Random Rant of the night.



  • Continuing the discussion from sigh I guess if that's what you want...:

    @hungrier said:

    What about

    vs

    http://1.fwcdn.pl/ph/13/21/11321/320961.1.jpg

    @hungrier said:

    vs

    Still don't get that....

    Why would they take Bison and totally get the ethnicity wrong???

    I mean, I have to be fair... when people are complaining about ethnicity in avatar airbender movie. (Yeah, thanks "Avatar", you totally made me have to type extra words for this comparison).

    Oh, the fight takes place in a jungle?

    Well, that's fine. Only minorities live in the jungle.



  • @xaade said:

    Well, that's fine. Only minorities live in the jungle.

    http://www.vastseaofgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/M-Bison-Of-course.gif


  • BINNED

    I am not fucking kidding, this was in my editor for like 10 minutes now but I got a phone call and didn't hit post :rofl:



  • Haha, use it or lose it, sucker!



  • I watched that animation so many times, I swore I saw the screenshot of it move.


  • BINNED

    @cartman82 said:

    Haha, use it or lose it, sucker!

    Fair Hanzo is fair. I just found it entertaining that the posts were identical, down to the quoted bit.



  • @Onyx said:

    Fair Hanzo is fair. I just found it entertaining that the posts were identical, down to the quoted bit.

    Except you did the "Filed under" extra bit of effort. That turned out to be your undoing.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @xaade said:

    I mean, I have to be fair... when people are complaining about ethnicity in avatar airbender movie

    Geez, people will talk about anything.


  • BINNED

    Now, imagine if there was a community of people willing to go to war about how you name variables and what line you put brackets in...

    Madness, madness I tell ya!



  • @xaade said:

    Still don't get that....

    Why would they take Bison and totally get the ethnicity wrong???

    Do you know why Raul Julia took that role? Look it up. Have Kleenex handy.



  • He took the role so he could identify with his kids who played the game, not knowing it would be his last role?

    Just to be clear, the above was satire.

    My intentions are to say that it shouldn't matter who plays the roles of characters in fictional universes. If there aren't enough english speaking minorities that can act THAT PARTICULAR role, then I don't care who plays it.

    I just find it funny that no one complains when the shoe is on the other foot.



  • @xaade said:

    He took the role so he could identify with his kids who played the game, not knowing it would be his last role?

    My understanding is that he knew it would be his last role, and he did it specifically for his kids.

    @xaade said:

    My intentions are to say that it shouldn't matter who plays the roles of characters in fictional universes. If there aren't enough english speaking minorities that can act THAT PARTICULAR role, then I don't care who plays it.

    M. Bison is one thing. The crap Sham-a-scam pulled on Last Airbender is still inexcusable.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    The crap Sham-a-scam pulled on Last Airbender is still inexcusable.

    Can someone explain what this was? I saw...at least part of the movie. Can't recall if it was the whole thing...probably just sort of watched it in the background while my kids watched it. I'm guessing there's some other Last Airbender version that did something differently or something?



  • In the original cartoon, all the heroes are mixed-race, asian-ish and the bad guys are white.

    Sham-a-scam reversed it so all the good guys are snow white and all the baddies are minorities.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    Ah. Thanks.



    1. He disconnected the relationship between the characters movement and the affect it had in the environment. Turned the game into a dance off. Even though they recreated the intro animation, which demonstrates this affect.
    2. He hired practically all white cast for Inuit tribe, but hired all Arab cast for oriental tribe.
    3. He weakened the powers of everyone down to barely producing anything, yet made the Avatar infinitely stronger for a split second plot twist device Deus Ex Machina style.
    4. He completely changed the brother's personality from comic relief to Angst-Man!
    5. He didn't even do anything to promote the time it takes to build relationships. Not even a cheap "1 year later". Nothing. People were instantly attached to each other and trusted each other for no reason at all.

    About the only thing the movie had that was similar was environments and costumes. And even a certain hairstyle was a joke.

    It would be like taking The Hobbit, and adding a whole movie halfway through the book that is completely made up, including an attempt to embalm a giant dragon, and orc-head hopping ninja archers. Reintroducing Legolas so people had an attachment to the movie. And changing the lead dwarf into Action-Hero-Man. You can't tell he's a dwarf until he stands by someone. Oh, yeah, that happened. Well, take it as a comparison.

