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Kevinology's Replies
What else do they have? They can't criticise any other group except white people, they have no other options.
I'm not suggesting it didn't happen, people complained about Gordon being black too, but those voices were a minority on Twitter compared to a generally positive reception even before it was released - people were pretty excited and the trailer and promotional material were well received. I can see why you might prefer a less theatrical version of Catwoman that's more grounded, but for me the more they try to ground superhero films the more silly they appear, I prefer it when they embrace the theatricality.
That's why I'm one of the few people who prefer Batman Begins to The Dark Knight, I think the latter was largely carried by Ledger's amazing performance. Trying to pretend your movie's like Heat when you've got a grown man growling excessively in a bat costume just didn't work for me.
Sure, The Batman was slightly better received critically but that means very little to me, I no longer care what critics say about films, I prefer to judge for myself. Batman killing people wasn't that big of an issue for me, in Nolan's films he causes potentially fatal accidents constantly and in The Batman he's viciously beating people in ways that could easily kill them, if anything it's refreshing when he dispenses with the "no killing" nonsense when it's virtually unavoidable. Furthermore, TDK seemed to agree with me, since if he'd killed The Joker he would've saved Rachel, Harvey, and probably all the lives lost as a result of Two-Face and Bane's rampage.
Why hire a no-name actor when Pratt was talented enough and had experience with comedy? His voice was fine, and he'd earned his name. Tom Holland was horribly miscast but he was playing a much younger version of Drake and I'm pretty sure Glen Powell was relatively unknown at the time, he might not have even auditioned. The Rock definitely earned his place, not only did he cultivate years of stardom through his WWE stint (which is basically acting, in front of a live audience, constantly), it's hard to imagine his roles in Moana, Jumanji and the Fast & Furious films being played by someone else. He has something you just can't teach, which is charisma and screen presence, same things Stallone and Arnold had (even though they were in better movies). Jessica Alba could actually act, you should watch her in The Killer Inside Me, but she was typically cast in movies that used her as eye candy because she was typecast as "the hot girl."
It does matter if it's just one song, the more singing there is, the more vital it is to the role. In this case, it wasn't as important because most of the singing was done by other people, and fewer actresses were more beautiful than Emma at the time. Finn's arc was done in TFA, where else was there to take him? He had no romantic chemistry with Rey, and there'd be no romance with Poe because it's Disney, he was done.
I agree that the MCU had a negative impact (though what they accomplished pre-Endgame was impressive), but studios have always been obsessed with money, that's never changed. Pre-MCU when HP and the Deathly Hallows got split into two movies, they saw dollar signs and started doing it with movies that didn't need to be, this is common. The decline of cinema is a combination of COVID, streaming, studios no longer taking chances because they can't rely on DVD sales, almost no movie stars left because of hiring practices, and a general decline in quality across the board. Even CG is no longer impressive.
GTA VI?
People were against Kravitz for normal reasons too, only a small handful of people complained about her race and it was mainly people who had no idea the character had a multiracial history. Kravitz was fine, but her performance wasn't preferred because she didn't really do anything truly special, she was just okay. I literally can't even remember it, I think the same is largely true of Hathaway who was completely overshadowed by Tom Hardy. Pfieffer's performance was the best because she oozed charisma, was incredibly memorable, was more villainous and had the most chemistry with her co-star compared to the others. Even her costume was the coolest.
Batman Returns was also a more memorable film than The Batman in my view, namely because of its flamboyant but dark art style, legendary cast, costume design and overall tone which was more adult than the previous entries. The Batman had a more adult tone too but it was par for the course at that point, when Burton did it people only had the Adam West series as a reference - it was completely fresh.
An increase in diversity doesn't change the fact that minorities are still minorities (for now), the pool will necessarily be significantly smaller which means the chances of a diverse cast having as much merit as a merit-based cast is always going to be much, much lower. Especially when you factor in the different races/sexualities/identities, now it's not even PC to hire a non-trans person to play a trans person, so you're left with a choice of like three trans actors who might barely make the cut of an acceptable performer for your film/show.
Why wasn't Pratt the best choice for Mario? If not him, who? The voice actor who essentially voiced what today would be considered an offensive Italian stereotype? I agree that being a star doesn't always mean you earned it, but the vast majority of the time it does. How many actual movie stars in recent history do you believe didn't earn the name, can you point to a few?
Emma Watson was fine as Belle, her singing wasn't great but how many solo performances did she have to deliver? One? The most important parts were her acting, her beauty, and her chemistry with the Beast, all of which were adequate. Adam Driver had plenty to work with, his character was probably the best thing about the sequel trilogy. The worst part was, once again, the diversity hiring. They hired a token black guy they had no future plans for, they didn't know what to do with him in TLJ, so they hired a token Asian girl he had no chemistry with and forced them together.
Advertising exists everywhere because companies are forced to increase their advertising budget to compensate for a lack of big stars and DVD sales they can no longer rely on. Even then, movies that reach cinemas are not doing as well as they used to, which is why people are talking about the death of cinema. Companies are taking fewer chances because of this and relying on sequels and franchises, ironically feeding into the problem.
To be fair, nobody liked Hathaway at first either, she was disliked even before she took on the role for other reasons, people found her too fake, much like Jennifer Lawrence eventually lost her appeal. There was even a backlash to Heath Ledger's casting as The Joker, before the first set photos were revealed people were mocking the choice because Ledger had only done Brokeback Mountain at that point and some stereotypical heartthrob roles. When his name was released you had countless gay jokes and people saying it was gonna flop hard until the first photo surfaced and it gave a lot of people pause.
Even if you're not a minority, you're always going into battle if you're taking a part that was already made famous by someone else and done extremely well, the only antidote for that is time. Over time people tend to appreciate the performance (assuming it is actually good) more as they adjust to the change.
