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Dune(2021) is nearly unwatchable in terms of the blatantly obvious middle-eastern appropriation while casting it to be superficially "race-blind" but very much not. The main characters are incredibly white, the boys mother is played by a woman too young to actually be his mother, and all the people who die are visible minorities who do so in sacrifice for the Important White Protagonists, who will white savior them. I haven't seen a movie more into appropriating cultures that it refuses to actually put into the cast since The Last Airbender, where nearly the only asian person in the cast was the bad guy. And that's just scratching the surface of the gender and race issues in the text. Jaxyon fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 20:58
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I've not read the series, I couldn't get into the first book enough to even finish it. That's on me. Having said that, the movie needs to stand on it's own without having to read a long franchise of books. And that is seperate from my other criticism, of the fact that it borrows heavily from middle eastern cultures but fails to cast many people from that area. Instead I get to watch one dark skinned character nobly sacrfice herself for the whites, and then Paul stabs another one. Arab, persian, etc? Not a lot there. Javier Bardem is Stilgar. Sanguinia posted:To be fair, judging the material as presented rather than in the context of its original source is reasonable. And like I said I haven't seen the new version. But I do feel like if you're saying things like "The Fremen are appropriating Arab culture," or "Paul is a bog standard White Savior," or talking about the problematic treatment of women in this neo-feudal society, you might be failing to grasp the fullness of the text, because that is all very much That's great and all. Does the 2021 movie make that clear? Because the 1984 one doesn't seem to.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:20
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Gumball Gumption posted:But if you're noticing that Paul is a bog standard white savior, yeah, good noticing, they'll deal with that in part 2. I don't have a lot of confidence in big budget hollywood movies to address that in a good manor, several years and hundreds of millions of dollars on, even if it is in the text. I'm glad to find out it's somewhat the point, but the movie isn't satire and not knowing what happens down the road is OK.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:23
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Also I'd wager most of the people who are loving the movie haven't read the book and don't know what happens in Part 2, so they're taking the Paul story straight instead of as a subversion. That's how my partner is, because they haven't read the book and don't know what is happening in part 2.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:25
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Gumball Gumption posted:This is like walking out of the intermission of Sound of Music and wondering why it was so kind and chill about the Nazis If they split the movie into two 2.5 hour musicals and the nazi stuff was in the latter one maybe. Like, "oh I can get how you'd see that because it's not a complete movie" is an OK response. edit: And I still have the problem with the casting. If you're going to make it obvious appropriation and a commentary on white saviorism and oil extraction why are we not casting anyone from that region
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Nov 2, 2021 21:29
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Gumball Gumption posted:Yeah that parts pretty dumb. It wouldn't make sense for any of the groups to be racially homogeneous but if you're filming in the region hire some actors from the region. It's easy. Yes it is easy, which makes it a choice. I got a lot of issues with hollywood casting.
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Nov 2, 2021 21:36
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Nix Panicus posted:Its been forever since I read it, but I'm pretty sure Paul ends up blinding himself and wandering the desert and is never heard from again* because he can't bring himself to be the evil tyrant the universe needs to break itself of its infatuation with messiahs. Instead his kid has to become a monstrous tyrant who rules for millennia until humanity finally breaks itself free of prophecy and the desire for a strong daddy to take charge So what I'm getting from this is "white savior on a small scale is wrong, white savior on a cosmic scale is right".
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Nov 3, 2021 19:25
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Sanguinia posted:I mean, if you take "things got so bad once the Cosmic White Savior was in charge long enough that humanity purged itself of all ills," as an endorsement of Cosmic White Savior I guess. I feel like the actual message is the opposite. Or an endorsement of accelerationism. As I've not read the series, it sounds like the Paul/Paul's son is a despot in order to force the galaxy to rise against him/them. So like the ultimate white saviorism. Which doesn't make it right. Alternately, is it just the story of white people being awful, and the author wants people to take away the fact that white saviors are awful? Because if so people are going to miss that point, as has already been stated. I already know putting white saviors in charge is bad. Is it a good read when it's couched in space empire poo poo? I don't need a thousand year empire and a trillion deaths to illustrate the issue with white saviors. The issue comes up that no matter how you try and make a statement, by making a movie about a thing you unavoidably promote the thing you hate. You make a movie about how "war is hell" and you unavoidably glorify war and soldiering.
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Nov 4, 2021 02:38
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fool of sound posted:I'm not super into either comic books or the MCU so I might be missing some context but I think the basic structure of Civil War is pretty interesting, the movie makes a bunch of noise about Cap's dedication to freedom and non-intrusion and whatever, but I think the more interesting reading is that the former weapons contractor of course has no issue throwing the power of Avengers behind a national interest, while the former soldier does. Despite his origin story, Stark is and has always been insulated from the effects of the American foreign policy apparatus and war machine, while Captain America deliberately bore the brunt of it out of nationalistic pride and is cost him everything, and that directly informs their worldviews. Here's a link to the comics Civil War rundown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_(comics)
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Nov 4, 2021 02:59
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DarklyDreaming posted:And the new Suicide Squad which is basically "The US did some hosed up poo poo in South America" for 132 minutes Including Cena's character who's the most flag humping "literally any atrocity is justified by saying it's for freedom" fascist imaginable.
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Nov 4, 2021 04:27
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The 1960's wasn't ready for time travel incest fantasies, but by god Heinlein had the courage to bring it to them.
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Nov 19, 2021 18:33
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Baron Porkface posted:A morally healthy person can deduce that genocide is bad without a Greek choir telling them so. This is Somethingawful so maybe that isn't the case. A lot of people are not morally healthy. Many people think the movie version of Starship Troopers is a straight-forward action movie and not a satire of fascism, despite being very heavy handed. Similarly you can't do a war movie that doesn't glorify war, even if the message is entirely "war sucks".
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Nov 22, 2021 22:24
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DarklyDreaming posted:"Thanos is secretly the protagonist of Infinity War" was the Hot Take of the season when that movie came out, and it kinda makes sense in a Mechanics of Storytelling sort of way 
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Nov 30, 2021 00:31
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