    Not to say the movie wasn't interesting, but if you don't want to give due respects to the source material, go back to ruining Dare Devil, X-Men, or Ghost Rider.



  • ...then Sham-a-scam is an idiot that deserves to be whacked on the head.

    Is there something terrifyingly wrong with making characters who have interesting ethnic backgrounds? We have this wonderfully rich palette of people to play with when creating characters, yet people seem loathe to use it in anything more than a TOKEN fashion! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE!!!!????!!!!!

    Or will I have to start assuming that every character whose ethnicity is left unspecified is a Kerbal by default?!



  • The funny thing is he looks like this:

    You'd think he'd be all behind protagonists who look like him.



  • That wonderfully rich palette of people who also have a talent, skill, and can speak English, are disproportionately white.

    If you want to pull a feminist and start forcing minorities to learn English and develop acting skills, then we'll have diversity, but until then, nope.

    Seriously, when I look for a movie calling for an east-Asian that can speak English, I see the same 3 or 4 faces. Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and that guy who played in Dragon Ball Evolution.



  • I would argue that he simply can't find minorities, like most directors have trouble doing.

    But he went out of his way to find a white child for Aang, whose never seen the screen (not TV, not even Disney/Nickelodian insert same plot for tween drama here).

    Looking back, how many minorities has he hired.

    I mean, has he developed penchant for making the bad guy a minority and the good guy white.

    Unbreakable did it too.



  • @xaade said:

    Seriously, when I look for a movie calling for an east-Asian that can speak English, I see the same 3 or 4 faces. Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and that guy who played in Dragon Ball Evolution.

    Really. Not... Michelle Yeoh? Not Chow Yun-Fat? Lucy Liu?

    Now if you're looking for middle-eastern actors, THEN you have a problem. There's basically Alexander Siddig (who used to joke that he was the only Arab in Starfleet-- he's actually the only Arab who can get a call from a Hollywood producer) and ... uh. Hm.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Chow Yun-Fat?

    was

    @xaade said:

    that guy who played in Dragon Ball Evolution

    Goku was white. :wtf:



  • Seriously? He did that shitty movie? Chow Yun-Fat's an actual actor. Jesus.

    Remember Mako? I loved that guy. Shitty actor, but super-likeable and he was everywhere in the 80s.





  • @xaade said:

    That wonderfully rich palette of people who also have a talent, skill, and can speak English, are disproportionately white.

    If you want to pull a feminist and start forcing minorities to learn English and develop acting skills, then we'll have diversity, but until then, nope.

    Seriously, when I look for a movie calling for an east-Asian that can speak English, I see the same 3 or 4 faces. Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and that guy who played in Dragon Ball Evolution.

    I was speaking to character definition not actor casting...


  • BINNED

    Dragonball was so bad that my friend (a DBZ fan) and I (watched an episode here or there, I know the basics) managed to forget it was supposed to be Dragonball within 5 minutes and ended up laughing our assess off. Laughing at the film, of course.

    Same thing with Battleship. One of the best watching experiences ever. I don't even remember the climax, last 15 minutes of it was replaced by wiping tears from our eyes and trying to breathe from time to time.

    But if I had to watch either of them alone I'd probably want to strangle someone afterwards.



  • I liked the Dragonball movie. It's pretty good if you remember that the only similarities are the names.

    However, that guy up there looks nothing like Vega (No, you all got it wrong.)

    Also, when I want ethnic movies I'd rather they be authentic. I just watched Stephen Chow's Journey to the West, and that didn't have any diversity (unless you count furries) - not a single person wasn't Chinese.



  • @Magus said:

    not a single person wasn't Chinese

    No English either.

    Look, I'm not saying you can't have diversity, just saying you can't get it from Hollywood.



  • So? Who cares? Everyone makes movies.



  • All this discussion, and not one mention of casting Cumberbatch as Khan? For shame...



  • I have to admit, I was impressed by how well Hollywood managed Ender's Game. I expected much worse, but I don't think that, given the length and format, it could have been done better.

