Way back in April of last year I wrote a post called “Mashin’ It Up” [titled after something Harley Morenstein says on Epic Meal Time] that mentioned the new upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. You don’t have to read it if you don’t you want to, and I can sum it up with the following sentence: the turtles will now be aliens.
Oh, and Michael Bay will be directing, but you knew that from the title.
TMNT: we are bringing Megan Fox back into the family!
Michael Bay
To be more specific, Megan Fox will be playing April O’Neil, the Turtles’ ladyfriend. Prompting rage from all corners of the internet [not that they weren’t already upset about the “alien” thing].
As you all probably know, Megan Fox played a pretty pivotal role in his first two Transformers movies, until the two had a falling out and she was replaced in the third film by a blonde goldfish [looks are subjective, but that’s just how I feel about Rosie Huntington-Whiteley]. Now it appears that the two have patched things up and the actress will have moved on from hanging out with alien shapeshifting robots to hanging out with ninja turtle aliens.
She managed to beat out starlets Jane Levy, Anna Kendrick, and Elizabeth Olsen, who were all also in the running. I can say for a fact that the latter two, at least, are very talented actresses and that I am very glad they didn’t make it. Allow me to explain myself.
No one out there expects this to be a good movie. I mean, sure, co-creator of the original TMNT comic Kevin Eastman thinks it’s going to be “a fantastic film,” but I’m not buying it. We’ve all seen Transformers, we know what to expect: a testosterone-fueled explosion-fest that will include at least one decent fight scene that you’ll have to find on YouTube after you’ve seen the movie because there was too much detail in too short an amount of time. It won’t be good.
And because it won’t be good I don’t want Anna Kendrick in it. If it’s going to be a train wreck of a movie I don’t want decent actors and actresses to be involved in it. Megan Fox can be April O’Neil because if I watch this film I want to enjoy it like I do a triple bacon cheeseburger, knowing it does nothing good for me whatsoever. Casting a truly gifted actress would be like putting spinach on that burger; it’s not where it should be, and in spite of being healthy would actually hinder my enjoyment of it as a whole.
So I’m not mad, personally. It’s just a Michael Bay movie, something we’ve all had to get used to at some point this past decade. You can be upset about it if you want to, but that’d be like being mad that an episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo doesn’t have better cinematography.
Some time ago, I submitted a brief post recasting the Batman universe. Today, I will be doing the same for the Last Son of Krypton, a challenge greater than that of the Dark Knight first because it will be pretty much impossible to find a better Lex than Kevin Spacey…
…And second because of how much I hate and despise Superman.
Now I know that’s gonna be shocking news. After all, who could find anything but love and appreciation for an inherently powerful, indestructible being serving the US government and acting without any accountability? What could possibly go wrong?
But my issue with Big Blue is neither here nor there. Presented below, for your thoughts, consideration, and potential outrage are my picks for the cast of the perfect Superman series.
Kent Clark/Superman:
Actor: John Hamm
Why We Want Him: Because in addition to being the spitting image of Superman, Hamm is probably best known for his role as Don Draper, 1960s businessman. While I can’t say that I see Superman downing enough whiskey to kill a bull elephant, I can see Hamm’s immersion in a world with an antiquated sense of morality (and uncomfortable suits) as being a huge bonus in playing Clark Kent.
Cons: Weird as it may seem- Hamm is only 6′ tall- a full four inches shorter than Clark Kent’s reported height. While I like the idea of a slightly older superman, the simple truth of the matter is Hamm may be relegated to the speaking roles while a stunt double or two takes on any action scenes.
Lex Luthor:
Actor: Jason Isaacs
Why We Want Him: I’ve seen Isaacs play some pretty despicable characters (The Patriot), but also nail some complexly heroic ones as well (Brotherhood). Ideally, Lex is meant to be tragic hero- someone who could’ve or should’ve been a great leader of men were it not for his obsession with defeating Superman. If there’s anyone who can do this, it’s Isaac’s (also, did you know he played Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter? I just found that out).
Cons: He’s not Kevin Spacey.
