Fullmetal Alchemist Live Action Movie Casting

[Zontar]

I'm sorry, there's no demand in America for Japanese actors? Are you honestly trying to tell me that the people who are angry about the Major being played by a white woman didn't want a Japanese actor?

Yes, the tiny part of the internet that cares who couldn't collectively make the movie brake even if they all went to see it (and most of them won't by virtue of most of any group not seeing a movie when it's in theatres) care about hiring someone based on their race and not their ability to be marketed.

The other 99.99% of society however does not care.

From my experience, people use fake names so that people don't ask questions about their real names. To not draw attention to themselves. Having a name that clearly isn't your real name defeats the purpose of that. If she's using a fake name, then the logical thing to do would be to change her name to something that actually matches her appearance. Otherwise, what's the bloody point?

Maybe to make it clear she doesn't want people to know the details. It wouldn't be out of character for her to do is specifically to have people beg the questions she won't answer. It's not as though everyone and their dog wasn't aware that it wasn't her real name in the source material.

Yes. A Japanese take on all of those things. Kind of like how Fist of the North Star was a Japanese take on Road Warrior and Metroid was a Japanese take on Alien. The end result is still undeniably Japanese. If they were making another Blade Runner film I wouldn't be asking for a Japanese main character. If they were making a film based on Ghost in the Shell I wouldn't be asking for a Japanese main character (worked just fine for Edge of Tomorrow) but they took a Japanese film, kept the name, kept the character, and took out the nationality. Why?

Because they want to make an adaptation of either the story or something within the story where the name is appropriate (Edge of Tomorrow's name stemmed from the source material's not working in English), and while a niche brand it's still a brand.

That and the fact the story (assuming they're basically taking the original movie as the source) has no inherent connection to Japan (for god sake many people thought it was set in a different country due to how little reference there is to Japan and how the visuals are taken from Hong Kong) why would we expect that the characters would have no one else other then nameless actresses who have no chance of making the movie recoup its costs?

If you only care about making money and don't care how good the film is, which seems to be the norm for Hollywood executives. I'm not saying they shouldn't, but as a moviegoer my main concerns are with quality.

Look at the top grossing movies each year for the past 10 years or of all time and tell me that again.

The executives do only care about making money, that isn't even a question, and while we love to tell ourselves different the movie going audience has both a low and a high bar for quality where anything above or below is not accepted. Movies can actually make more money by being lower quality if they are above a certain level of quality.

I'm well aware of that, except Scarlet is as white as they come. But that's missing the point, at the end of the day the film seems to be saying that Japan seems to be where her origins are, which makes her having the appearance of a white person...clashing. Also, yes, she COULD take on the appearance of a white person. From what I understand though, foreigners in the Japan of Ghost in the Shell are mainly associated with refugees and refugee camps. Taking on that appearance just feels like it doesn't mesh with the world. Or in short, "She could, why the hell would she?"

This is a character who spent years fighting in foreign conflicts, and she also doesn't give a damn what others think of her and even uses their underestimating her against them. Given how whites in the setting's Japan are perceived as businessmen coming in from America or Europe to try and screw them over or to try and leech off their economic success, it can easily be turned into an asset to make people assume you have no idea what's happening because you're a foreigner.

There are, for an officer and ex-soldier like her, quite a long list of reasons why it would be practical, to say nothing of her possibly simply wanting to do it.

 

[Vausch]

OT: Unlike Ghost in the Shell, Japan has the very legitimate excuse of not having any white actors to cast, while America doesn't really have the excuse of having no Japanese actors.

Nope, the US has only 0.2% of its population who are Japanese American, while Japan has about 0.3% of its population who are white. If anything Japan has less of an excuse then the US.

Oh...and question. How many of that 0.3% are actors? Because I was talking about actors. I said actors twice. I wasn't talking about total population. We've got Japanese actors. Japan doesn't have white actors.

Please read my post next time.

But they do.

