1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
This is the worst when the film is legitimately bad, too.
Like, we all pretty much agree Gods of Egypt was a bad movie, but it's still got defenders because they think we're mad about the Black God and not the whole entire cast of White Guys.
Even worse is Captain Marvel. It's just a terrible non-plot without any character growth and intrigue, it's the female version of Green Lantern 2011, but unlike Green Lantern we can't all agree it's a bad movie for all the same reasons.
Movie studios go out of their way to amplify a few outspoken racists when people start trying to criticize movies on reasonable grounds. That's why when all you can hear about a movie is that it's "woke shit", it's because there's nothing good about it.
I honestly think this was the strategy for The Little Mermaid. Casting Halle Bailey took all the attention off the fact that it was another soulless live-action remake of a Disney classic, and nobody wanted to criticize it because they were afraid of being lumped in with all the racist dipshits (not to mention all the free advertising they got from said racist dipshits' angry xitter posts).
The musical sections were so off putting to me, idk how that movie got 90% on Rotten Tomatoes if not for vote manipulation.
I haven't seen it myself, but the only song I've heard was an annoying song sung by an annoying character, and the whole song was about how annoying she is. I could only wonder, who is this song for? The whole point of it seemed to be as off-putting as possible.
Captain Marvel was genuinely just a bland and uninteresting character. Similar story with Rey.
Admittedly a lot of comic book characters are drawn as stoics which is hard to adapt to movie and TV without making them seem unemotional, like with Spawn, except in the Spawn movie we had Klown which more than made up for the lack of facial expression from Spawn.
A similar issue with Hellboy, except we had really good effects and the glorious voice of Ron Perlman to make it work.
I feel like the people defending Captain Marvel should be more upset with how hamfisted its attempts at pandering are. Like playing "I'm just a girl" or having someone literally tell her to smile more followd by her saying "did you just ask me to smile more?"
Representation is important, but you have to put in some effort.
I loved Captain Marvel! Maybe you need to stop expecting Shakespeare from capeshit?
It's cool that you enjoyed it! But there's no need to pretend that this is a binary choice. Guardians of the Galaxy is also capeshit with a stoic woman, yet IMO Gamorra is a much more interesting character than Captain Marvel.
I also liked many parts of the movie, but some other parts were big enough misses that I'm not really interested in rewatching.
I absolutely care about historical accuracy! That's why that show depicting Rome in all white is so fucking dumb. It was a Mediterranean Empire, for fuck's sake! It had people from all around the Mediterranean, even in the upper echelons. For instance, there were emperors from the Balkan and modern central Turkey.
But anyway, what matters more to me than the ethnicity or appearance of the characters is the faithful representation of social and political structures or technological restrictions. Race can play a part in this, but it's hardly the only part and rarely the most important. Wealth, while often correlated with race, is generally the more significant factor.
For example: Arrows piercing plate like so much paper understates the power advantage between those who could afford proper protection and those who had to make do with textile armor. I don't care if the guy inside that cuirass is white, black, green with purple dots or actually not a guy: an arrow slowed by friction hitting a sloped steel sheet at an angle is gonna slide off. I'd rather see an Asian female knight stride into battle with confidence and terrify lightly armoured peasants than have a male knight shot through the chestplate.
Ofc, they're all white. Have you seen their marble busts? They'd choose black marble if they were black
From the Balkan? Really? Man you're not going to believe when I tell you the meaning of the word Caucasian.
Poor Elon Musk. The casting choices on The Odyssey have deeply affected his big, sensitive heart. But you wouldn't know it, due to his mature stoicism.
I mean, you expect he'd tweet up a storm, post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post after post over several days, making him look like some sort of whiny, tantrum-throwing white supremacist.
But, no. The control that selfless Titan of Industry has over his emotions is inspiring!
