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charliepanayi
10-25-2016, 08:10 PM
The latest MCU film is out today in the UK (though the US have to wait until 4th November). Anticipate, discuss once seen etc

Del Murder
10-25-2016, 09:17 PM
Skipping it in protest as it casts Tilda Swinton as one of the few Asian characters in Marvel universe, at least of those comics that have major movies, and puts her in like a weird Asianface. Also, I always found Doctor Strange to be lame.

I'm sure I'll get over that and rent it at some point if it is good.

DMKA
10-26-2016, 04:44 AM
Skipping it in protest as it casts Tilda Swinton as one of the few Asian characters in Marvel universe, at least of those comics that have major movies, and puts her in like a weird Asianface.

They cast Idris Elba as Heimdall in Thor so I consider it a wash. :p

I'm no fan of Benedict Cumberbatch personally, and I too don't really care about Dr. Strange, so my interest is almost non-existent. I live with people who absolutely adore Mr Cumberbatch though, so I'll inevitably end up seeing it.

Vermachtnis
10-26-2016, 04:59 AM
I heard it was really, really good.

Del Murder
10-26-2016, 05:59 PM
Skipping it in protest as it casts Tilda Swinton as one of the few Asian characters in Marvel universe, at least of those comics that have major movies, and puts her in like a weird Asianface.

They cast Idris Elba as Heimdall in Thor so I consider it a wash. :p
Casting one black person (the only minority that matters to Hollywood) in a historically white character's role where 90% of the Marvel Universe characters (at least those that get into the movies) are white is not a wash for ignoring one of the few Asian characters they had a chance to cast.

Wolf Kanno
10-26-2016, 08:40 PM
They didn't cast an Asian for the Ancient One because technically the character is from Tibet and China is the biggest box office venue for Hollywood right now. So they basically had to change the character's origins or risk having the film banned in China. She is of Celtic origin now according to the Wikipedia article on the film, and technically her character is meant to be androgynous and unknowable so even that might not stick since Ancient One appears to be a title.

charliepanayi
10-26-2016, 09:02 PM
I don't really mind them casting Tilda Swinton (as she's great), but I'm pretty sure they could have just made the Ancient One from anywhere else in east Asia and still cast an Asian-ethnicity actor if they didn't want to upset the Chinese market.

Slothy
10-26-2016, 09:13 PM
and puts her in like a weird Asianface.

That's just her face. All they did was shave her head and not give her gender specific makeup from what I've seen. She always looks like that.

Del Murder
10-26-2016, 10:46 PM
Ha, you're right. I guess she's just weird looking.

Shauna
10-27-2016, 08:28 AM
Yeah, Tilda Swinton looks very strange.

Miriel
10-30-2016, 08:40 AM
They didn't cast an Asian for the Ancient One because technically the character is from Tibet and China is the biggest box office venue for Hollywood right now. So they basically had to change the character's origins or risk having the film banned in China. She is of Celtic origin now according to the Wikipedia article on the film, and technically her character is meant to be androgynous and unknowable so even that might not stick since Ancient One appears to be a title.
This whole "she's Celtic" thing was an excuse they trotted out after there was significant backlash about this whole thing. And if that were truly their intent, to make it a Celtic character, than put her in smurfing traditional Celtic dress, not in blatantly Asian inspired outfits, surroundings, and motifs.

Such a bs excuse.

smurf that.

It every year, movie after movie, this constant whitewashing. I'm sick of it.

Let's say the motivating factor here was money, and not offending China means money. Since they cast a white person in the role of an Asian person, did they then go on to cast an Asian person in a role of equal significance to make up for it? Hell no! Did they even think to do that? I bet you that was never even in consideration. Casting for diversity beyond the lucky black actor or actress here or there is not a priority for studios.

charliepanayi
10-30-2016, 09:55 AM
Audiences (or at least the vast majority of audiences) don't really care about diversity. Studios have no incentive to make progress on the issue. And I'm part of the problem since I'm still going to watch this. I'm not losing any sleep over it, mind you (white privilege talking here!).

charliepanayi
10-30-2016, 06:23 PM
OK, saw it.

What I liked:
- The mind-bending trippy stuff.
- Some good laughs, especially the Beyonce bit.
- Benedict Cumberbatch (though he can play cocky arsehole in his sleep by now)
- Tilda Swinton (but then she's always great)
- Benedict Wong (easily the best thing in the film, wish there'd been more of him)
- The climax was a bit different to the norm, giving us a twisted variation on Groundhog Day
- The mid-credits bit. Thor and the refilling mug!

