Good or New Movies Review
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@Vorpal said in Good or New Movies Review:
Maybe one of the next Marvel phases will include Kamala Khan's Ms. Marvel or the Young Avengers. That would be cool, especially if they have a good America Chavez.
I'm personally satisfied with what they are doing with Marvel TV.
Daredevil and Jessica Jones are so good it hurts.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:
@Vorpal What I'm not sure about is how they'll launch the next Avengers movie without having to spend the first hour dealing with the fallout of this one.
There's a reason it's a two volume bonanza, bruv.
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The Russos have rewarded my faith in them. I am happy. Especially Black Panther was GREAT.
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@Ganymede Punisher and Luke Cage coming, too! Netflix and Marvel are my new favorite power couple.
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Yeah, we basically live in the golden age of TV. Enjoy it, folks.
You know what amuses me though? The Hollywood 'analysts' who keep predicting superhero fatigue. People are tired of superheroes! They've been at it for a while. Any day now!
What simply doesn't seem to sink in is people don't go to watch 'superheroes' or 'westerns', they go to watch good movies. No, your crapfest buddy cop remake/sequel didn't bomb at the box office because audiences didn't want to see cops any more, it bombed because it was crap. And while talented people make good films in any genre people will show up to watch them.
They seriously think it's the idea that matters. "Audiences want to watch volcanoes this year".
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel Agreed 100%. People weren't 'tired of superheroes' before when Daredevil and Elektra and Batman and Robin came out. They were tired of bad superhero movies, just like they got tired of bad sci-fi movies at one point.
To totally mug Field of Dreams and leave it bleeding in an alleyway: If you write it well, they will come.
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@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:
And while talented people make good films in any genre people will show up to watch them.
I'd quibble with this. I think there's a genuine issue in the marketplace right now with studio over-reliance on a couple big tent-poles a year and a lack of medium-budget movies (could you make something like Shawshank Redemption today as a non-indie? I kind of doubt it). This is a more complicated issue than "superhero fatigue," though, and those movies are just part of the landscape to me, not the actual problem. Whatever criticisms one might have of Marvel right now, they're making an effort to do good-quality narrative stuff.
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@Ganymede Agreed. I am looking forwards to Luke Cage as well, not so much for Iron Fist. I would have preferred them to have changed Danny Rand to something other than generic whiteboy01
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I was a little bummed out by the Danny Rand casting, too -- the guy hasn't impressed me much on GoT either, leaving aside the whole white dude versus potentially Asian American thing -- but ... I love Iron Fist so it's not like I'm not going to give it a shot.
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God almighty, Hollywood. It is 2016, cast a fucking Asian to play out Asian tropes. I mean, that's the absolute least you can do.
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@Kanye-Qwest I always thought that that, like the Ancient One, was a no-win scenario. Danny Rand was originally white, so if he's cast white then he's a "mighty whitey", but if they were to cast an Asian actor for him... honestly? "He's a kung-fu fighter so he has to be Asian" seems to me just as big of a stereotype.
For Dr. Strange, making the ancient one a Celtic immortal woman (how did she end up in Tibet? I guess she must be a Travelocity member?) was a creative way of dodging the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't trap.
Of course, since Tilda Swinton already portrayed an immortal character in film before (Orlando, based on Virginia Woolf's novel), in my mind I'm going to go watch Dr. Strange pretending the Ancient One is Orlando.
Vorpal is actually Satan made MU*nifest
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@Vorpal Look, I love Tilda Swinton. I LOVE her. I am always happy to see that she is in a movie, so much as I cringe at the whitewashing, I can't even be mad.
And I get that Danny Rand was white in the comic origin but that's a product of a more casually homogenous and appropriative time. I don't think everyone who knows Kung Fu needs to be Asian, you're right. Still, in the case of the Iron Fist, he learned Kung Fu by absorbing all kinds of spiritual martial arts wisdom.
