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We can't talk about the specifics of Disney's political challenges to their bottom line because they are political*, putting the lie neatly to the idea expressed by more than one poster in this very thread that the extent of political problems was white men being unable to not vocally complain when movies feature non-white men as leads.

*what's up with the call to prove political tension? Ron Desantis starting a war with Disney to bolster a Presidential campaign run alone sets politics affecting Disney firmly in the factual territory.

It's a shame the "there are no politics in Disney" and the "there's loads of politics in art and there's nothing wrong with it" crowds haven't met each other in the street to hash out which of them is actually correct. Of course, the "keep politics out of my movies" crowd and the "I don't like this current batch of politics but mine are fine" crowds share similarly unresolved tensions but oh well.

For example when Ben Shapiro literally sets Barbie dolls on fire this is because the plot was bad and not because straight white men can't handle movies that are not for them.

You're not gonna get me to defend Ben Shapiro

I never get all this "only straight white men hate these movies REEEEE" because I'm not a white guy and I still detest these forced attempts at diversity because they're the laziest ways to try and score virtue signalling points on how progressive their movies are without actually putting the effort in to make it either a) original and not skinsuit an existing story/franchise that disrespects the source material or b) preach "the message" and not do their basic job of entertaining the audience. I don't need a character to be the same skin colour or sex as me (shocking I know), for me to like or identify with a character. Growing up, race wasn't really a factor for me who I watched or liked as characters. For superheroes, I liked Batman, Spiderman, Cyborg, Spawn, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Cybersix, Kim Possible. None of which are Asian but I didn't have a crisis of not having characters that I could relate and look up to. You know why? Because they had actual personalities that didn't boil down to the most superficial aspects of being human. Hell, I play Orks and they're angry fungus bio weapons of war, does that mean they need to have females/males and human genitals for me to love and play them as a function?

The worst part is they could totally take the effort to just take legitimately interesting African or other countries folklore and adapt it faithfully, but being lazy and so risk-averse they'd just rather despoil existing Western IP and race-swap them, denigrate existing characters and call it a day. It's funny because in doing so, they're implying that most non-Western stories are inherently inferior and the best they can do is put minorities into historically white roles because God forbid they actually bother doing research and work into creating new stories/IP.

The funniest parts is that these people who supposedly champion these minority roles are the usually first ones to crap on minorities when they don't kowtow to the diversity line and call out the dumb crap they're trying to impose on people, like the whole Latinx stuff that were clearly made by upper-middle class Westerners who think they know better on how Spanish is gendered.

I might be white but I don't care at all about the race of the actors/characters at all as long as they are done well.

I have been mostly reading translated chinese stories for the last 6 years or so and besides being human, at least most of the time the MC is human, there isn't much "representation" that reflects me. Everything is completely different from what I am used to and the largest difference is not in physical characteristics of the characters but the cultures. Chinese is a very different culture compared to most western cultures but that is also what I find fascinating about the entire thing even though I had a hard time for the first few dozen hours to understand why they got all upset about what we see as trivial insults.

Why would I want to watch a watered down race swapped western story/IP that focuses more on including everyone than make the story interesting when I could instead read the genuine thing online? Would be really cool if they made some wuxia adaptions with all Asian casts as high budget TV-shows like Game of Thrones. They could have 0 white males on screen for multiple seasons and I bet that only a tiny minority of people would want it to get more diverse. And even if people would want that I bet it isn't the group that is getting called out for disliking the latest Disney stuff. Give us cool Kung Fu like action scenes, mythological chinese creatures, exotic places with tall mountains reaching to the sky with martial art practitioners living up among the clouds. Young Masters, Jade Beauties and corrupt old patriarchs to force the plot to happen. Give us that "diverse" content and stop trying to "modernize" Lord of the Rings, Wheel of Time or the Witcher.

Klickor wrote:
Would be really cool if they made some wuxia adaptions with all Asian casts as high budget TV-shows like Game of Thrones.

Given that video game movies/shows looks like it's going to be the next fad, perhaps we'll get Dynasty Warriors!

Well this thread turned to gak.

 Ahtman wrote:
Well this thread turned to gak.

