This really bothers me, Mignola says it'll be closer to the comic and then they start radically changing characters. Feels disrespectful to Arcudi to change Daimio.
This really bothers me, Mignola says it'll be closer to the comic and then they start radically changing characters. Feels disrespectful to Arcudi to change Daimio.
I mean, rebooting from the GDT/Perlman Hellboy movie series was already a bit of backlash because those movies (and those two guys specifically) are so well liked, but even though that hasn't totally gone away it seemed to some extent we were going past that and getting into the period of anticipation for the different things this movie would bring as an adaptation and now this. Do they lack self awareness to such a degree that they don't see the backlash coming? How was it possible for them to step in the most obvious pile of dog crap they could?!
It makes me question the... I don't know, sanity of those involved.
If they're smart they'll send this fella away with a box of chocolates and a beautifully written apology in a Hallmark card and cast one of the many Asian actors who are totally down for appearing in a big Hollywood film.
Ah, that's a shame. Rest of the casting has been so spot on. His heritage is so key to his character, it seems like such a wasted opportunity.
I mean, Ken Watanabe would've been great. Heck, I'd have given Dean Cain a pass.
Last edited by zerodemon; 08-22-2017 at 12:17 AM.
Well. Just from hearing names or news flashes on what actors and actresses are being cast, I'm not feeling in the position to ascertain quite what underlying "ethnical motivations" would have to be saught at the root of such. I mean ethnicity is great but it could just be they found this particular actor a part and apparently they wager he fits - must be some actor huh.
I totally agree that preferring a white actor even for playing another ethnicity altogether seems damn ugly in itself but I'm not convinced that is what is happening here. Since it seems to me the movie types want this particular white actor to get into makeup for portraying Daimio, a Japanese-heritage monster-guy. He'll probably be awesome and be destined to die brutally well before the end of the movie, since vampires or were-beings usually do. Maybe he'll even be swearing in Japanese, or at least something Asian.
Plus I don't know whether movie characters would have to equate to the comics versions in every sense even if and when the movie would follow the comics tone more closely than the GDT ones, which surely didn't equate to the comics in every sense - but then the GDT flicks were designed not to be.
Last edited by Kees_L; 08-22-2017 at 08:17 AM.
SLINT / Mike Mignola / Walt Whitman / Arthur Lourié / Dr. Pepper
Wow, what a disappointing news this is. Daimio (along with Hellboy and the Lobster) is one of my favorite Mignolaverse characters! They needed an Asian actor for the role, but also someone older who just looks pissed all the time. This is awful casting. I've loved everything I've heard so far, from the director to David Harbour to Ian McShane. I've been cheering for this movie, defending it from those who hate it simply because Del Toro and Pearlman aren't involved. But this? It's bad. It totally disrespects the source material and kills most of my enthousiasm. Bleh.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of the casting here, either. But, why was it okay to change Alice's race, and not Daimio?
I feel like if you're okay with one you don't get to complain about the other.
It doesn't really matter what race Alice is. It had no impact on the character. Ben is a specifically Japanese American chracter. It's big part of his storyline and even his last friggin' name!
It's so obvious it's hard to believe you're actually sincere in this statement.
Aren't you mixing up the actors their own actual ethnicity with the ones they are going to play?
I might be wrong but I'm under the impression that
A) the part Maori/White Caucasian/Black African American Sasha Lane is going to play the Irish character Alice Monaghan and that
B) the white Caucasian Deadpool actor is going to play the Japanese heritage character Ben Daimio.
In this sense there is made no "race change" or whitewashing entirely here, I would think?!
Furthermore/FYI I'd believe there is no such thing as a Japanese 'race' or an Irish 'race', nor either an African one, since biologically there are no discernable differences between any humans apart from ethnical/surface/superficial traits, which are purely sociological features instead of biological differences as a matter of fact.
Last edited by Kees_L; 08-22-2017 at 11:54 AM.
SLINT / Mike Mignola / Walt Whitman / Arthur Lourié / Dr. Pepper
Sorry, I should have specified. I'm seeing the complaint half framed as a departure from the source material, which this was supposed to be closer to. That's why I'm asking why one is okay and the other isn't.
This is super whitewashing, and it's very disappointing for that reason, but that's not what I'm asking about.
Also, I hate to say this, but Daimio is not a real Japanese surname. It's a title. It's like naming him Ben Shogun/Samurai. Whatever that's worth to you all.
Last edited by Joker; 08-22-2017 at 12:16 PM.
Joy to come.
Last edited by Ferdiaclass; 09-17-2017 at 03:26 PM.
Man, that's just messed up. Maybe they screwed up and the English guy is actually Abe? Have they announced who's played Abe yet?
^Skrein tweeted a Guy Davis drawn pic of Daimio and Mignola re-tweeted it. So there can't be any miscommunication there.
This set off a chain of thought in me. Smidgen off topic but here goes:
It's kinda hard to transport yourself back in time, but GDT's Hellboy movie came out the same year the Arcudi/Davis BPRD series began. GDT took liberties with the material, fleshed out characters personalities and such by bringing his own interpretation to them, and it's important to remember that up to that point it was pretty much all Mignola written and drawn minis and short stories. I adore those stories, but Mike's talent was in creating visual poetry, striking images and mood so thick you could cut it with a knife, but how much of the rest of that world, especially all the side characters, were fleshed out? Besides Hellboy and to a lesser extent Kate and Roger a whole heckuva lot of stuff was pretty lightly sketched. GDT had to put meat on the bones in order for it to work as a live action story, and he started writing that screenplay years earlier when there was even less material to draw from (what, three trade paperbacks worth?).
Meanwhile, Arcudi ended up doing the exact same thing in comics: fleshing out the entire cast (Liz, Abe, Kate, Manning, Roger - new characters like Ben and Panya), and fleshing out the BPRD organization and the entire fictional universe around around it - everything! Even sparing use of flashbacks with Hellboy to better place him in the more solid, realistic world that was being established, instead of the more expressionistic dreamworld of Mignola's page. In time BPRD became more than a spin-off to Hellboy, but a full-fledged equal companion piece.
Both of these new storytellers started from essentially the same starting point and by the time they got going they really diverged. GDT's Hellboy sequel was really different from the comics, but by 2008 the comics were different from the comics! GDT was making a sequel to his personal interpretation of Hellboy, which was made when there were only a few comics to draw from, and by the time that movie came out the comics canon had exploded in size and had diverged pretty radically (more serious and detail oriented) from what his ideas were (more fanciful and romantic).
Last edited by Angilasman; 08-22-2017 at 06:45 PM.