Lois Lane
Actress: Jennifer Morrison
Why We Want Her: It’s tough to respect an investigative journalist who can’t recognize Superman as the guy who works the next cubicle down from her simply because he’s wearing glasses. This being (in my experience) pretty much the extent of what Lois does in any Superman book, filling her shoes is a job that pretty much anyone can do- the question is, who can do it best? I submit Jennifer Morrison (House, How I Met Your Mother). She’s played intelligent characters, and we’re banking on that offsetting Lois’s apparent ineptitude.
Cons: As I said, L.L., having the same basic role as Princess Peach, could be played well by pretty much anyone- John Hamm included.
General Zod:
Actor: Viggo Mortenson
Why We Want Him: Because we (or at least, I) have yet to see him deliver on being a truly evil character (SPOILER ALERT: he’s a good guy in Eastern Promises).
Cons: I can’t say for certain that I can see Mortenson pulling off the self-assured, swaggering crypto-Fascist character that Zod has.
Bizarro Superman:
Actor: Benecio Del Toro
Why We Want Him: You might think that the anti-Superman would still be best played by John Hamm. I disagree, and submit instead Benecio Del Toro, who (and I mean no disrespect to him, I really like his work) looks more or less how you’d expect Hamm to look if you took a shovel to his head for a while.
Cons: Del Toro is slightly taller than Hamm, and like Hamm, may be beyond doing some heavy-duty action scenes at this point (but hey, 45 is the new 38).
Pa Kent:
Actor: Rutger Hauer
Why We Want Him: Because the man improvised the “Tears in the Rain” monologue in Bladerunner. That’s right- this guy right here made up on the spot one of the most iconic and moving speeches in film history.
Cons: What about “Improvised ‘Tears in the Rain'” did you not understand?
Ma Kent:
Actress: Jessica Lange
Why We Want Her: Because I’ve seen this woman do some incredibly moving scenes and play her insanely layered and complex characters to the hilt.
Cons: She’s terrifying. AHS fans know what I’m talking about.
Jor-El:
Why We Want Him: Because Rickman, in addition to being just generally awesome, has that strange accent (something entirely beyond British) that’s almost alien. Even if Jor-El is only going to have a few moments of screen time, you want to make ’em count for something- who better for the job than Rickman?
Cons: There’s a strong chance that the accent might be too much- but hey, he could always do that flamboyant American one that fooled John McClane.
Jimmy Olsen:
Actor: Rupert Grint
Why We Want Him: Because of the three ginger comic-relief go-to-guys ( the others being Seth Green and Fran Kranz), Grint is the only one young enough to actually pass for the Daily Planet’s whipping boy.
I don’t normally get that angry about things. Disappointed, sure. Upset, often enough. But really, truly angry? That emotion is normally reserved for pure, undistilled racism.
Yesterday I wrote about the production history of Red Dawn, and mostly talked about how the plot was immensely improbable and how the film industry is all about money, et cetera. What I did not at all dwell on was the potential of the film to bring out racism in people, similar [but not at all comparable] to the abuse of Middle Eastern Americans after what happened on 9/11.
On Facebook Racebending.com directed me to Tumblr user manilaryce, who compiled a number or racist tweets by people who had just watched Red Dawn. I have embedded the image below and on the right.
The following are a few of the tweets that particularly stood out to me:
Kinda wanna kill some Asians right now and defend the homeland, thank you Red Dawn for sparking some patriotism in me
The only reason Im going to see red dawn is cause there’s sexy ass guys running around with guns killing Asians my type of movie;)!
I now hate all Chinese, Japanese, Asian, Korean people. Thanks. #reddawn #amazingmoviedoe
Red dawn was sickkk..just another reason why to hate asians.
One of the tweets, by @elysse223, reads “I usually love Asians, but in Red Dawn I found them terrifying.” After reading that I almost immediately felt worse, like both me and everyone else like me had been transformed into inhuman movie monsters.
