Live-Action Mulan remake.

Well...Ariel IS a supporting character in OUAT...and played by a Hispanic actress for all that's worth)...Mulan too actually...

I still want someone to name an American made movie in the last ten years without a single white person in the cast. Until Disney gives us a reason to believe they'll break from this I think it's safe to assume someone will be white.

While we're on it, give me a movie made in India over the last ten years where absolutely no cast member is Hindu. Or name a Japanese movie from the last decade with no Yamato at all in the cast. Or a Latin American film from 2005 until now where absolutely no one is Latino.

I mean, geez. Let's not pretend it's not the same thing everywhere and from every modern culture (including mine), instead acting as if it's only a flaw of the Mighty Whitey.

edited 31st Mar '15 6:47:10 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

She joins the army in her father's place for her father's sake.

She goes to great lengths to fight the Huns, even after being exposed and thus at great person risk to herself, for China's sake.

edited 31st Mar '15 7:26:44 PM by KnownUnknown

And for honor's sake which seems to be a running theme in the film.

Both are related. I put it as her main motivation being the protection and aid of the things she honors, even when she is unsure of herself or when doing so could only result in misfortune for her.

edited 31st Mar '15 7:28:23 PM by KnownUnknown

Any Indian film with Shah Rukh Khan or Aamir Khan would have a single cast member who isn't Hindu, since those two are Muslims.

False equivalence. Japanese and even Indian industry have nowhere close the budget and actor pool as Hollywood. How many non Japanese actors who are fluent in Japanese exist? Compared with non-white anglophones? Not to mention people from all nationalities live in US, which makes things considerably simpler. You could have a 100% American cast with no white person in it. It would be trivially easy even. Try to pull that in Japan.

edited 31st Mar '15 7:53:42 PM by Heatth

Honestly Mulan seems like an easy pick for a live-action remake. Well-liked Action Girl lead, aside from Mushu and the Ancestors there aren't a whole lot of "magical" elements to the original movie. I don't think they'd have to change all that much depending if they keep the songs or not to make a good live-action version, just get a good cast and director.

The Little Mermaid they'd have to rework quite a bit I think to make it appealing to a modern audience, I doubt they want to do an Aladdin movie any time soon in a world without Robin Williams, and Pocahontas is kinda a Black Sheep in the Canon to start off with. Lion King shouldn't be touched (no humans!), Hunchback would be awesome with the right cast, Tarzen I'm indifferent on, and do we really need another Hercules movie?

There, I think that covers my thoughts on remaking the Renaissance films.

We already have Lion King with humans. It's called Hamlet.

But Hamlet was boring.

edited 31st Mar '15 9:42:04 PM by Parable

But Mighty Whitey is the majority, so it's wrong when Mighty Whitey does it.

And yes, this is a double standard. A double standard that we as a society have deemed acceptable and arguably deserving, but nevertheless a double standard.

In regards to my 47 Ronin example, I know that it's not perfect. I know it's still problematic. But it's progress. The thing is that Hollywood is a behemoth run by crotchety old white men. Progress is going to be slow and gradual and honestly relying on the old guard dying out, but it's there.

I just thought of an American movie with no white person: The Wiz.

Regarding the whitewashing complaints: I'm just holing up and waiting until they come up with actual casting.

A couple websites had me kind of worried that Ken Watanabe would be in it as Fa Zhou. (I love Ken Watanabe, but he's Japanese and it's going to feel like Memoirs Of A Geisha.) And then I realized they were fan-casting websites, and I had to facepalm amidst my relief.

Mulan itself has a vocal cast of Asian American actors, same with The Princess And The Frog and African American actors. If Disney decides to make a live action Mulan, it would likely be because they feel confident in making a film consisting solely of Asian actors.

Also consider what the last mainstream movie you've seen that had NO Token Minority.

The thing that comes down to casting is whether or not they can portray the role required, not that they check off a specific set of background traits. Actors can and have lied about their age, background, nationality and ethnicity if they felt it would help them get a part. And an American movie is going to focus on American actors (of any descent), casting entirely Chinese actors and teaching them English or making the movie entirely with Cantonese subtitles is hugely impractical. And the trope Ability over Appearance has mostly minorities cast in white roles as examples, not the other way around.

The reason I feel this way is in my own experience the film Extraordinary Measures has Dr. Robert Stonehill as a Composite Character of various scientists, the foremost being my Mom's cousin, William Canfield, who is very much white. Another scientist working from Duke University, Dr. Yuan-Tsong Chen, helped in the research but did not want to be fictionalized. Then you have a big name like Harrison Ford expressing interest in the scientist role. And I've seen a few misguided articles ranting about the Race Lift in the film when all they know is an Asian actor could have been cast but wasn't.

Real Life is complicated, and Casting is not an exact science.

