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    DelectablyChicStassa Edwards
    11/29/15 1:24pm

    To be fair, an all black cast probably wouldn’t be all that realistic, either. Wasn’t Egypt at its prime very multicultural? And the ruling class was probably more middle eastern-looking? For a major film, you’d need big names, and Hollywood’s big named actors are mostly white or black. Not many middle eastern looking big names.

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      lunchcomaDelectablyChic
      11/29/15 1:34pm

      The big name argument isn’t very convincing given who they actually did cast. Gerard Butler isn’t really a movie opener these days. I’d be kind of surprised if they couldn’t do as well with a cast that included some black and some Middle Eastern looking actors, regardless of how well-known they were.

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      MayotonillaDelectablyChic
      11/29/15 1:37pm

      Gerald Butler is a major actor now? Hollywood is at an all time low then.

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    lunchcomaStassa Edwards
    11/29/15 1:32pm

    Gerard Butler, Geoffrey Rush, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Brenton Thwaites

    This is where white-washing confuses me. I would get it, even if I didn’t approve, if they were casting Channing Tatum. Instead, they cast someone I’ve never heard of, and up-and-comer who most people think of by the name of his TV character, a dude who’s a bit of a has-been, and...admittedly, Geoffrey Rush is pretty wonderful, though I don’t think he’ll draw huge crowds if they aren’t otherwise interested either. If your white-washed cast isn’t going to guarantee a big opening, why not cast some actors of color? I don’t believe for a second there aren’t any whose acting is up to snuff for this action film.

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      EileenOnSundayNightsAfterAllInTheFamilyOnCBSlunchcoma
      11/29/15 1:37pm

      Butler had “300”. Rush has “Pirates of the Carribean”. Coster-Waldau has “Game of Thrones”. Thwaites is new boy but is pretty and can be the ingenue.

      This would look like a dream team that has cross appeal all over the place. And they frankly didn’t think beyond I that, I think.

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      lunchcomaEileenOnSundayNightsAfterAllInTheFamilyOnCBS
      11/29/15 1:41pm

      Butler’s career has been on a downslide for years. Rush is a great character actor, but he’s not someone action fans will line up to see. Coster-Waldau is also talented, but he’s “that guy from that show” rather than anyone a movie goer will recognize by name. And there are certainly plenty of new actors who are pretty and can be ingenues and who are Middle Eastern or black.

      I think that they didn’t think beyond their assumption that their cast should be white. If they had, there would have been a ton of actors who could fill those descriptions.

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    girlcalledchuckStassa Edwards
    11/29/15 1:20pm

    She is so fantastic. And her love on Twitter for Creed is making me really happy, because that was a shockingly good movie. A Rocky sequel has no right to be that good, but damn, it was excellent and you should see it.

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      Potential Slayergirlcalledchuck
      11/29/15 1:24pm

      My boyfriend saw it and said it was really good. I refuse to see it bc it's a back-door cancer movie.

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      SpargerPotential Slayer
      11/29/15 2:22pm

      Why did you give away a plot point in a movie that has been out for less than week in a thread about a different movie?

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    deerlady83Stassa Edwards
    11/29/15 1:39pm

    It seems TV is getting better at having diverse casts than movies. One of my new favorite shows is Into the Badlands and it has a Chinese actor in the lead. Not only does he kick ass but he also has a love interest. He is a producer on the show.

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      No Math After 5PMdeerlady83
      11/29/15 1:55pm

      Yes! Into the Badlands is pretty great, and I found myself looking forward to it a tad bit more than The Walking Dead. Not only is Daniel Wu’s character allowed to have a love interest, but she’s a WOC. ItB is also helping me through Jessica Jones withdrawal, but I’ll probably watch it through again.

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      deerlady83No Math After 5PM
      11/29/15 2:01pm

      The fight scenes are so good. I have to finish Jessica Jones.

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    LaComtesseStassa Edwards
    11/29/15 2:43pm

    Genuine question I do not have an answer to, but I want to ask to generate discussion:

    How much do we put on the actors themselves to fix this? Under what circumstances? I think Bradley Cooper committing to discussing salary with female costars makes a particularly good foray into the discussion of actor responsibility in making Hollywood more fair and inclusive.

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      LaComtesseLaComtesse
      11/29/15 2:44pm

      To be very clear, I think we should put more responsibility on directors/producers/the people who traditionally have say over who is cast.

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      AltairaMorbius2200ADLaComtesse
      11/29/15 3:04pm

      I think holding big-name stars that get choices responsible for this is fine- so J Law, Cooper, Emma Stone, etc.

