Poll: Whitewashing, yay!!!

[blackrave]

So I just watched Edge of Tomorrow trailer.
It looks interesting enough
Certainly my cup of tea
One tiny problem though
I looked up source material for it and it seems it was japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill
Main protagonist was young japanese (or at least asian, since I'm not sure about political situation in setting) guy named Keiji Kiriya
And what we have in movie?
William Cage played by Tom Cruise.
Really?
There wasn't any other young asian actor around Hollywood to be casted?
Or at least any other young actor?
Why miss so much when adapting character?
Why even make such unnecessary changes?
Especially in the country that claims equality'n'shit.
At this point I think I'll skip the movie and try to find translation of the novel.
But that is only my personal mini-rant.

Question is
Do you think it's justified to skip piece of adaptation media, if it makes unnecessary changes to race/nationality of main characters?

And bonus question- do you think it's justified in this particular case?

 

[Zhukov]

Ambivalent.

On the one hand, if race isn't important to the character or story then there's no less reason to cast a white person than an Asian one.

On the other hand, I certainly wouldn't mind if they were to take the opportunity to have a non-whitey hero, if only for a change of flavour.

I guess the movie-making powers that be are really that scared of how us movie-going schmucks would react to an Asian lead. Maybe they're right to be.

EDIT: Just watched the trailer. Looked alright. Not into the time travel-esque business (I detest time travel in stories) but I'm certainly up for some folks in weaponized exo-suits engaging in a wholesale wrecking of shit.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Question is
Do you think it's justified to skip piece of adaptation media, if it makes unnecessary changes to race/nationality of main characters?

And bonus question- do you think it's justified in this particular case?

This case is part of a larger trend of whitewashing.

Now, hypothetically, if half of every movie was about a Japanese bloke, even if the source material wasn't, I'd not mind them going the other way.

As it stands, not really.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Well if it's made for a western audience then it's a good move to use one of the most iconic western action heroes.
Some people like me may be put off if they seem to be putting in an asian person in the lead role for the sake of it.
There are people who ride the line well enough though between western and asian like the guy from Star Trek reboot or Glen from Walking Dead.
I really like Tom Cruise so I'm fine with it and it seemed to be a role he fitted judging by the trailer.
And finally, a film that seems to blend geek-culture things and non-geek-culture things well! Maybe it can pick up where Pacific Rim failed badly.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Some people like me may be put off if they seem to be putting in an asian person in the lead role for the sake of it.

Hey?

You don't like the idea of an Asian as the leading man in movies in general?

 

[blackrave]

How can this bother someone so much? Especially if you weren't even a fan of the original novel? Seriously?

Because it rubs me in REALLY wrong way. I don't know exactly why. At least I can't pinpoint any particular reason.

On the one hand, if race isn't important to the character or story then there's no less reason to cast a white person than an Asian one.

This argument never made sense to me.
Because if race/nationality doesn't matter, then why NOT sticking to original race/nationality?

Well if it's made for a western audience then it's a good move to use one of the most iconic western action heroes.

But western audience != US audience
And even among US audience not everyone would fit the trend

 

[blackrave]

Deal with it?

You never knew about the novel it was based off until you saw the trailer. Now you're all super pissed about the fact they changed the main characters race?

If you were a diehard fan of the original novel, even then you'd be pushing having a reason for be super pissed about this.

Thing is they did not stopped at race/nationality
They also changed background of character
Without a good reason for it
If I have to guess someone REALLY wanted to see Tom Cruise as lead, without any consideration will it make sense or not.

 

[Zhukov]

On the one hand, if race isn't important to the character or story then there's no less reason to cast a white person than an Asian one.

This argument never made sense to me.
Because if race/nationality doesn't matter, then why NOT sticking to original race/nationality?

Well yeah, it goes both ways.

No particular reason to change it. No particular reason not to... except the fear that an Asian lead might scare off the traditional white audience.

