Pseudonym2 said:
xitel said:
You know, in response to all the "whitewashing" complaints, I have to say... get over it. They picked the actors they thought would be best in the roles, race or ethnicity be damned. They could have gotten a middle eastern actor to play the prince, yeah, but that doesn't mean he'd have been necessarily as good an actor in the role. I actually applaud the fact that they didn't focus solely on their appearance and went with acting talent instead. I mean, look at Michael Cera. He keeps getting cast as an awkward teenager because he looks like one, but he's not a good actor in those roles. The casting director picked the actors that would best carry the story of the movie, and that's the important thing.
You don't think the fact that Hollywood can't or won't find any good middle eastern actors is very damning? I think it goes back to Hollywood's bullshit assumptions that minorities can identify with white people but white people can't identify with a minorities people. That's why Barbershop is a "black movie" but any john Hughes movie isn't a "white movie."
Why are so many Hollywood movies criticizing the war in Iraq now? It might have done some good six or seven years ago.
I think people are simply looking to pick a fight where there isn't one when it comes to accusations of "whitewashing". It's sort of like saying The Rock wasn't Egyptian, yet he played "The Scorpian King" not once, but twice, and the DVD of the movie actually went so far as to say that unlike the generic "Prince Of Persia" this was loosely (very loosely based) on a real person.... showing a mace with the Scorpian Emblem to point to there being a tribal king who used that symbol somewhere down there at some time... well you get the point.
Also when it comes to swapping other ethnicities it's not viewed as any big deal, I mean when you have a Korean guy playing a Japanese guy, when those two nations/cultures arguably hate each other, why does nobody make a big deal about that? (referring to "Ninja Assasin").
In general I think both politics, and race contreversy, should more or less stay out of fantasy films, video games, and similar things. I am simply put tired of it.
To put things into perspective, when you look at the artwork for the video game, the guy they picked looks pretty close to the picture. Someone could have claimed years ago that the protaganist in "Prince Of Persia" doesn't seem Persian enough, but nobody did until they made a movie.
Furthermore, I can't think of any decent Arabic actors that could have pulled off the character. Heck, I can't think of any decent Arabic actors at all off the top of my head. However to be honest, I don't think that itself is a racial issue either, as much as the fact that you don't see that many ethnic Arabs going into acting (and it takes a lot to succeed in that business), just like how people complain "why aren't there more Black super heroes" yet at the same time I can't think of many black guys who write comic books either.
See, for an ethnicity to become really represented in something that is as competitive as most "artistic" businesses like movies, or comics, you need for a lot of them to get involved and pull ahead in the competitive shark tank that affects everyone involved (and it's about as impartial as you can get). You see a decent number of Asian characters in comics and Asian actors in movies, but then again there are decent numbers of them working in both industries and have been for a while, as time went on there were successes and it changed the industry. Heck you see "Hong Kong Action Cinema" and "Anime" having an influance on Western film making (and vice versa), and the same thing with comics with western and eastern comics being interwoven.
I guess what I'm saying is that if your an Ethnic Arab and something like this bothers you, then maybe you might consider trying for a career on stage? Your not guaranteed to succeed, but if enough people do it, your going to see enough ethnic talent where if someone is going to do an Arabian Nights movie, they'll have a choice of properly ethnic people to perform the roles.
Such are my thoughts at any rate, to me this seems like bellyaching for the sake of bellyaching.
Maybe he can actually do it, but I'd challenge a massive film critic like Moviebob to pick a properly ethnic actor who he thinks could have pulled off this role as well as the guy they chose... considering the source material, and what the character is supposed to look like. Honestly, for all the whining, I don't think the hypothetical guy who should have gotten this role actually exists.