But very eloquently illustrated the elements of pop culture I'm far more tired of than any movie genre.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

Klickor wrote:
Would be really cool if they made some wuxia adaptions with all Asian casts as high budget TV-shows like Game of Thrones.

Given that video game movies/shows looks like it's going to be the next fad, perhaps we'll get Dynasty Warriors!

I hope they have learned from the lessons that have been dished out recently on how to do adaptions. One Piece and House of the Dragon are both from what I have seen fatefully adapted (at least compared to what we have seen recently and they capture the most important elements. Some changes will have to be done when changing the medium) and successful while most other adaptions lately have been terrible. There is enough stats and feedback out there that if they just listen and are willing to take the criticism to heart they could make awesome new movies and shows out of video games or non western media.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Or don't.

The fact that more movies are being made with protagonists who aren't male and white is only a matter of politics if you choose to make it one.

Vandalising established cultural things is. See above exemple with disney snowwhite.

Nobody is 'vandalising' anything. The original animated Snow White still exists for anyone who wants to watch it.

Mhm no, sorry, as someone from that cultural background it is vandalising and insulting.

Why? Snow White's ethnicity is completely irrelevant to anything that happens in the story. Sure, the story itself has a specific origin in Bavarian folk tales, but I fail to see how that affects the ethnicity of the main character when the themes aren't rooted in a specific ethnicity or location. One of the reasons for the continuing success of a lot of folk tales and fairy stories well beyond the time they were created is because the themes are pretty universal.

And the "original" folk tale still exists (at least as far as you can call any such tale original), as does the classic Disney animation. Retelling the story with a different actress doesn't change that, nor does it "vandalise" the story itself.

I think it is the wrong place to do it. Perhaps her ethnicity doesn't matter in the story but it is quite tone deaf to not even try to be accurate to the defining characteristic of the main character to the point it is her and the story's name. Would be a bit different if it was called "Angela" and be a random name and not "Snow White" from her skin being "white as snow".

There are probably a bunch of stories and characters relating to minority people that are named after visual characteristics that don't actually matter in the story itself. Would it be fine to take a character called Night Hunter (name I just made up about an african man who got his name for his skin being black as night while he hunts his enemies in the dark) and then just have a white guy in dark clothing play the character? Or just have it be after he retired and he no longer does anything in dark or any other way the actual skin tone doesn't matter for the part of the story being told. Wouldn't that be seen as quite disrespectful and be cultural appropriation (in the negative sense).

Slipspace wrote:

Why? Snow White's ethnicity is completely irrelevant to anything that happens in the story. Sure, the story itself has a specific origin in Bavarian folk tales, but I fail to see how that affects the ethnicity of the main character when the themes aren't rooted in a specific ethnicity or location.

"Haut so weiss wie Schnee, Lippen so rot wie Blut und Haare Schwarz wie Ebenholz."

One of the reasons for the continuing success of a lot of folk tales and fairy stories well beyond the time they were created is because the themes are pretty universal.

The themes are universal if the themes are left alone, but the themes themselves couldn't even be left alone. Infact if the themes were left alone then an actual argument could've been made for a reimagination but they couldn't hence why it shows that this is just unashamed vandalism for the sake of vandalism for a very specific type of narrowminded people.

And the "original" folk tale still exists (at least as far as you can call any such tale original), as does the classic Disney animation. Retelling the story with a different actress doesn't change that, nor does it "vandalise" the story itself.

Reason given for retelling in such a fashion which is the insulting bit: "People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it's like, yeah, it is—because it needed that. It's an 85-year-old cartoon, and our version is a refreshing story about a young woman who has a function beyond "

"The original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There's a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her... Weird! Weird. We didn't do that this time... We have a different approach to what I'm sure a lot of people will assume is a love story just because we cast a guy in the movie, Andrew Burnap, great dude. It's one of those things that I think everyone's going to have their assumptions about what it's going to be, but it's really not about the love story at all, which is really, really wonderful."

So no, the themes are not universal because the themes of it had to be changed to fit a certain extremely narrowminded worldview that has the audacity to demand change in it's very specific way and throws a hissy fit whilest proclaiming everyone else that doesn't agree with them as the narrowminded people. It's basically gaslighting on a cultural level.