What I didn't like:
- Being an origin story it takes a while to get going, and we have to deal with Emo Strange with his emo beard for a while. It only really kicks in when he meets The Ancient One.
- Mads Mikkelsen's villain is pretty dull. Marvel still have an issue with lack of interesting villains.
- Chiwetel Ejiofor is saddled with delivering a lot of exposition and little beyond that. Of course being Chiwetel Ejiofor I should have known his character wouldn't stay a good guy
- Rachel McAdams is stuck in a nothing role.
- Michael Stuhlbarg is stuck in an even more nothing role. Why cast one of Hollywood's best character actors if you're going to give him just one scene and a vending machine gag?

Miriel
10-30-2016, 06:50 PM
Audiences (or at least the vast majority of audiences) don't really care about diversity. Studios have no incentive to make progress on the issue. And I'm part of the problem since I'm still going to watch this. I'm not losing any sleep over it, mind you (white privilege talking here!).

That's simply untrue. Movies with more diversity make more money on average than movies with less than 10% diversity in the cast. And same for television, shows with diverse casts get higher ratings and viewership than shows without a diverse cast.

Just purely based on numbers, studios SHOULD want diversity because they will MAKE MORE MONEY. But they are resistant to it because they are racist. Yeah, I went there.

The millions of black people in this country want representation in media, the millions of latinos in this country want representation in media, the millions of Asian people in this country want representation in media. It's utterly false to claim that all of us people of color just don't give a trout about diversity. Of course we do.

The biggest cultural phenomenon of the past year is Hamilton, and its mind blowing success is due at least in part to the fact that nearly every single principal cast member is a person of color! Of fucking course audiences want it. We're practically begging for it.

Calliope
10-30-2016, 08:23 PM
1) One of the most successful movie franchises I can think of is The Fast and the Furious, which manages to have a very ethnically diverse cast without shoehorning it down our throats that it's ~diversity~
2) Racial representation in the media is pretty poor, but Asian actors have it worst than most. There's a great line in an Aziz bit about him hoping that it gets to the point where he can like an Indian character on the merits of the character, and not just because it's the only one for ten thousand miles. We want to watch people we can identify with!
3) If you don't think that cis-het whitewashing doesn't exist, then you're delusional. Let's look at some castings where Asian characters are replaced by white actors, shall we? Let's see...we have Scarlett Johansen playing The Major in Ghost in the Shell, we have Emma Stone playing Allison Ng in Aloha, we have Tilda Swinton obviously playing The Ancient One, we have all the white people in The Last Airbender, Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow completely replacing his novel counterpart, Keiji Kiriya, Mickey Rooney as Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and my personal, heart-crushing worst/favourite, Fisher Stevens as Ben Jabituya in Short Circuit.
4) This is nothing new. Everything, including Hollywood, privileges white people; whether it's whites-only on Friends or Girls or Elizabeth fucking Taylor as Cleopatra, or Ben Kingsley in his best Maori geddup, or whatever. And on the flipside, my boy Cliff Curtis has to play terrorists and gangsters and criminals of every shade of caramel, chocolate, and toffee, and the only recent time he gets to be Maori and not a homeless guy/rapist/criminal is when he's being chased by zombies (I'll take what I can get).
5) Here (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/26-times-white-actors-played-people-of-color-and-no-one-really-gave-a-sht_us_56cf57e2e4b0bf0dab313ffc) is a popular article if you would like more examples.

I probably won't see Dr Strange, I'm not very attached to the comic. One comic I am attached to is Spiderman, so it's even more of a shame that we're stuck with a third fucking whitey spidey reboot, instead of going down the Miles Morales route.

charliepanayi
10-30-2016, 09:06 PM
A lot of the supporting cast in Spiderman are non-Caucasian though. The Ancient One has been a rare misstep for Marvel when it comes to their casts so far. Whitewashing happens because studios want names in their films that people recognise (so Scarlett Johansson is the Major rather than, say, Rinko Kikuchi, the only Japanese actress who has possibly any name recognition in the US). Nobody wants to take punts on unknowns or lesser known actors. So you get a vicious circle where non-Caucasian actors never get a chance to make a name for themselves and studios use that as an excuse to cast another white person people have heard of instead.

Colonel Angus
10-31-2016, 11:05 PM
I really wish they would've made James Hong the Ancient One, but ironically, he might be too old to play the part.

