Thread: Great Wall

Really?



A chorus of outrage followed the release on Thursday of the first trailer for The Great Wall, a fantasy adventure set in China more than 1,000 years ago, which stars the white Hollywood star Matt Damon in the lead role.

Damon plays a soldier in ancient China in The Great Wall, an English-language film directed by Zhang Yimou and set for release in February 2017.

Constance Wu, a star of the comedy show Fresh off the Boat, posted a statement on Twitter that lambasted the “racist myth that [only a] white man can save the world”.

The popular blog Angry Asian Man called the movie “the latest movie in the grand cinematic tradition of the Special White Person”, adding: “You can set a story anywhere in the world, in any era of history, and Hollywood will still somehow find a way for the movie to star a white guy.”

Matt Damon and The Great Wall: the latest targets of whitewashing on film
In her post, Wu wrote: “Our heroes don’t look like Matt Damon. They look like Malala. Ghandi. Mandela. Your big sister when she stood up for you to those bullies that one time. We don’t need salvation. We like our color and our culture and our strengths and our own stories.”

The Taiwanese American actor criticized various justifications for the paucity of starring roles for Asians in Hollywood.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.the...id-metropcs-us

The popular blog Angry Asian Man called the movie “the latest movie in the grand cinematic tradition of the Special White Person”, adding: “You can set a story anywhere in the world, in any era of history, and Hollywood will still somehow find a way for the movie to star a white guy.”

Talk @ racism! Make your own movie if you don't like this version. Hollywood does what it wants to do, it is American industry and they obviously wanted a "star".

Originally Posted by artist

Talk @ racism! Make your own movie if you don't like this version. Hollywood does what it wants to do, it is American industry and they obviously wanted a "star".

But if "star power" was the only thing needed, how do you explain the statement @ 3:00 minute mark?

(Course language)

I don't think anyone is saying Hollywood cannot make the kind of movie it wants. Commentators are just talking about the obvious. I, ultimately, decide to watch the film or not. Gods of Egypt made 145 million on a 140 million budget. The time for valid media and entertainment is very near, even at the door!

I don't know if it is racism that inspired them to cast a Caucasian as a Chinese figure of history -- a figure of Chinese history . Maybe it was just stupidity. Maybe a little of both.

I'm not going to see it. I wouldn't see a film about Frederick Douglass if they cast him with a Chinese actor. I wouldn't see a film about Patton if they cast him with a black actor.

This is not Shakespeare where you can fool around with casting outside the ethnic group. But even there, look how long it took to cast Othello with a black actor.

Things are getting weirder by the minute.

I'm betting Matt Damon was chosen for the same reason major American film producers do anything--to make money. I don't think any Chinese actor would have the box office drawing power.

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon did pretty well and not only were there no Caucasion performers, there was no English spoken.