But god forbid they'd actually pick up a story from Latin america, or when they do don't tell them how bigoted their language supposedly is for not having a neutrum form.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Ahtman wrote:
Well this thread turned to gak.

But very eloquently illustrated the elements of pop culture I'm far more tired of than any movie genre.

Legitimately, part of the reason I find myself disinterested in watching much of anything these days is simply because engaging with them socially is exhausting.

 insaniak wrote:
Nobody is 'vandalising' anything. The original animated Snow White still exists for anyone who wants to watch it.

Story tellers have been reimagining existing characters and stories for as long as people have been making up stories. Characters have been gender swapped. Stories have been shifted to different cultures, or different times, or whatever else the teller of that version of the story felt like doing with it. It's only in recent years, as this sort of thing became more obvious in mainstream media, that it was suddenly declared to be 'political'.

Why not, though?

Retelling the story with a twist to it is infinitely more interesting than a frame-by-frame live action remake. I have no interest in seeing 'Snow White, but live action', because it offers nothing new, and is unlikely to be as good as the original animation. 'Snow White, but with girl power' at least offers some reason to revisit the story.

 insaniak wrote:
Why not, though?

Retelling the story with a twist to it is infinitely more interesting than a frame-by-frame live action remake. I have no interest in seeing 'Snow White, but live action', because it offers nothing new, and is unlikely to be as good as the original animation. 'Snow White, but with girl power' at least offers some reason to revisit the story.

Because we could do so, so much more. Maybe this isn't exactly Disney fare, but wouldn't it be extraordianary to see as a film?

https://thedreaming.moteofdust.com/1999/10/10/snow-glass-apples/

That's kind of the point, though... There's no reason to not have multiple versions of a story. Everyone can enjoy the version they prefer.

People re-read the same books and watch the same films and TV series. People enjoy the same experience.

Sometimes they want to enjoy that same experience in a different medium. Perhaps abook turned into an audio book; or a play; a drama; a film.

In this case people wanted to see the Snow White film that they loved from Disney as an animation; taken into the Live action world.



That isn't what they got. Another issue is that many of the changes that were made felt less like "this was done for creative purposes" and more "this was done for political/marketing/management" purposes.
Now I will agree the line between those two is insanely hard to draw at times and often depends upon perception. However it can also depend upon and overall thrust of choices made on productions before the film itself.


Ergo some of the hate is likely coming not from choices within this film in itself; but from choices made in previous films that were also unpopular for many people.



I would also argue that there's an element of marketing going on. A film that really makes a big change to the source material BUT at the same time markets itself as more of an "inspired by"; that can totally work well and in its favour.

Snow White wasn't marketed as that. It was another "our animation becomes live action" film and people were expecting to see a faithful charming recreation of the classic film.

 insaniak wrote:
Or don't.

The fact that more movies are being made with protagonists who aren't male and white is only a matter of politics if you choose to make it one.

Alternatively, we can just accept that white men have had the lion's share of leading roles in western movies for pretty much the entire existence of film media, and choose to enjoy seeing a wider range of people in those roles moving forwards, and be happy for the people who get to feel good about that additional representation.


As a father of daughters, I for one am more than happy to see more movies featuring roles for strong women. As are they. If I find myself feeling the need to see manly men on screen, the next Tom Cruise / Chris Pratt / Vin Diesel / Jason Statham / whoever epic blockbuster will be along soon enough. They've not actually gone anywhere.

Agreed. We need WELL WRITTEN stories - movies, TV, and books - featuring a wide variety of people.

Characters like Ellen Ripley, like Blade, like Ennis Del Mar, like Creasy, Trish O'Day, Yu Shi Lien, and Mystique. Samantha Caine and Eowyn and Major Houlahan and Lt. Uhura.

Yes, more diversity of THAT sort is needed and very much wanted.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Or don't.

The fact that more movies are being made with protagonists who aren't male and white is only a matter of politics if you choose to make it one.

Vandalising established cultural things is. See above exemple with disney snowwhite.

Nobody is 'vandalising' anything. The original animated Snow White still exists for anyone who wants to watch it.

Story tellers have been reimagining existing characters and stories for as long as people have been making up stories. Characters have been gender swapped. Stories have been shifted to different cultures, or different times, or whatever else the teller of that version of the story felt like doing with it. It's only in recent years, as this sort of thing became more obvious in mainstream media, that it was suddenly declared to be 'political'.