70952

DMKA
11-05-2016, 03:04 AM
I just got back from seeing it. It was really, really good, and I really enjoyed it. I was pleasantly surprised.


Casting one black person (the only minority that matters to Hollywood) in a historically white character's role where 90% of the Marvel Universe characters (at least those that get into the movies) are white is not a wash for ignoring one of the few Asian characters they had a chance to cast.

Says you, and I disagree. :p

Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass about "white washing" or "race bending" or whatever else you want to call the non-issue that petty racists constantly complain about today. I just find it amusing and retarded that people only complain when it's a traditionally non-white character played by a white person, not the other way around.

Del Murder
11-05-2016, 05:58 AM
You really think people don't complain about that? Or do you mean non-racists also don't complain about that? Because white people don't have tons of opportunity regardless and most these characters are white to begin for some other reason than the fact that our society has been racist for decades?

The point is not to have the person of the correct historical race of the character in every single role. The point is that, for minorities and Asian Americans in particular, major roles in Hollywood productions are very rare, much more than for whites or blacks. So when the opportunity arises for an Asian character to be cast in one of these movies, it is disappointing when they don't give someone with limited roles available to them a break. They did it with the Mandarin and they did it here. It's not some one off thing because they really like Swinton. It's systematic.

Calliope
11-05-2016, 07:01 AM
I'm curious as to how many Asian actors the average, Western TV watching person can even name, not counting Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Stephen Chow, Lucy Liu, Zhang Ziyi, Ken Watanabe, Sonny Chiba, George Takei, and Steven Yeun? Try, and then think about how many white American actors you can think of without having to think too hard.

Night Fury
11-05-2016, 07:34 AM
Sandra Oh, Gong Li, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Bae Doona, Andy Lau and Michelle Yeoh. That's pretty much all I got. But I watch a lot of asian cinema and I did study an asian cinema module at college so I'm probably not the right person to ask.

I can also name a heck of a lot more white actors.


It is a problem and those who say otherwise are part of it.


A lot of the supporting cast in Spiderman are non-Caucasian though.


I mean, why have a leading role when you can be TOKEN BLACK GUY, or TOKEN ASIAN DUDE and play a stereotype?

Psychotic
11-05-2016, 09:23 AM
Depends what you mean by Asian. In Britain, Asian tends to mean people of Indian or Pakistani origin as they make up significantly more of the population than people from East Asia, and I could name you a few Asian British actors - including Sir Ben Kingsley who fwiw is definitely not white. I don't think that's the point you were making, though, but correct me if I am wrong. As far as East Asians go, you didn't name Ken Leung and Kenneth Choi! I like both of them though they never seem to get lead roles...! Incidentally Kenneth Choi plays an Asian character in a Marvel movie.

Anyway, I agree with most people that casting any minority character as another race is ridiculous.

charliepanayi
11-05-2016, 09:58 AM
Sandra Oh, Gong Li, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Bae Doona, Andy Lau and Michelle Yeoh. That's pretty much all I got. But I watch a lot of asian cinema and I did study an asian cinema module at college so I'm probably not the right person to ask.

I can also name a heck of a lot more white actors.


It is a problem and those who say otherwise are part of it.


A lot of the supporting cast in Spiderman are non-Caucasian though.


I mean, why have a leading role when you can be TOKEN BLACK GUY, or TOKEN ASIAN DUDE and play a stereotype?

You haven't seen the film yet, and you say all these supporting characters (and it's not just one or two) will be token stereotypes. Why not wait and see first? And progress takes time, it won't all happen at once. Better to have some diversity to start with than none at all.

Night Fury
11-05-2016, 01:29 PM
Yeah but saying 'you should be happy to have this' honestly sounds like a massively cop out to me. It's 2016 and we aren't even seeing a true representation on screen. Like how much longer should we wait at this point? :/

Calliope
11-05-2016, 04:17 PM
Psy - I only wanted to name ten actors! And yeah, I didn't mention any Indian folks, whoops.

And uh...progress takes time? This isn't gay marriage, this is a movie casting. It has always struck me as ridiculous that audiences will go and suspend their disbelief and accommodate aliens and magic and war, but no, we simply cannot have a person of colour in a leading role, they're only there to help the white lead succeed, or provide comic relief.

charliepanayi
11-05-2016, 07:21 PM
Progress still takes time, whatever the issue. You should apply pressure on things and highlight casting controversies but equally you can't expect things to change overnight.

One thing's for sure, Tilda Swinton's presence certainly hasn't affected the film's box office. Marvel are pretty bullet-proof at the moment.