No white people will star in the ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’ movie, and that’s a beautiful thing
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It’s about time that Asians control their media and leverage its soft power properly instead of selling out and getting insulting bit roles while the protagonist roles get whitewashed by Europeans.
When the live-action adaptation of the wildly-popular manga-turned-anime Fullmetal Alchemist hits theaters next year, its entire cast of lead characters will be Japanese.
“I want to depict something that follows the original work as much as possible,” the movie’s director Fumihiko Sori told Natalie. “The cast is entirely Japanese, but the setting is Europe. However, their race and nationality isn’t expressed in a specific form.” This news is particularly refreshing in the wake of the upcoming Dr. Strange and Ghost in the Shell movies’ whitewashing of the Asian characters in their source material, tapping Tilda Swinton and Scarlett Johansson, respectively, to play them.
The world depicted in Fullmetal Alchemist is a complicated one. There, steam-powered technology and alchemy are the major forces that power the world. Amestris, the country where the bulk of the series takes place, is obviously fictional, but it’s heavily inspired by Edwardian-era Great Britain and German culture.
Edward (subtle), Fullmetal Alchemist‘s flaxen-haired protagonist, works as a State Alchemist tasked with traveling through Amestris to investigate various alchemy-related disturbances of the peace. As the series progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Amestris is more or less a stand-in for Europe.
http://fusion.net/story/306067/fullmetal-alchemist-japanese-cast/
What are your thoughts on this? Are you happy with their casting decisions?
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I don’t mind if they used whites as villains more often in Asian movies, lol.
That happens pretty often in martial arts films. Ip Man 2 is probably the most well known right now, but there are many others. Jet Li and Jackie Chan both have had movies where the bad guy is white. Think Fearless and Rush Hour 1. It’s just a drop in the ocean by comparison to Hollywood’s blatant and decades long smear campaign.
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@secondstrike said in No white people will star in the ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’ movie, and that’s a beautiful thing:
@siberiandragon @Vrendly @natalie_ng You guys will love this…
ROFL!!! “The last n***** on earth starring Tom Hanks”. He was on point. Yep, that’s pretty much how it is in Hollywood, sadly.
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@siberiandragon @Vrendly @natalie_ng You guys will love this…
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About time they’re giving Asian roles to actual Asians. I am much more willing to watch it if this is the case.
Another popular anime turned live action movie, Rurouni Kenshin, was also properly casted to Asians. I let out a huge sigh of relief when I saw no white person in it at all.
Although, since they have made Asian male actors act as villains in so many western movies, I don’t mind if they used whites as villains more often in Asian movies, lol.
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@siberiandragon We should make a “Dances With Wolves/Last Samurai” type film with everything reversed.
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They should have had the villain played by a white guy and thrown in a couple of scantily clad white women as sidepieces for the Asian male lead.