      At this point, you don’t want to be the face of this sort of controversy, so it’s even a good career choice to stay away from roles that absolutely *should* be non-white (I think Stone’s career was actually damaged by the Aloha thing- she went on SNL and made jokes about it just recently).

      In this case, I’m pretty sure all the actors are just happy to be working, so I’m not sure you can fault them too much. Every single one is in a “Can I haz movie role?” phase in their career, each for different reasons.

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    jasoneliasStassa Edwards
    11/29/15 1:23pm

    While I’m shocked that a movie about Egypt has an all white cast, I’m also shocked that Gerald Butler is still getting work.

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      GoodNaturedCadjasonelias
      11/29/15 1:37pm

      Hey now...Butler is the John Gielgud of “walking around in front of a green screen while yelling at a large group of men”.

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      ledariajasonelias
      11/29/15 2:24pm

      It’s funny (and quite terrible) how white actor and actresses can have multiple terrible movies with awful box office results and yet Hollywood makes excuses for why casting POC in movies wouldn’t be a wise choice. The Adam Sandlers and Gerard Butlers of the world have had enough lead roles, give someone else a chance.

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    agenttrembleStassa Edwards
    11/29/15 2:17pm

    I’m not really buying these apologies. Like, that shitass Ridley Scott Moses movie just came out. We just had this same controversy. There’s no way they didn’t consider that whitewashing a movie about Egypt was the wrong thing to do and might cause people to be (rightly) upset, they just hoped that it wouldn’t and figured it was easier to beg forgiveness in the event than actually put any effort (or risk) into finding a few Black/African/Middle Eastern people to cast.

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      caperclawagenttremble
      11/29/15 2:53pm

      They were in development and filmed at roughly the same time, I believe, so at the time they didn’t give a shit at the time. This movie came up a lot around the time Exodus was released. I feel like that’s why they were dumping it in February of next year... to keep it away from the discussion instead of realizing they’d just start it all over again.

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      Bagpiperagenttremble
      11/29/15 3:10pm

      Movies are in production long before the public hears about them, the casting and filming had probably already begun when Exodus came out.

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    Nobody is here for that, Lola.Stassa Edwards
    11/29/15 1:28pm

    We saw a preview for “Gods of Egypt” last night, and I have to say, in addition to being apparently totally whitewashed, it also looks aggressively bad.

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      rubyx4sohoNobody is here for that, Lola.
      11/29/15 1:36pm

      i saw the preview before the hunger games, and i was just really confused. is it based on a video game?

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      physicksNobody is here for that, Lola.
      11/29/15 1:38pm

      I saw the trailer last week and I’m pretty sure I was grimacing the whole time.

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    ShqiptarStassa Edwards
    11/29/15 1:31pm

    Why wouldn’t Creed have a black guy in the lead role? Unless Apollo adopted a white guy in one of the Rocky movies and I missed that. Not really something to applaud it’s just common sense.

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      girlcalledchuckShqiptar
      11/29/15 1:35pm

      I think it’s more about the fact that choosing to focus on Apollo’s son is a choice to focus on black characters within the story, unlike say the last one, where it was about Rocky’s son. There were plenty of options for a Rocky sequel that could have been all white, and those wouldn’t be bad stories to tell, but it’s still an active choice to make a Rocky sequel with a black lead.

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      lucy pevensieShqiptar
      11/29/15 1:41pm

      I think it’s less that a movie about Creed has a black guy in the main role, and more that a moderate-budget movie with a black guy in the lead role is even getting made (and marketed to all audiences, not just black ones) in the first place.

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    rusholmeruffianStassa Edwards
    11/29/15 3:11pm

    I hope nobody thinks that African-American or Afro-British actors should have been cast for these parts. Notwithstanding the dubious claims of Afrocentrists, most persons of West African ancestry (from which the two aforementioned populations derive) have about as much genetic material in common with the peoples of ancient Egypt as does Channing Tatum.

    Not a ton of Greek Islanders or North Africans in the English-speaking film world, though. (Francophone is another story, in the latter case.)

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      Mitch Connorrusholmeruffian
      11/29/15 5:40pm

      I think the issue people are seeing here is less that the film isn’t authetic to what we suppose ancient egyptians might have looked like, and more that audiences are tired of fantasy films assuming that white is safe fantasy-neutral casting.

      Now in fairness to this movie, it’s not completely blindingly white. Chadwick Boseman and Elodie Yung are credited right after the white dudes, but who knows how big their roles actually are since the adverts seem to be leading with Rush, Coster-Waldau, Butler, and the other guy I haven’t heard of but believe is white based on the reporting here. While I don’t want to shit all over this movie without knowing how it plays out, the apology from the filmmakers suggests at least that studios are starting to wise up to the fact that people want to see more race-blind casting, which is good.

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