I would actually be surprised if Mulan gets white-washed. Disney has been courting the Chinese market for a long time now (See: Disneyland Shanghai and Marvel recording extra scenes in the Chinese version of Iron Man 3 just so they could include Chinese actors), and the choice to go for Mulan for the next Live Action remake is very likely to grab more of that ever-growing Chinese box office money that is predicted to surpass America's within this decade or so.

Considering how the Disney brand itself is currently just as big, if not a bigger selling point than most of the people in Hollywood that Disney would be willing to spend money on for a Live Action Remake (These tend to be smaller budget affairs than Marvel movies and the animated features from Disney Animation Studios and Pixar), going for extensive white-washing in Mulan would be contrary not just in an artistic standpoint, but from a financial standpoint as well since they would lose a large chunk of the Chinese audience for little return.

edited 1st Apr '15 4:51:00 AM by Servbot

Now you're just pulling things out of thin air because no one in this thread was asking for that.

The Wiz was an entirely black production IIRC, right down to the staff.

And the thing about Hugh Jackman playing Wolverine: a white Australian playing a white Canadian in a movie set in modern times, considering he can pull off the proper accent, is simply not going to stick out, unless Canadians have remarkably different facial features from Australians that I didn't know about.

Casting a white guy to play the lead in a feudal Asian setting where logically there shouldn't be anyone but Asians, yeah, people a gonna notice and cry foul.

edited 1st Apr '15 5:48:11 AM by PhysicalStamina

Given the comments in this thread, an Australian playing a Canadian because they're both white is just as problematic as a Japanese playing a Chinese because they're both Asian.

I was thinking the same. Hollywood is terrified of pissing off the Chinese market. If anything, they try too hard to please them: for example, Chinese audiences did not like the forced pandering in the Chinese release of Iron Man 3.

It's not the same thing because Canada and Australia don't have long history of hating each other.

Joel Schumacher directed The Wiz. He is most definitely not black.

Anywho It's really hard to judge on an Aussie playing a Canadian vs a Japanese playing a Chinese. The way I see it is that white Hollywood casting white characters is different from White Hollywood casting a character of a different race. The latter can often feel like "Well all Asians look alike so no one will notice that a Chinese actor is playing someone from Japan" A la Memoirs of a Geisha.

I guess it's like James Bond fans freaking out whenever it's hinted that someone not from UK is being considered for the part. Were there riots when George Lazenby was cast btw? I know Flemming had to warm up to Sean Connery, but he was at least still from the UK...

And of course Dragon Ball Evolution *shudder*. I guess because Goku's technically an alien, there was no predetermined race for him...but it was still weird seeing a white kid play him...

edited 1st Apr '15 7:35:32 AM by Sisi

Wouldn't a better comparison be a German actor playing a French character or something? You can't really easily tell the difference between a white Canadian and a white Australian because of all the intermixing of races in those two countries, but, from what I understand, there is a considerable difference between the different European ethnicities, but they tend to get lumped in together as "white" anyway, sort of like how Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people get lumped in together as "Asian."

What about someone like Takeshi Kaneshiro, whose mother is Taiwanese and father Okinawan? He mostly plays in Hong Kong movies and I don't think most of his roles are Japanese characters. Then there are Zainichi Koreans in Japanese movies, of whose ethnicity you couldn't automatically tell, if you didn't do some research.

And BTW, it was Sidney Lumet who directed The Wiz. Not that he's black either.

edited 1st Apr '15 7:40:56 AM by harkko

sorry. I just remember Schumacher's name being attached to that movie.

About European actors, that happens especially a lot with different Slavic actors I find. I'm Croatian, so I'm always curious to find actors from there in stuff. But oddly, they don't usually play Croats in non-Croat media. Goran Visnic from ER is one of the very few exceptions I can think of.

A lot of the time you of Serbs and Croats getting cross-cast (not too different from the Japanese-Chinese cross-casting in that they too have a VERY acrimonious history). Another thing that isn't nearly as common as it used to be but still happens a surprising amount is using actors of any Slavic background to play Russians or Soviets. Rade Serbedzija is the king of this (see his role in 24. He also played a Frenchman in South Pacific).

Than there's Peter Stormare. He's Swedish and yet somehow ends up playing a shitload of different ethnicities XD

I have to say though, on of the most unfortunate cases of white-washing is a Canuck production of Othello where Othello was played by Carlo Rota. Who's an Italian Brit. playing a black character. This was in 2008.

I'm really, really sorry guys XP

Link?

Heh, kind of figured it'd be awkward and crappy insertions.

edited 1st Apr '15 12:08:09 PM by Ekuran

Are Australians and Canadians visible different ethnicities? An Asian person can actually tell other other Asian apart. Also, as Kostya said, Australians and Canadians don't have a history of hating each other. Nor a history of being being mixed up by foreigners.