Rahda

It's like he stepped right out of a 12th Century painting!!!!

 

"I am the punishment of God... pilgrim."

Kor

 

But how do we know that Genghis Khan didn't make his hoardes get off their horses and drink their milk?
JB

 

But the play Hamilton is fine with a non-white cast? Today's casting rules aren't better, they're just reversed.

 

I think plays are a bit different. You can have all male the Importance of Being Ernest. The audience is already in on the joke or the reasons behind a different interpretation.

The reaction to Black Panther, which simply a quite good action flick, was so powerful it showed that it is far too easy to live in a bubble where you under estimate the effects of a lack of representation on screen.

If it didn't matter why would white folks be complaining about too much diversity meaning not enough white men in Discovery?

 

From what I've seen, Broadway people are just as insistent as Hollywood that actors "of color" are eligible to play any role, but roles "of color" must be played by actors of color. [Gay actors now enjoy a similar double standard.]

But it's complicated. Emma Stone got a lot of blowback for playing a Hawaiian in Aloha, and had to apologize to the world for it. I happen to agree that white actors should not play non-white characters, because it looks stupid and adds a needless layer of phoniness to a film.

And what's happening on the other side of this is not black actors getting into white face, thank God, but previously white characters becoming black. An example would be Will Smith in The Wild, Wild West. (I think Smith said at one point that he would decline the role of James T. Kirk, because it would annoy too many white guys.) We've also seen many calls over the years for James Bond to be played by Denzel Washington, and more recently Idris Elba.

So on this of the ledger, the only unbalanced thing is that we won't be seeing calls to remake Shaft with a white guy in the title role. I hope. Although a Will Farrell or Jim Carey could probably kill in that.

 

Yeah but I think the only reason you get calls like that is because even with those extra ethnicity swaps , there is still a massive imbalance in favour of Caucasian actors. So swapping one way improves the situation , swapping the other way makes it worse. I think that's it in a nutshell.

Now I had no problem with Naomi Harris as Moneypenny, or swapping the ethnicity of Felix Leiter but I think Bond is perhaps a step too far. Even making Q a young techie rather than Major Boothroyd was a step too far for me...

 

Q was another character rather than the same man as played by Desmond Llewellyn! In fact didn't he introduce John Cleese into the role as well?
JB

 

Yeah I think Moneypenny and M are the same characters from Dr No. Q is a different Q. More confusing is that Judi Dench has played two different Ms.

 

You could say this is a hairy subject to broach.

 

Moneypenny isn't the same woman for two obvious reasons while Judi Dench has to be the same M that was in the Brosnan and Craig eras!
JB

 

No, definitely the other way round. Naomi's ethnicity is no more significant than Lois Maxwell being Canadian and every other version being English. Moneypenny is her name so it must be the same character.

You have to remember that Casino Royale is technically set before Dr No.

In Goldeneye, Judi tells Bond something along the lines that her predecessor supported him but she thinks he's a dinosaur of the Cold War. While in Casino Royale, she's the one who actually promotes him to 00 status i.e. the M before the M she was talking about in Goldeneye. Since she retires in Skyfall, it's physically impossible as well as canonically impossible for them to be same woman.

 

Her ethnicity does count and it can't be a true reboot because Judi Dench is still Bond's boss as she was in the Brosnan era! A lot of things in the newer Bonds don't make sense like the reboot itself, M, Blofeld especially as Bond doesn't seem to know him yet now they are sort of half brothers!!!
JB

 

Oh dear so Felix Leiter is... Married to a man of differing ethnicity who also works for the CIA and is also called Felix?

Doesn't help you with M though. The dialogue is expressly contradictory .

 

I just have a hard time seeing John Wayne without a 10 gallon cowboy hat on.

 

Just which memo is this?

 

We reach.

Herbert.

 

Blofeld didn't recognize Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, even though the two became well-acquainted in the previous movie, You Only Live Twice. Continuity has never been a priority for EON. But those two movies offer up some superb James Bond adventure.

 

I would agree with all this except Will Smith as Jim West. That was a black actor doing white-face in the extreme.The premise of the character is compromised, simply because of the era depicted. I saw the film, I listened to the reasoning behind it, I understand the intention to be inclusive and open-minded, but it still doesn't work. There is no way a black man could have had the job, or the clout, that Jim West is shown having in that film. The casual racism of era would have seen him shot in the back before the first act was over.

 

I wasn't sure either that that topic needed its own thread, but it has turned into an interesting discussion.