The only consolation I can take in all this is that the film is being almost universally panned. Liam Lacey, reviewing the film for The Globe and Mail, says “Red Dawn panders to the worst kind of racist and jingoist impulses, though the movie is so preposterously insincere, it feels like those adjectives should be in air quotes.” Over at Indiewire Gabe Toro describes the film as “stitched together with scotch tape and falling apart at the seams, letting casual racism and misanthropy to spill out the sides.”
I honestly don’t have a lot to say except that I’m angry, hurt, and somewhat unsurprised that this is what audience members all over America are choosing to take away from this movie. I am Asian and I am not evil. I do not want to take over America. I do not want to ever feel like this:
I’ve begun seeing trailers on TV, and apparently it hit theatres two days ago, so I figure now’s as good a time to talk about Red Dawn as any.
For those of you who don’t know, Red Dawn is a remake of the 1984 film of the same name. In the original the United States is invaded by both the Soviet Union and its Cuban allies. A group of plucky high schoolers bands together to form a guerrilla fighting force, named the Wolverines after their high school mascot.
In remaking the film the studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), realized that they needed to modernize the invaders in light of the current political climate, and chose China. Keep in mind that in the original film that country was apparently America’s only ally, with the following exchange taking place:
“…Well, who is on our side?” “Six hundred million screaming Chinamen.” “Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen.” “There were.”
A long, long time ago, back before it was announced that Bane would be the “big bad” in this summer’s The Dark Knight Rises, Bat-Fans everywhere were talking villains. Who would square off against the Caped Crusader next, and who would play him or her?
The most popular pick was The Riddler, as he was deemed the one most suited to Nolan’s gritty, realistic world. It didn’t take long after that for people to settle on the actor most qualified to take on the role: Neil Patrick Harris.
This was popular enough to warrant at least twoseparate Facebook petitions, fan-made posters [see above], and even a fake movie trailer. A month before the actual film hit theatres everywhere the people at ScreenCrush decided to announce that they too thought that NPH looks like the Riddler. He was even the picked for the role in a post on this blog that I did not write; just a reminder that my fellow writers and I will (and do) not always agree.
Even more recently, I read a post on reddit titled “My personal pick for the flash.” The accompanying image was a photo of Neil Patrick Harris. I disagreed, and, before you fly into some/any sort of rage, let me defend myself.
I love How I Met Your Mother. That being said, I really, really enjoy the character of Barney and the nonstop energy and enthusiasm the actor brings to the role. It’s how most people know the guy, and I can see why most people are struck with how, well, awesome he is. But after I saw the aforementioned post on reddit and composed a reasonably put response, I knew what I had to do:
To start with, let me list the last few movies in NPH’s filmography, in descending order:
American Reunion [2012]
The Muppets [2011]
A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas [2011]
The Smurfs [2011]
Beastly [2011]
Comedies and children’s films. To be fair, Beastly appeals to more of a younger, Twilight-loving crowd, and it’s also where Harris plays his most serious role: a blind, wacky, wisecracking tutor.
That’s not to say that he can’t pull off emotional depth. HIMYM‘s Barney doesn’t go through every relationship like it’s nothing, and more than a few times has to face the fact that maybe he does want love, or at least stability. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which you should all watch if you haven’t, is a really enjoyable musical about a supervillain, but also has some deeply heart-wrenching moments.
In spite of all that, I just don’t think Neil Patrick Harris has what it takes to take on the role of a member of Batman’s rogues gallery, or don the cowl of the Fastest Man Alive. Just because he voiced Nightwing in the very well-done animated film Batman: Under the Red Hood doesn’t make him qualified to do anything similar live-action. The headlining role in an independently done musical is not the same as a film in a huge franchise.
If his HIMYM co-star Cobie Smulders’ performance as Maria Hill in The Avengers is any indication, he won’t do a terrible job, he just won’t do great. Neil Patrick Harris is an immensely talented actor, singer, and dancer, but I don’t believe he’s not the next big thing in comic book movies. Feel free to disagree.
EVAN: Today’s topic is something that I hold very near and dear to my heart. Years of research on the topic has made me witness to all of the arguments that can be used against needing to have racially accurate casting, and because of this I’m going to propose something a little different
GORDON: Namely?