Snow White is a German story, and the defining feature of the character is her (ahem) snow white skin. So casting a Hispanic in the role is broadly similar to casting a white man as Zorro, or as Miyamoto Musashi, or Shaka.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 insaniak wrote:
Why not, though?

Retelling the story with a twist to it is infinitely more interesting than a frame-by-frame live action remake. I have no interest in seeing 'Snow White, but live action', because it offers nothing new, and is unlikely to be as good as the original animation. 'Snow White, but with girl power' at least offers some reason to revisit the story.

Except this isn't retelling Snow White. It's retelling the Star Wars sequels, the latest Indy film, every Marvel film since Endgame (barring the Spider Man movies), and quite a few other 'girl boss shows her power' stories we've been force-fed the past decade.

And not even the GOOD ones like Alita or Wonder Woman.

Exactly. This isn't retelling it with a twist. This is changing it to make it "better", because the previous version is "old" and it's "not 1937 anymore".

They're not trying to put a new spin on it. They're saying that the old version was wrong, and that the new version is correct. It doesn't have some silly little white girl trying to find true love - OH! How outdated and clearly sexist and misogynist - no, now it's about a not-white girl finding her power! That's better. That's an improvement over the backwards older version.

And they always talk about "power". It's so individualistic and so narcissistic.

The Daily Wire version of Snow White is going to be a gak Z-tier level film, but at least it'll be a Snow White film.

Disney films have never been accurate to the original stories, or in the case of Pocahontas the real person: Sleeping Beauty isn't impregnated while she slept, the Little Mermaid doesn't doesn't turn to sea foam and die, and Pocahontas wasn't a new age mystic.

This isn't the 18th century so pretending we people can't adapt with current time is an asinine, myopic position. Stories we're coming up with today will be reworked and modified two hundred years from now as well.

In the end all this bitching and moaning about kultur won't matter much because most of the people here, if not all, are not the intended audience and like all the other Disney live action films will make the studio money.

I haven't seen a single one because I have no interest in them and somehow that hasn't made much of an impact on their success.

 Ahtman wrote:
Disney films have never been accurate to the original stories, or in the case of Pocahontas the real person: Sleeping Beauty isn't impregnated while she slept, the Little Mermaid doesn't doesn't turn to sea foam and die, and Pocahontas wasn't a new age mystic.

This isn't the 18th century so pretending we people can't adapt with current time is an asinine, myopic position. Stories we're coming up with today will be reworked and modified two hundred years from now as well.

In the end all this bitching and moaning about kultur won't matter much because most of the people here, if not all, are not the intended audience and like all the other Disney live action films will make the studio money.

I haven't seen a single one because I have no interest in them and somehow that hasn't made much of an impact on their success.

Keep spending a couple hundred million on movies intended for niche audiences and... well, conservatively, they've lost $750 million dollars on movies this year alone. Disney Plus has also failed to show a profit thus far.

A hundred million here, a hundred million there, and pretty soon you're talking about having lost some SERIOUS money...

 Vulcan wrote:
Keep spending a couple hundred million on movies intended for niche audiences and... well, conservatively, they've lost $750 million dollars on movies this year alone. Disney Plus has also failed to show a profit thus far.

A hundred million here, a hundred million there, and pretty soon you're talking about having lost some SERIOUS money...

Disney Live Action remake films aren't "niche" audiences, they're kids, and Disney's entire portfolio of films isn't live action remake fare. You know what kids don't tend to care about? Race or ethnicity.

A $750 million loss versus a gain of what? Disney isn't overall in the hole in any capacity and will still be generating billions and billions.

 insaniak wrote:
That's kind of the point, though... There's no reason to not have multiple versions of a story. Everyone can enjoy the version they prefer.

I don’t have a dog in this fight. Snow White is even less “for me” than The Little Mermaid*. But, doesn’t girl power Snow White already exist? From the descriptions in this thread (don’t know if they’re accurate), it sounds like Disney is making a safer Snow White and the Huntsman.



*no one in my family cared about TLM. But hearing how bad the awkwafina song supposedly was kind of piqued my curiosity.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
That's kind of the point, though... There's no reason to not have multiple versions of a story. Everyone can enjoy the version they prefer.