It can be stupid to necessarily assume that someone's chosen for reasons other than merit, but when things like diversity initiatives exist it's reasonable to consider the high likelihood. The reality is that if the casting was merit-based, you just wouldn't end up with a perfectly diverse cast every time, like you frequently see in media today, simply because minorities are minorities. This is what was happening before when casting was more merit-based, minorities didn't make the cut anywhere near as often because there was a significantly smaller pool of them to choose from, thus the likelihood of finding someone right for the part was lower.
I agree that non-merit-based casting can exist in other forms too like only getting roles because of your looks or name, but I oppose those methods as well, two wrongs don't make a right. At the very least, however, if you get a role because of your star power it tends to suggest you've at least enough merit to have earned the name.
I agree that Catwoman is perhaps one of the silliest examples of woke outrage, but in the case of Ariel in The Little Mermaid that actually was a problem, mainly because the actress had virtually no chemistry with the male lead (which happens often, with a few exceptions interracial couples seem to have less chemistry, and I think I know why), didn't have much acting talent, and really only had singing ability. All of her mermaid sisters were of different races, which made no sense, and they even had to awkwardly shoehorn in an explanation for why the Prince's parents were multiracial and he was white. Top it all off with Javier Bardem's bizarre casting and the whole thing felt forced and strange. The Beauty and the Beast remake sucked, but it had nothing to do with the cast, that was fine.
We don't even have many new movie stars anymore, why do you think that is?
Where's the racism there?
There are quite a lot, probably more than any other group.
I agree, although I can't remember if God's Not Dead was right-wing, it might've just been Christian propaganda which isn't necessarily the same thing.
I think for some people, it's bothersome that diverse casts exist today because they know there's a decent chance that certain minorities were chosen at least partially because of their skin colour rather than entirely merit, which demonstrates a prioritisation of politics over quality even if the performance ends up being adequate. The argument there would be that if they were chosen based on merit, the eventual performance might've been even better, but we'll never know because that's no longer how casting works. So it's not so much the mere sight of the minority, but what their casting represents.
There's an issue with that too, which is that every time a minority delivers an average or poor performance, it's attributed to them being a diversity hire rather than the writing or directing or some other cause which could also explain it. This is why I believe diversity hiring does more harm than good, because while it may result in greater representation for minorities, it'll also fundamentally create a permanent sense of inadequacy in them and if anything make racism far more likely. When Morgan Freeman is cast in a role, nobody ever calls it "woke", because Freeman's an actor who established himself in an era where people were mostly cast based on merit.
But I understand the counter-arguments too; it's nice for minorities to see themselves represented on screen and in a merit-based approach there would be far fewer because there's a much smaller pool of minorities to choose from. However, when I discuss art I'm more interested in what makes for the best art rather than what's best for society. If I cared about the latter, I'd be in favour of placing endless restrictions on what can and cannot be depicted in media, but that would likely make for terrible art.
You have your pick of the bunch, there are a ton of talented Jewish comedians.
Jews are highly represented in media, Spielberg is Jewish and he's directed some of the greatest movies of all time, Mel Brooks is Jewish and he's responsible for some of the funniest comedies. I'm not sure what your implication is here, that it being directed by a Jew is bad or that you think it's bad because a Jew wrote it...?
I'm confused, you said you disagreed but then you went on to affirm everything I said. I agree that it also applies to right-wing films, there just aren't many modern right-wing films anymore so we don't see it very often. I haven't seen Ladyballers so I can't comment on it, but it's entirely possible for a movie to include hamfisted politics that are right-wing, which causes the film to suffer, but it happens so little with right-wing films (because there are hardly any out there now), that a term doesn't exist to describe it.
The statement "if a movie is badly made it's badly made" is accurate, but it can also be badly made because of the way its politics are handled, or because there was a greater focus on the political message than other more important aspects of the film. People don't point out that The Northman was outgrossed by some woke films because I don't believe the claim is that simply having an all-white cast means your movie will perform well, or that having a diverse cast will mean it'll perform poorly.
He's been married twice, both times to black women. The narrative is that Trump is racist. Do the math.
It's worth noting that "woke" doesn't have an entirely consistent definition, but as I've seen it most commonly used, "woke" seems to mean the pushing of leftist politics at the cost of quality. Aside from Barbie, which was protected by its toy brand appeal, two massive lead actors, target audience and unprecedented marketing campaign, none of the other films on your list pushed leftist politics at the cost of quality (though I haven't seen the recent season of Arcane, so I can't comment on that). When that does happen, such as the Borderlands movie, The Acolyte, or in the video game world, Dragon Age: Veilguard, it typically does appear to significantly impact the product's financial success.
But I don't think anyone would argue that merely having leftist politics in your movie will automatically lead to it going broke, that would encompass far too many films and it wouldn't even make sense. "Going woke" tends to signify that you've prioritised your political messaging over everything else, which leads to quality suffering, which leads to people being less likely to consume your media. Do you disagree with that assessment?
I agree with you, but I don't think fleeing to a leftist echo chamber will solve the problem. There doesn't seem to be a way for people with differing opinions to co-exist anymore, it appears to inevitably lead to a desire to split into separate echo chambers with their own insular, increasingly extreme views. Twitter's a right-wing echo chamber and Bluesky will likely become a left-wing echo chamber, if it hasn't already, thanks to the suppression of right-wing views.
I heard she's the first woman to be neutral in interviews, and also the first actress to ever take anti-depressants.
I could say the exact opposite though, that your life has no value [i] unless [/i] it has an inevitable end. Why should you value something that lasts forever?
Why is your life miserable, if you don't mind my asking?