Thumbtack, I have read this thread from page one, and that is the conclusion I have come from it. Yes, there are a few who feel otherwise, however, the overall theme has been that the writers "whitewashed" the role. I really don't believe they did. DelToro didn't work out, Cumber did the trick for them, simple as that.
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS - Grading & Discussion [SPOILERS]
- Thread starter Agent Richard07
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^Hey, all I did was show why other people objected to it.
Deliberately so.
How would you have coped in Shakespearean days when all parts in a play had to be performed by men?
When actors start training, they learn accents, they practise pretending to be younger and older than their age, they learn how to apply makeup to emulate all manner of humanity, and they may be required to pretend that they have lost one or more of their senses.
The lead role in the stage play "Whose Life is it Anyway?" was a paralyzed white male sculptor who spends the whole play in a bed. Essentially a taking head. It wasn't deemed essential to employ a quadroplegic actor, and in fact the acting performance was deemed even cleverer because the actor, Tom Conti, had to remember not to move his limbs for two hours. After a lengthy run, the role was recast as a white female (Mary Tyler Moore!), and the play had another lengthy run. (When husband and wife team, Laurence "Sybok" Luckinbill and Lucie Arnaz starred in a national tour of the play, they actually rotated playing the patient and doctor.)
Suddenly, some people are saying that ethnicities can only be played by actors of that ethnicity? Why apply this ruling only to skin colour? Where do the rules stop, and who's making them?
Whatever happened to the actor doing the most impressive audition getting the part?
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Wait, so Ophelia was played by a dude ?
Imagine what people would be saying if Khan 2.0 had dark skin.
"OMG Abrams reinforces terrorist stereotype!"
"Abrams re-enacts 9/11 in Star Trek movie!"
"Star Trek should know better!"
Call me when they turn Sisko white. You might have something worth ranting about.
"OMG Abrams reinforces terrorist stereotype!"
"Abrams re-enacts 9/11 in Star Trek movie!"
"Star Trek should know better!"
Call me when they turn Sisko white. You might have something worth ranting about.
I imagine fuck all would have been said.
Not that I give any kind of shit about Khan's skin colour mind.
I don't. When people look for a reason to be outraged, they usually find one.
Totally agree. We've seen people ranting about JJ and Bad Robot since before the first teaser trailer for the 2009 movies was attached to the front of "Cloverfield".
Of course you do.
It's not Shakespearean days. It's not the 1960s. That's the point.
The strangest part about this comment is that he pretty much did. Khan crashed his spaceship into San Francisco, killing who knows how many people (which was just brushed aside really), yet the movie was dedicated to 9/11 vets? That particular part strikes me as somewhat odd already, and then you say that all it takes is for Khan to be brown to make that actually controversial? Ok...
If people wanted to be outraged about terrorist stereotypes, then why would the color of Khan's skin matter? "Khan" itself is a common Muslim surname and title. Folks who wanted to could run with that. They just have to forget the Noonien Singh part of his name or believe he converted to Islam. As Belz said, there are people who can find any reason to be outraged about anything.
This is outrageous.
So, suddenly, all actors must restrict their skills set? Where do the restrictions end? Is the new rule skin colour and ethnicity only, or is it every other human variation?
For centuries actors have used a huge range of chameleon-like skills, but now they must remain within their own physical type?
Marina Sirtis - a British actor of Greek descent, based in USA, and known to us for playing a half-Betazoid alien - recently accepted a role in "NCIS", Orli Elbaz of the Israeli intelligence organization, Mossad. Sirtis uses yet another accent not her own, expands her skill set, and is quite convincing. But she should have stepped away from the part and let it go to a genuine Israeli actress?
One of the most praised stage roles is "The Elephant Man" by Bernard Pomerance, which won a Tony Award for Best Play in 1979. The production opted not to recreate John Merrick's physical deformities with makeup but to have the leading actor (including both Mark Hamill and David Bowie) play the role barefaced, so that Merrick's humanity, not monstrosity, would be emphasized. (I guess you'll say this isn't 1979, but acting without specialized makeup is a specific acting skill.)
Acting also comes from within. Physical appearance is just one element, and just because a particular acting performance is going to be on the big screen, why should we suddenly start restricting the actor's craft in one category?
I'm still not understanding why Benedict Cumberbatch has done a disservice to all swarthy male actors of the world by accepting the part of John Harrison, nor why JJ Abrams has committed a crime by hiring who he felt had given the best audition.
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That's an outrageous assertion.
It's obviously a non-subtle 9-11/War on Terror/drone strike allegory, but there's a big difference between having similar but different events happen to make a point and directly implicating a brown-skinned man who ruled the Middle East and South Asia for the fictional crime. The backlash against that would have been huge. Making it a genetically engineered pasty white British guy is not going to insult any minorities by showing them still being depicted as terrorists even 300 years in the future.
Not to mention the fallout from emphasizing that the perpetrator is a Sikh given the amount of harassment and attacks Sikhs have had to endure post-9/11 by ignorant assholes who think they're Muslims (not that it would be right to harass or attack Muslims either). People would be (rightfully) upset about it, and the outrage would far exceed any of this nonsense about whitewashing a character that was already played by a white man of European descent once before. It's a no-win situation.
Since the decision had already been made to go with a terrorism and responding out of fear and revenge allegory, emphasizing a brown-skinned Khan, the region he dominated, and his religious background would become a liability. Now, they could have just chosen not to go with Khan (since the rogue Starfleet operative story predated the decision to use Khan), but then you have the problem of the movie not having a hook to attract audiences in the form of Trek's most famous established villain. Could they have done it and still made a blockbuster? Possibly. But it's a greater risk, and studios don't like to take big risks when they're investing hundreds of millions of dollars.
On a separate note, people keep saying that they just "brushed aside" the destruction in San Francisco, but I don't understand what they're looking for here. Did they want them to tack on an extra half an hour to deal solely with the aftermath of the crash? Can't people pretty much extrapolate what will happen for themselves without having it explicitly spelled out? Lots of searching through rubble, lots of funerals and memorials, and then the rebuilding process begins. They showed a memorial to the fallen, they made it a poignant moment by using actual soldiers deployed overseas post-9/11, they made a 9/11 vets dedication, and the story itself was a 9/11/War on Terror allegory. What else should they have done?
PS: There was just an earthquake here as I was typing this up.
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