 

[Tom_green_day]

Some people like me may be put off if they seem to be putting in an asian person in the lead role for the sake of it.

Hey?

You don't like the idea of an Asian as the leading man in movies in general?

Oh no I'm sorry if it seems that way. But in the kind of film like this, war action thing, I don't know any asian actors who would be good for the role. The two examples I used wouldn't be, and I don't know many others.

But western audience != US audience
And even among US audience not everyone would fit the trend

I realise Western is not US, mainly due to the fact I am Western and not from the US so think that gives me pretty good ground to say that it appeals to people outside of the USA. Everyone I've talked to has said they think it looks pretty cool.

 

[blackrave]

Well yeah, it goes both ways.

No particular reason to change it. No particular reason not to... except the fear that an Asian lead might scare off the traditional white audience.

Well, that's a reason
But it really says bad things about our species :/
Besides I don't think it is only issue of "white audience"
Other audiences also can be ignorant and biased.
At least that is just common sense.
They're humans too, aren't they?

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

My response? Who the fuck cares.

I haven't read the original novel (Although "All You Need is Kill" is a retarded title), but I'm never bothered by race. I don't care if the entire cast is white, as long as they does a good job and it's still an entertaining movie, I don't care, even if it's an adaptation of something I'm a big fan of. I'm open to different interpretations, even if it's one I don't agree with, and I actually encourage changes. And from the looks of the trailer, it seems like a story where it doesn't matter where it takes place.

Also, America isn't the only country that does that. Other countries do the same thing when adapting material from another country. Oldboy was originally a Japanese manga, with Japanese characters, and it was adapted into a Korean movie, changing the Japanese characters into Korean (Well, that's not the only thing changed), yet no one bitched nor moan about that, and it was still a great movie. However, when an American company tries to do the same thing, EVERYONE FLIPS THE FUCK OUT!!!

 

[Uhura]

They could have chosen Asian American actors but apparently Asian Americans are not "totally American":

CS: I think "All You Need is Kill" is one of the ones you've been eyeing next, which is interesting because it's based on a Japanese book, so are you going to go for Japanese lead actors?
Liman: No, it's totally American.
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=70941

Curiously enough, they didn't have any trouble with casting English women (Emily Blunt, Lara Pulver, Charlotte Riley, Marianne Jean-Baptiste), an Irish man (Jonas Armstrong), an English man (Tony Way) and an Australian man (Kick Gurry) in their "totally American" movie so I guess white, non-American actors can be "totally American".

Whitewashing is especially common phenomenon when it comes to Asian characters and I'm not fond of it.

 

[Zhukov]

Well yeah, it goes both ways.

No particular reason to change it. No particular reason not to... except the fear that an Asian lead might scare off the traditional white audience.

Well, that's a reason
But it really says bad things about our species :/
Besides I don't think it is only issue of "white audience"
Other audiences also can be ignorant and biased.
At least that is just common sense.
They're humans too, aren't they?

Hey, I didn't say I liked the reason.

And it's not a case of only white folks being dumb, it's a case of white (male) folks traditionally being the ones who have the money for stuff like movies and thus being the target audience. Of course, the money thing isn't anywhere near as true as it used to be, especially in the age of world-wide media releases, but it's taking a long time for things to catch up.

 

[JayElleBee]

To be honest, changing a character's race, does bother me. I don't know anything about this film or the book, but that doesn't matter. I'm a writer. My characters and their identities are important to me. If someone came along and made an adaption of one of my stories, changing my character's races, or sexualities or ages, I'd be enraged.

They should have cast an Asian actor for this. People can ***** about how 'race doesn't matter' but for racial minorities, I imagine it does matter. A lot. I can enjoy a film or a game or a book with a male lead just fine, but those that have strong female characters (that aren't all friggin' romance) attract me more because I rarely ever get them. I'm not going to sit here and say that straight white male leads are bad, but neither are gay, black female leads, or any other combination you can imagine. There's no good reason not to include variety.