EVAN: That I switch sides for this conversation, and speak out against it.
GORDON: Intriguing. Mind starting us off with the first salvo?
EVAN: Statement: Racially accurate casting is not important. The most talented actor should be the one who gets the role.
GORDON: Doesn’t appearance play a key role in what makes an actor good? Peter Dinklage is good, but you wouldn’t really find him believable playing Abraham Lincoln or Kareem Abdul Jabbar.
EVAN: In this case his stature, not his race, is what would keep him from playing either role in a convincing manner.
GORDON: But isn’t that essentially the same issue? Imagine the great Denzel Washington playing Lincoln- you’d be sitting there the entire time, no matter how much of a powerhouse Washington would be, taken out of the film because you have to deal with a black guy playing a white guy during the height of the civil war.
In any piece of film where you’re expecting realism, you’re going to expect the actors to conform to the styles and facts of the time. If you portray Georgia in the 1960s, you’re obviously not going to have a largely black cast portraying the upper class or if you were to set the scene in early 1900s Ghana you wouldn’t have a cast comprised of Caucasians. It wouldn’t make sense, no matter how good they are.
EVAN: If anything, Cloud Atlas at least proves that a talented actor can portray whoever they like, given an adequate amount of makeup. Halle Berry plays a Korean Man in the film, and does so in a convincing fashion that doesn’t at all take viewers out of the film in the least.
GORDON: I haven’t seen that film, so I can’t speak to the use of the actors for the parts they play. From my understanding that was a work of fantasy (or science fiction, I’m only going off what I can gather from the trailers). And in one or two movies, it’s probably not a big deal. After all, Cate Blanchett played Bob Dylan.
But imagine this applied to each and every movie, it simply wouldn’t work. Realism would deteriorate- and this would be especially detrimental in a film trying to deal directly with race relations.
EVAN: I personally feel that allowing any race to play any other speaks much more in terms of race relations. That’s a world where colour is a non-issue because it shouldn’t be.
EVAN:I’m dying, Gordon. My life force is seeping out of me.
GORDON: Try to stick with it…
GORDON: And while it’s true that race ought to be a non-issue, that’s simply not how things are or have been in the past. Using black actors to play black characters and white actors to play white characters is fundamental to demonstrating past inequity and injustice with American racism and segregation. And that’s just one element.
Let’s talk about Indians playing Arabs. It happened in Lost and it happened in Community (with multiple actors), but Arabs look nothing like Indians. Indian actors are used simply because they fit the stereotype of what most people think an Arab looks like. It perpetuates an inaccuracy.
EVAN: Isn’t the fact that the role is an Arab important a large enough step? This is a minority with a major role on a TV show, and an opportunity for minority actors to step up, which they have in both cases.
GORDON: Barring Monk and Arrested Development, when’s the last time you saw an Arab actor? I’m not trying to argue against Indian actors, or actors of Indian heritage getting roles, but for the purpose of portraying the world as it is (or at least with some realism) we should have actors with some vague resemblance to the people they’re portraying on film.
After all, would you not be thrown off by guys with German accents playing French resistance fighters during WWII?
EVAN: If they had German accents then they simply wouldn’t be right for the role, which brings me back to my first point.
GORDON: Which, by proxy, brings us back to my first response. Ethnicity (depending on the situation) is just as valid an element of a guy’s candidacy for a role dealing directly with ethnicity as accents, or height, or any other factor (actual talent, of course, being the most important).
Vincent Cassel should probably not play Malcolm X. Adrien Brody should probably not play the Queen of England, though that would be pretty funny.
EVAN: If we’re going to stick with believability, than why is it so important that Indians not play Arabs? No one has ever made a big deal out of this, so clearly people believe that they are what their role calls them to be-
Likewise a Korean can to play a Chinese person can play a Japanese person. Audiences can’t tell the difference and believe that they are whatever the role is, and that’s okay.
GORDON: But Koreans do not look Chinese, Chinese people don’t look Japanese, and Arabs and Indians certainly don’t look like each other. The only reason this happens is because most people either don’t know (partly due to this inaccurate casting) or don’t care (in other words, all non-whites are basically one homogenous mass.