I just had a great idea. let's make a mockumentary about Trump and all his supporters, but cast inversely instead.
let's get a nice young black man that looks like Obama to play Trump, but we actually name the character something weird like President Donald Doofy but he still acts like Trump.
it'll be the worlds best troll. all the advertisements will be "doofy" rambling on about how the movie is getting rave reviews and "the best" ratings better than that shitty "melabia or whatever" movie.
I do not, and have never, twittered. Nonetheless I have to assume you are being facetious, and that I am missing out on a veritable stream of rageposting nonsense from the 21st-century Midas of Feces.
There's always been race swapping in films. Just look at John Wayne portraying Genghis Khan.
It's totally fine when white people do it. /s
Am I allowed to be annoyed at race swapping if I'm consistent? If you're going to make a movie about characters with a canon appearance, the actor should conform to that appearance.
If you're making Romeo and Juliet, the actors should at least look Italian. Now, if you're doing a full reimagining, that's a different thing. If you're making West Side Story, half your cast should look Puerto Rican. But if you're just doing a straight telling of a story, especially a historical one, casting choices shouldn't distract from the story.
Romeo and Juliet is a great example of why I think it's fucking asinine to even care.
Specifically, if the actors need to look Italian, you will need to argue that an accurate telling of that story has never been accomplished.
Was it an accurate telling when Shakespeare himself was involved in the production? When the actors were exclusively pasty English men? Or was it only accurate after Shakespeare himself was dead and a translated production was performed in Italy by Italian men and women? Do the actors need to actually be 16 and 13? Or can maybe young looking adults be used? Should we go back to the original Italian spelling of their names or is anglicisation in this case ok?
Why does your suspension of disbelief only stop when the skin color changes? What even does an Italian look like? Rome was a commercial hub for centuries that saw settlers from all over the known world. Are they not Italian?
What's even better is there's a great opportunity to use subtext to tell a much deeper story with Romeo and Juliet specifically by making one of the families black, because the specific beef between the Montague's and Capulet's isn't really discussed.
Sure, there are times when it's important to get those details right. Specifically, when ethnicity is a central component to the story being told. Those stories aren't very common, and almost certainly will be the ones you think of as exceptions to everything else I just said. Otherwise, bro, it's a movie, everything about it is a lie.
I believe there was also a shitstorm when the chick in Ghost in the shell was chosen to be white (instead of Asian), and similar with Avatar the Last Airbender?
hey now! John Wayne always gave the colored folks roles they deserved! /s
Maybe we should ask Mongolians how they felt about John Wayne portraying Genghis Khan.
Some people don't want to let anyone else tell a story.
And sometimes its just racism.
I don't care about the race of the actor 99% of the time until they race swap a character just for the sake of inclusiveness.
If you wanna be inclusive then make a new character of that race.
Or maybe don't pick characters that three minutes of thought would reveal massive problems with swapping them.
What's wrong with doing something just for the sake of inclusiveness? That is a moral good in and of itself. Really, inclusiveness is limp-wristed weak term. The better term would be "correcting historical exclusion."
We used to find it acceptable to only write white characters. Characters were written white not for any important narrative reason, but just due to a racist ideal of white as default. Then when people try to correct this historical exclusion, fragile white men lose their god damn minds.
When you're used to privilege equality feels like discrimination.
I always tell people like this that jesus was a short brown skinned jewish man and I take offense to white people portraying him in video and people portraying him as white in paintings too and I swear they would shoot me on the spot if we u.s. losers but we are canadian losers.
I will believe its about equality when we get Black Hitler in a Netflix historical drama. WITH the gay sex scenes, please.
Look, I just want historical accuracy in my movie about sea monsters and cyclopses!
As we all know, despite part of the story taking place in Africa, there were no black people in ancient Greece!
You know what we call people whose job is to pretend to be other people they are not? Actors.
It's even better when they want "historical accuracy" in a fictional world that's based on medieval times.
Donnie Darko. Now there's a movie I haven't thought about in a while.
Bridgerton probably gives these people seizures