    Of course, it just reinforces my certainty that there will never be a good Dune movie.



  • @Magus said:

    Of course, it just reinforces my certainty that there will never be a good Dune movie.

    There's a really entertaining movie named "Dune". Close enough.

    I have no interest in Ender's Game after I realized the book was just juvenile power fantasy.



  • Now if you're looking for middle-eastern actors, THEN you have a problem. There's basically Alexander Siddig (who used to joke that he was the only Arab in Starfleet-- he's actually the only Arab who can get a call from a Hollywood producer) and ... uh. Hm.

    Naveen Andrews (Lost)
    Faran Tahir (Iron Man)
    Saïd Taghmaoui (Lost, Game of Thrones)
    Ahmed Ahmen (Iron Man)
    Makram Khoury (Munich)

    Just a bit of fun:
    http://www.sidcity.net/gallery/albums/misc/jamesnotsid.jpg



  • @Captain said:

    Naveen Andrews (Lost)Faran Tahir (Iron Man)Saïd Taghmaoui (Lost, Game of Thrones)Ahmed Ahmen (Iron Man)Makram Khoury (Munich)

    London, LA, France, ... ah! Egypt!, ah! Israel!

    3/5 of those actors, (3/6 if you count Alexander Siddig who is from Sudan), are from nice "friendly" Euro-merican countries.

    It's great that there's more minority actors around than there were back when I was still watching TV, but there's still a huge gap here that we should all be rightly critical of. The truth of the matter is a lot of Hollywood execs are highly racist (or are highly racist "on behalf of" their audiences, who they assume are highly racist.)



  • Of course they're from "friendly" countries. The people from unfriendly countries probably wouldn't get a visa, let alone get the one-in-a-million shot actors get, let alone actually succeed in acting at million-to-one odds.



  • Well that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

    It's also worth noting that there are a lot of great films made in those countries that there's absolutely no reason (including awful border controls) couldn't be localized and released in the US.

    It was easier to do an American release of a movie made behind the Iron Curtain in the 1960s than it is a movie made in Egypt in 2015. Even though there's far more distribution channels now. That's fucked-up.



  • I don't know. I don't much trust most official western localizations, because I know what they do to things from, say, Japan.

    You take something contemplative, with a plot, and you notice that there are times where people aren't talking. I assume that what happens in the studio is that some guy with a cigar says,

    'This looks like someone drew it.'

    'Er, yes sir, it's from Japan, it's abou-'

    'Hmm, kids like things that are drawn. Why aren't they talking during this bit?'

    'Well, sir, the situation is really rather gri-'

    'Jokes.'

    'Sir?'

    'Forget what they're saying, it's too quiet, kids won't watch this. Add more jokes!'

    'But sir, this isn't targeted at children, and everyone is about to di-'

    'I'm paying you to make what I tell you!'

    -or so I imagine.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    It's also worth noting that there are a lot of great films made in those countries that there's absolutely no reason (including awful border controls) couldn't be localized and released in the US.

    Why would they? "Foreign films" have abysmal sales here in the US, unless they are done entirely in English. Hollywood is a business, not a NFP that works to expand the cultural horizon of the US. They import what will make money.



  • How about we get to step 1: "they exist at all" before we worry about step 2: "the translation is accurate", eh?

    Also your little scenario seems to be more imaginary than anything. When's the last time a adult-targeted anime was translated to be family friendly? Is that even a problem that's existed in the last 20 years?



  • Well yeah but. It's so depressing to think of, for the price of one shitty Sci-Fi Original Picture, they could have instead done a great job importing, localizing and marketing the excellent Thai monster film Garuda. For example.



  • @doramjan said:

    All this discussion, and not one mention of casting Cumberbatch as Khan? For shame...

    So the nice WASP played the genetically-enhanced Sikh this time, instead of the nice Mexican (who was later known for playing a guy named "Mr Roarke", fer cryin' out loud).

    BTW, the new Trek also features another ubiquitous east Asian actor who's somehow been overlooked in this thread: John "Roldy" Cho.



  • They're generally targeted at teens. They're generally translated for 8yos.