If all your life, you had seen black men and been told “these are Uzbekistanis,” then you’d go your whole life simply assuming that Uzbekistanis are, in fact, indiscernible from guys from Benin.
Your ignorance should not dictate which actors get which parts. Further, no Uzbekistan could really ever get a chance to play and Uzbekistani because of the years of misinformation.
EVAN: But there is a huge difference between a black person and an Uzbekistani. The examples I made have similarities that the example you used clearly does not.
To be such a stickler for accuracy is the other extreme, and just as wrong. You wouldn’t get someone with mental problems to accurately portray a character with mental problems, that just doesn’t make sense. Race should matter if it is noticeable, and like I said in the case of shows like Lost it is not.
EVAN: The logic above was used against me by someone in a thread on Reddit You can check out our exchange here.
GORDON: Granted, my example was extreme, but that doesn’t change the point. Even though a Thai guy and a Japanese guy share more similarities than a Beninese guy and an Uzbekistani guy, there are still distinct differences between people from Thailand and people from Japan.
With regards to being a stickler- I admit, as I have previously, that you don’t have to have an exact replica of the character you’re trying to portray. Jet Li, I imagine, is doing pretty well for himself, and I still wouldn’t doubt his ability to portray a poor man very well. However, while you don’t need to be point for point, you do need to have some general similarity. That’s why we don’t have Emma Stone portraying Fidel Castro.
EVAN: I feel like the extremeness of your examples is damaging your point. If we’re sticking with race we should do that, and not bring in gender.
GORDON: It’s to demonstrate the underlying point in all of this: Verisimilitude. Realism. Accuracy.
EVAN: And since you said “you don’t have to have an exact replica of the character you’re trying to portray” why isn’t it okay to have Naveen Andrews play Sayid Jarrah on Lost?
GORDON: But the distinction is great enough. The accent is Indian, not Iraqi. Naveen does not look Iraqi. When an actor neither looks nor sounds like the character he is meant to portray, we have a problem.
EVAN: So if Jarrah had managed to sound Iraqi, would that have helped?
GORDON: It would’ve added to the realism and accuracy, yes. But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s very clearly Indian, not Arab.
EVAN: Clear to a very select few. As mentioned, people didn’t seem to notice for the most part.
GORDON: Clear to a very select few. As mentioned, people didn’t seem to notice for the most part.
Most people don’t know what an Arab looks like. Do they know that Monk is Lebanese? That Cousin Maeby is Iraqi? Most do not. Ignorance is not an excuse for inaccurate casting.
EVAN: And that brings our exhausting exchange to an end. Trying to argue for something I so strongly disagree was one of the more difficult things I’ve ever done. I hope that in reading this you were able to see the holes in my argument and the truth in Gordon’s.
GORDON: Booyah.
The past few paragraphs alone have had the same effect on Evan as that life-sucking device in the Princess Bride. Commend him for biting the bullet.
And as for our discussion next time, your options are: What do we make of the upcoming Star Wars sequel?
EVAN: And. . . how about . . . How much artistic merit is there in a show like Adventure Time?
GORDON: I like it.
And to our beloved and devoted followers (who would organize into a vicious and unholy army of darkness if we ever were to ask it of ’em), feel free to suggest your own topic down in the comments section.
Actress: Jennifer Morrison
Actor: Viggo Mortenson
Actor: Benecio Del Toro
Actress: Jessica Lange
Why We Want Him: Because Rickman, in addition to being just generally awesome, has that strange accent (something entirely beyond British) that’s almost alien. Even if Jor-El is only going to have a few moments of screen time, you want to make ’em count for something- who better for the job than Rickman?
Actor: Rupert Grint
That’s not to say that he can’t pull off emotional depth. HIMYM‘s Barney doesn’t go through every relationship like it’s nothing, and more than a few times has to face the fact that maybe he does want love, or at least stability. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, which you should all watch if you haven’t, is a really enjoyable musical about a supervillain, but also has some deeply heart-wrenching moments.
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