And you can hardly make the claim that white, American audiences don't like Asian leads after the success of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee. I mean, come on.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Either changing race bothers you or doesn't. If you were OK with making Heimdall black, what's wrong with making (character) white?

 

[Frezzato]

The thing that actually offended me in the trailer was the fact that they took one look at the Raytheon Exoskeleton [http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/092910_rg_RaytheonXOS2_01.jpg] and proceeded to not modify it for the film. Really now? What's the point of all this extra power and not adding armor to it? I can understand not wanting to obscure Tom Cruise's face but what's the goddamn point of using power armor with just body armor? And, uh, air support? Hello? How about a tank once in a while. No? Okay then, have you heard of this thing called a helicopter? They can put rockets and 20mm automatic cannons on them. Never heard of a helicopter either? Okay then, fair enough.
[hr]
Just to play devil's advocate, I'm going to guess that whichever planet they go to has a strong gravitational pull, requiring humans to wear those suits just to move around.

[hr]
Hopefully one day they'll have actual armor in a big budget Hollywood movie and people will go ooh and ahh over it, not realizing that Robert Heinlein envisioned it over 60 years ago. Not counting Iron Man of course, Stark is a billionaire.

*EDIT* I watched the trailer again and noticed a handful of helicopters in it, operating under "video game rules" obviously. This means flying at low altitude, getting shot. See: the stupid low-altitude Apache segment in Medal of Honor: Warfighter.

 

[blackrave]

Either changing race bothers you or doesn't. If you were OK with making Heimdall black, what's wrong with making (character) white?

Well, in defense of that situation, Heimdall wasn't nowhere near main character
And even despite that I personally wasn't particularly ok with that (unlike majority)

The thing that actually offended me in the trailer was the fact that they took one look at the Raytheon Exoskeleton [http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/092910_rg_RaytheonXOS2_01.jpg] and proceeded to not modify it for the film. Really now? What's the point of all this extra power and not adding armor to it? I can understand not wanting to obscure Tom Cruise's face but what's the goddamn point of using power armor with just body armor?

That's actually a fair point

Spoiler: Rant about technological stupidity

What is the point of powered exoskeleton if you don't cover it with armor plates
Just to carry weapons of higher caliber?
But even that was implemented wrong
Check the moment in trailer when protagonist replaces magazine
Lets assume they are using at least .50BMG as their ammunition (due to barrel size and when in scale of Tom, length of ammo looks like ~10cm). How much rounds would fit in that tiny box? It looks like single stack magazine, and even if it was double stack magazine, my estimation would be 20 rounds tops.
YEEEEHAAAA!!! 5 seconds of full auto fire, baby!
And how much magazines that leg mounted system can provide? 10? 20? 30?
Apparently whoever designed that armor never have heard of belt-fed machine guns.

So we have armor with barely any protection and crappy weapons
No wonder they will get slaughtered

Hey, but that's what you get for outsourcing development and manufacturing to lowest bidder

And, uh, air support? Hello? How about a tank once in a while. No? Okay then, have you heard of this thing called a helicopter? They can put rockets and 30mm automatic cannons on them. Never heard of a helicopter either? Okay then, fair enough.

Also- mass produced drones controlled by army of gamers. Cheaper and simpler solution to win war with less deaths.

Just to play devil's advocate, I'm going to guess that whichever planet they go to has a strong gravitational pull, requiring humans to wear those suits just to move around.

If people in the future need powered exoskeleton just to move around on Earth, those lazy bastards deserve to get exterminated.

 

[C14N]

Adaptions are sometimes made more interesting by changes. It's not at all uncommon either for a character's race to change in an adaption. Morgan Freeman's character in the Shawshank Redemption, Red, was originally a red-haired Irish guy in the short story version but the film makers decided to change that because they could (they even included a reference in the film to his original story as a joke). If race or gender was really important to the story then I could understand, but if it's a story where the kid is Japanese because it was written in Japan and for no other reason then his ethnicity doesn't sound that vital to the plot.