 

[rob_simple]

I came here hoping to discuss the actor choices for a new film, and whether or not it might be any good, instead I get treated to two pages of TLR ideological horseshit.

Guess I'll check the forums again in another year; maybe by then we can get back to actually discussing geek shit instead of this boring-ass, interminable culture war.

Oh, and for what it's worth: I don't think the actor they got to play Hughes looks lovable enough.

Peace out.

 

[Something Amyss]

This is an outrage! Won't anybody think of the white guys!?!? Why do we never get any representation!?!?!?!?!!

Oh, wait, what's that? It's a Japanese film made in Japan, where something like 98% of the population is Japanese, the film industry is much smaller, and they have very similar issues with casual racism that the US does? Does this mean that people will actually understand why others were upset at the casting choice in Ghost in the Shell, or are these totes different situations?

Don't be absurd. That requires empathy, and that is the rarest emotion on the internet!

OT: I don't really know any of these actors, so I don't have much to say about the movie. But most of them do look the part. They just need wigs or some hair die or something and we're good.

Because that's what people want, right? Accuracy? Right?

...right?

 

[shrekfan246]

OT: Unlike Ghost in the Shell, Japan has the very legitimate excuse of not having any white actors to cast, while America doesn't really have the excuse of having no Japanese actors.

Nope, the US has only 0.2% of its population who are Japanese American, while Japan has about 0.3% of its population who are white. If anything Japan has less of an excuse then the US.

Oh...and question. How many of that 0.3% are actors? Because I was talking about actors. I said actors twice. I wasn't talking about total population. We've got Japanese actors. Japan doesn't have white actors.

Please read my post next time.

Kind of also ignores the actual numbers.

1.3 million people (possibly more, since those numbers are a few years old now) living in America are either Japanese or of Japanese descent, compared to likely under 200k people (exact numbers are not terribly well reported, but there are under 30k Britons alone) of any European descent living in Japan.

It's easy to make things seem really small when you just use percentages that don't really account for how much larger the US is comparative to Japan...

Don't be absurd. That requires empathy, and that is the rarest emotion on the internet!

The fuck is empathy? They didn't teach me about that in school in between all my lessons about rage and entitlement and guns!

OT: I don't really know any of these actors, so I don't have much to say about the movie. But most of them do look the part. They just need wigs or some hair die or something and we're good.

Because that's what people want, right? Accuracy? Right?

...right?

I saw a few posts that were complaining about the hair, actually, as if that cast image is totally how their final looks are going to be in the film.

 

[RaikuFA]

This is a thing people? It's a movie in Japan.

 

[Something Amyss]

The fuck is empathy? They didn't teach me about that in school in between all my lessons about rage and entitlement and guns!

It's SJW speak for virtue signalling. You know, pretending to care about something (they must be pretending, because I always pretend).

It's interesting to see the flip on this, though. Folks who are defensive of white people playing people who aren't historically white (or white in the fiction, for similar cases) suddenly have a problem when the shoe's on the other foot. This could be a teachable moment--the moment when people figured out "hey, this is what those other people mean when they say whitewashing, and I don't like it when it happens."

Alas, it won't be.

I saw a few posts that were complaining about the hair, actually, as if that cast image is totally how their final looks are going to be in the film.

Wow...I mean, the movie's not going to be out for a year and a half, and some of those images come from other movies/shows and a few at least are glamour shots for someone's portfolio. Actually, I'm not sure they're not all glamour shots, just that a couple of the outfits match one from a movie listed on someone's IMDb page. Also, I don't think there are any official cast shots, so....

 

[Liljumpman]

Honest opinion?

Only Mustang looks right.

It's going to be bad since all live action anime adaptions are bad, but yeah. Only Mustang looks the part.

 

[FPLOON]

Aw man... None of them are German and/or of German descent... I'm dissapointed that my "sarcasm font-corrector" can't be fix through equivalent exchange... ALCHEMY HAS FAILED ME ONCE AGAIN!!!