I don’t have a dog in this fight. Snow White is even less “for me” than The Little Mermaid*. But, doesn’t girl power Snow White already exist? From the descriptions in this thread (don’t know if they’re accurate), it sounds like Disney is making a safer Snow White and the Huntsman.



*no one in my family cared about TLM. But hearing how bad the awkwafina song supposedly was kind of piqued my curiosity.

Oh it's bad, almost comically so, but it gets old real quick and shows how the quality has dropped a lot in a lot of musical portions are in their live action remakes:

 Ahtman wrote:
Disney films have never been accurate to the original stories, or in the case of Pocahontas the real person: Sleeping Beauty isn't impregnated while she slept, the Little Mermaid doesn't doesn't turn to sea foam and die, and Pocahontas wasn't a new age mystic.

irrelevant, as i already did show why it wasn't an honest reimagination. Whilest a happy ending version is nothing if not the wish for a better less traumatic accessability for the consumers and has nothing to do with the contention raised.

This isn't the 18th century so pretending we people can't adapt with current time is an asinine, myopic position. Stories we're coming up with today will be reworked and modified two hundred years from now as well.

19th century.
Yes, but there is natural and forced (engineered) reworking. However asinine is a rather laughable sentiment, indeed i could use it just aswell to describe your willingness to accept this vandalism and support it. Infact i will.

In the end all this bitching and moaning about kultur won't matter much because most of the people here, if not all, are not the intended audience and like all the other Disney live action films will make the studio money.

Kultur. Sorry have you followed disney and its IPs and their value? They managed to ruin IPs that were run successfully for 60 years in comics like thor in a singular movie. And it showed at the box office and park visitations and sales of merchandise. Nu-Star Wars sells basically like dogshit f.e..

H.B.M.C described it well.

Disney went out and got Star Wars and Marvel because they wanted to expand their market to boys. The perception (and perhaps reality) of Disney is that they were decidedly a girl's brand*.

They didn't want to lose that market, but rather seek a different demographic and add to their market. And here we are, 15 years later, and so many Marvel and SW properties are solidly focused on female characters.

M-She-U is a cliche, and a catchy little phrase you can use to bump out the outrage/engagement, but ever since Kevin Feige said he wanted more than 50% of their super heroes to be female, it's becoming truer and truer each day.

And they're bad characters. Characters who don't have arcs. The only struggle they endure is that they're very powerful, and could be more powerful if everyone would just get out of their way.



*And let's make it very clear: I am referring to 'boys' and 'girls', and not "men and women" or "males and females" because I am specifically talking about the children's market/demographics.

At the rate Geek Media is going, the MODs will have to shut this part of the site down the same way they had to shut down the Politics section.

Some of us can not handle nice things.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
Or don't.

The fact that more movies are being made with protagonists who aren't male and white is only a matter of politics if you choose to make it one.

Vandalising established cultural things is. See above exemple with disney snowwhite.

We need to get back to only showing Shakespear with male actors playing every role, to be period correct.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vulcan wrote:

Snow White is a German story, and the defining feature of the character is her (ahem) snow white skin. So casting a Hispanic in the role is broadly similar to casting a white man as Zorro, or as Miyamoto Musashi, or Shaka.

You know that multiple cultures have stories with white/fair/snowy complexions which are relative terms to the wider society, not absolute standards of colour? I know Indian examples the best where being fair was associated with the ruling class.

Personally I couldn't give a monkeys about the ethnicity, gender, height or age of a character. I just want it to be a good actor that entertains me. And many of our conventions are bonkers - my favourite is always the Hollywood aged action Hero, from Bond through to the crop that come through every decade. The idea that a late 40's onward guy can run around and do stuff like a 25 year old and still get up with no complaints in the morning. Its absurd fantasy, why should the fact the actor is Afghani matter a jolt. Even the historical films are hilarious - people will faint over thinking x non white person shouldn't be there(often demonstrating a lack of historical knowledge), but not give a peep about the lack of period appropriate attitudes and views (which are left out because they are frankly alien to us now).

Which was not the contention raised at all, as was shown again and again, but shifting straw has become a normal occurence.