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Yeah but isn't it more racist and gross to constantly exclude Asians than it is to, you know, sometimes cast one in a role that is arguably racist? If you know you're making a movie that draws on Asian story elements do you really make it LESS bad by casting all white people? I mean. What if you cast somebody as Danny Rand who is, I don't know, Latino or Native American or something?
There's a lot of things you could do that aren't weird white savior tropes but at this point the accompli is fait. I still love Iron Fist comics so I'm ... fingers crossed that it doesn't suck.
Re Ancient One, didn't they already move that out of Tibet into Nepal? Couldn't they have found somebody Nepalese in that case? I mean, I just don't really buy that their only solution to the Tibet issue was ... white person! I like Tilda Swinton generally speaking and I'm bummed.
Same with Scarjo in Ghost in the Shell. CAN WE NOT? But that's probably OT for this thread.
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@Vorpal So make Danny Rand Central/Native/South American, or something else. I agree that there is to an extent, a Kobayashi Maru when it comes to casting. Especially when it involves tropes /but/ on the other hand it would still be cool seeing something other than white washing.
I am not saying Danny Rand is being white washed with the current casting, he was created as a white guy and so it is being true to the character design to make him a white guy.
It would just have been /interesting/ to see Danny Rand as something /other/ than a white guy. Just like I would have loved Dr. Strange to have been Italian (He just screams sexy italian in his art to me) instead of a brit but...
Long story short: You can't please everyone, it's impossible to do so, take a stand and stick with it. I can applaud that.
Will I watch Iron Fist? Sure I'll give it a shot, I'm just not as invested/interested in it as I am Luke Cage, or Daredevil Season 3, or The Punisher, or Jessica Jones Season 2.
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Damnit, Lithium... maybe it's because I am brain tired today, but the moment I read "Kobayashi Maru" my brain suddenly went "Let's cast William Shatner as Danny Rand."
Or maybe my brain is still scarred from the panther mind control semen thing that was just unveiled to me in that other thread.
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I never want to read William Shatner and mind control semen in the same vicinity ever again.
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Oh, I wasn't clear, I guess! I dont' at all think that casting all-white makes it any less bad. I think probably we should just own that our golden age heroes were created in a time where there was a lot less diversity and adjust accordingly. I'd love to see an Asian Iron Fist.
I would love to see Godfrey Gao, etc, as just about anything, tbh. Woo boy.
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@saosmash said in Good or New Movies Review:
Yeah but isn't it more racist and gross to constantly exclude Asians than it is to, you know, sometimes cast one in a role that is arguably racist?
The current movement of Asian actors is towards including Asian actors in movies where race isn't a factor.
My interest in Iron Fist is low because the concept is, in my mind, lame as shit. Rich white guy becomes martial-arts vigilante? Way to rip off Batman, yo.
Do I think the Marvel TV crew can do it justice? Absolutely. They made me forget how shitty Daredevil and Elektra were.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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Sometimes I wonder if we're regressing. Or maybe we're just in a two-steps forward one-step back phase.
For instance I read that in the 80s when they were writing Beverly Hills Cop Axel Foley wasn't black in the script; he had no race. Eddie Murphy just took him, made him his and the fact he was black gave him a better edge (on top of Murphy's own mad talent at the time of its peak).
That's what I'd like. Characters who are played by whoever can do a better job, as long as we avoid pointless blackface phenomena. As long as it's not a stretch, that's all I can ask.
So... dunno, if you pick Scarlet Johansson for a role in an A-list movie that's gonna cost $100m I can kinda understand the producers - they needed a big name for their big-tent film. But if that's going to be a distraction in the script then it shouldn't happen anyway, it'll just detract from the movie ('why did this white girl grow up and went to school in Japan?' isn't a question that was asked at all in Ghost in the Shell).
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel said in Good or New Movies Review:
So... dunno, if you pick Scarlet Johansson for a role in an A-list movie that's gonna cost $100m I can kinda understand the producers - they needed a big name for their big-tent film.
This isn't just any generic A-list film, however. It is an A-list film based on material that has a very strong connection to Japanese culture. I mean, you wouldn't cast a Scotsman as an Egyptian God, right?
Oh wait.
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