But seriously, I'm hyped for this shit! And not just because, as it is, it can't get any worse than that one FMA-related movie... Seriously, that one FMA-related movie REALLY did not need to exist! (At least L'Arc En Ciel got paid in the end...)

Other that that, will L'Arc En Ciel do the theme music like the other times FMA had a movie? If not, then I'll start worrying by less than 1%... ("Seriously"...)

 

[Jute88]

...Who exactly wanted a live adaptation of FMA? Brotherhood follows the story pretty well and is otherwise a damn good show. On the other hand, I'm dying to see how the actors are going to act european-ish.

Placing bets on how crappy Alphonse's CGI-armor is going to look. My money's on the Last Airbender-movie levels of bad.

 

[Erttheking]

Snip

Those numbers distinctly reek of "I just made them up." I can pull random statistics out too, they don't exactly prove anything. Oh, and you're making a lot of assumptions assuming people don't care just because they don't scream about it on the internet. Say, for example, if I don't call Donald Trump an idiot, does that mean I don't care about what an unstable moron he is?

It still just doesn't add up. It's like putting on a dress shirt and hot pants. People usually don't do things like that that directly contradict each other. A white person with a very Japanese name just feels like inconsistent writing.

So it's like one of those EA remakes where they wanted the brand recognition and nothing else to do with the original. Classic, sleazy corporate tactics.

Like I said, it came out of Japan at a critical time for the nation. When it was an economic giant. But then again we've made it clear that the studio doesn't give a fuck about the roots of Ghost in the Shell. I like how little of an opinion you apparently have of the moviegoing public. Like Scarlet's name is the only thing that people want to go see this movie for. Is it true? I can't say. But it does kind of paint a sad picture of the average movie watcher being fairly mindless, saying "I'm not watching this movie. Forget the premise and the way it looks, I WANT TO RECOGNIZE THE LEAD CHARACTER!"

*Ahem* As a moviegoer my main concerns are with quality. There. I told you it again. I fail to see what the top ten grossing movies have to do with my movie watching habits.

They make money? I don't care. If it's crap, I'm not watching it and I'm making it clear I think it sucks.

Uh, ok. So your argument is that she would take on the appearance of someone that would actively attract attention and hatred. Now I'm no government agent, but I'm fairly sure that those are two things that you are not supposed to do. But then again lets be perfectly frank. Any reasons the studio comes up with (I can't help but notice for all the long reasons you're coming up with the studio has released none, making me fairly sure that none of this is going to be brought up) they came up with after they made the decision to cast Scarlet. This was not an organic and natural development. This is them forcing something they wanted in, and justifying it afterwards. Can we at least agree on that.

 

[mecegirl]

When I first heard about this I thought that it was going to be made in Hollywood but it's being made in Japan. Since it is I'm not at all surprised that all the actors are Japanese. There are at least b-c list Asian actors in the states. And the only thing keeping them from a higher ranking is that very few studios cast them. I have no idea if there are any White credible stars at all in Japan. Nevermind the fact that they would need a shit ton of White extras. I don't know how possible it would be to have a White cast in a movie made over there.

But FMA would be one of the few adaptations that could be made in Hollywood with a predominantly white cast and no one would have anything negative to say because the main characters are meant to be White.

 

[Dragonlayer]

All the usual suspects having their snarkfest over the correct ethnicity for a film, and I'm just sitting here thinking that the manga arc with the Not-Holocaust was pretty cool.

 

[krystalphoenix]

As someone who lives in Japan, Ryosuke Yamada the lead actor to play Edward is currently huge here. He's been in a bunch of anime/manga to movie adaptations of late and this is another notch on his belt. You have to remember that in Japan they are rarely "just singers" but classified as "idols". This means they do singing, acting, variety TV shows and a lot more. And Yamada is in a company, Johnny's, which pushes the multi role idol a lot. So really, for Japan, it's the perfect lead actor. And may even mean that his group "Hey!Say!JUMP" will likely do either the title theme song or closing theme song.