  • Grade A Premium Asshole

    @blakeyrat said:

    Well yeah but. It's so depressing to think of, for the price of one shitty Sci-Fi Original Picture, they could have instead done a great job importing, localizing and marketing the excellent Thai monster film Garuda. For example.

    Hit up Kickstarter and get it done. ;)


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    the bad guys are white.

    ? Fire nation's not asianish?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    I have no interest in Ender's Game after I realized the book was just juvenile power fantasy.

    No, the book was setting-dressing for the sequel, which was supposed to be the main story.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @FrostCat said:

    No, the book was setting-dressing for the sequel, which was supposed to be the main story.

    Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind are really quite good, but Ender's Game is just something you suffer through to make those other much finer books make sense.

    I plan to entirely ignore the film.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    we should all be rightly critical of.

    @blakeyrat said:

    or are highly racist "on behalf of" their audiences

    This is my problem with that line of thought.

    If you want minorities to succeed, go watch the movies that minorities play in.

    Business is only there to predict the market and succeed.

    You seriously want businesses to take risks that are too great, resulting in movies that people don't watch, resulting in budget cuts that get the other minorities working for them (in IT, in production, post-production, even cleaning ladies) fired?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    When's the last time a adult-targeted anime was translated to be family friendly?

    Yeah, but it isn't just translated, it's also localized.

    No one is going to watch a show where they have to look up Japanese culture every 5 mins to understand the dialog or jokes.

    I do that, because I leave subtitles on, which are usually translated more exactly, and care enough to understand the joke.

    But most people will say, man the comedy made no sense, and stop watching foreign animation.

    Despite your imagination, they aren't sitting in the office saying, no one is going to watch this because it isn't kid friendly. They are sitting there saying, "Does anybody in here get that joke, no. Ok, look it up and see if we can get as close as possible."


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @xaade said:

    Business is only there to predict the market and succeed.

    Theoretically, and ideally, yes. Reality's a bit less even than that. We can wish it wasn't, of course, but the whole point of the whole affirmative action thing is to try to address the problems where people are not succeeding because of their race, rather than because of whether they're hard working, smart or have good creative ideas. (Or the combination of those things, more normally.)

    If we look at what societies can conceivably work as a map of a “social energy” space and plot the isosurfaces, we'll find that there are many locally stable societies possible, and that almost all societies are actually located in one of these local optima. We can also look at whether the local optima is a particularly good one and whether the values to which it corresponds are ones that we morally feel comfortable with. The proponents of affirmative action believe that the US is stuck in a poor optimum, socially speaking, and that moving to one where race matters less for whether someone succeeds would be better.

    People who are the beneficiaries of this sort of thing tend to lose sight of the fact that the aim is to get to the point where they succeed on their value as a human being, not because of handouts. The handouts are only there because there are other people busy taking stuff away on the basis of race.

    I suspect it's all a hang-over from the days of slave owning. By contrast, the UK doesn't have these problems because slavery was never anything more than rare here. (We've got other problems thankyouverymuch. Just not really race.)



  • @dkf said:

    was never anything more than rare here

    The problem is that we dumped slaves out of slavery without taking the time to educate them on what it takes to be successful in society.

    I think it's like over 50% of blacks in America did NOT descend from slaves. So I suppose they integrated into communities where people were like them.

    The difference in the UK is that the blacks that immigrated to the UK did so because they were already successful at living in western civilizations. The blacks that weren't successful are still in Africa in the freed colonies. Yet they still participate or suffer in sectarian violence much like they do in America today under the concept of street gangs.

    The successful blacks in America also do the same thing and migrate out of the innercity.

    I believe strongly in the concept of generational curses through learned behavior.

    So handouts will never compensate for years and generations of learned behavior and lack of education. Even when opportunities present themselves, the capable people are threatened into criminal behavior, killed, etc. No different than the behavior in Africa.

    You can look at west coast Africans who have benefited from colonization, and compare that to eastern Africans, and you see a clear distinction from peaceful people on the west, and an encroaching violence from the east.

    Not tho mention that later slaves weren't the result of capture,d locals by force, but slaves in their culture already, because of criminal behavior or capture from the sectarian violence.

    So it has almost nothing to do with the slavery itself, but the isolation they experienced immediately after being freed.


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