might have said it before but because of this casting, part of me hopes they change the setting to an American city rather than attempting to set it in Tokyo.