TCTTS said:ABATTBQ11 said:TCTTS said:
Literally no clue what you mean by that first sentence. As for everything else, what's your alternative? Disney/Marvel should never try and sell to anyone other than white males? I don't even understand what you're arguing. All I'm saying is that it makes sense, every so often, to try and widen your audience, and thus make more money, by selling to people other than your core customer. Sometimes you'll succeed. Sometimes you'll fail. But it's worth taking that chance every so often.
This is you trying to put words in my mouth. The alternative is to make movies for entertaining everyone.
The problem is when representation becomes a main selling point. Very few people are going to go see a movie specifically because it has 3 female leads and a black female director. People will go see a movie because it's good entertainment. They don't care about the diversity boxes it checks.
This is true, but only to an extent. Again, there are MANY people who want both. They want good entertainment, but they ALSO want to see themselves reflected more often on screen. So why do you care so much if them getting to have that experience barely affects you? For argument's sake, say ten blockbusters released every year featured white male leads. So what if now there are only eight? Why does that annoy so many of you? Especially when all signs point to things eventually going back to at least nine, seeing as a few of these experiments are objectively failing.
Also, define what "making movies for everyone" means to you. Because at the end of the day these movies still have to pick a race and a gender for the lead. And it seems, no matter what, if they're not all white male leads, there's a contingent of people who get their panties all in a bunch. One of my proposed "solves" was no more blockbuster superhero movies with all female leads, where men take a far back seat/barely affect the plot. Instead, if you have a female lead, make sure there are prominent males roles as well, if only to ensure that males show up to your movie. But even in, say, the Star Wars sequels, where there was a female lead surrounded by all kinds of male leads, people still lost their minds that Star Wars had gone "woke," simply because the third trilogy in the franchise didn't revolve around yet another white male. So in that instance, how do you "make that movie for everyone"? What's the solve there?
Everything you're saying is based on your continued, willful misunderstanding and misstatement of that which you disagree with.
For one, it doesn't "bother me" or "annoy me" when a blockbuster doesn't have a white male lead. What I care about is the decision making process behind a film or show and the effect it has on the final product. There's a difference between making a movie or show that's diverse and making a movie or show to be{ diverse. The latter is what is bothersome and annoying and typically results in crappy end results. You bring up the third Star Wars trilogy, so we'll start there as a perfect example of what making something to be diverse looks like.
JJ Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan pretty much wrote The Force Awakens in 2013/2014 after Michael Arndt struggled with the script. Abrams and Kasdan made a lot of serious changes to the ideas that Arndt had, and that changed the direction of the entire trilogy, with little to no thought about what the end goal was. Abrams' also wanted a diverse cast, which means there was a box around who the characters were and how many of them there were in order to meet those goals. That's an issue when you get too many characters eating up screentime and can't cut any because you'll undermine your diversity quota. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that's how we got a movie trying to split itself between Rey, Poe, Finn, Han/Chewie, Kylo, and the overall plot instead of simplifying it and trying to tell one or two stories instead of four. Why do I say that? Because Rey is the protagonist, Han is a requirement to harken back to the original trilogy and he's Kylo's father, Kylo is the antagonist (and necessarily white), and you have to have the addition of Poe and Finn to hit the diversity goal because none of the other characters can. No one can be cut under those constraints. Now there's no room for a mentor for Rey or screentime for it, so she ends up a Mary Sue who can suddenly go toe to toe with Kylo Ren, who's been studying the force for many years and can apparently stop a blaster bolt with the force. The whole thing is really rushed, and the trilogy gets off on the wrong foot and never recovers. Now, you could blame Abrams' and Kasdan's writing the whole thing in 6 weeks for all of the shortcomings, but it really doesn't help when you box yourself in with additional requirements for what the cast looks like instead of crafting a story and then casting to that. Then we got the trainwreck of The Last Jedi and somehow Palpatine returning. In the end, no one lost their minds because the sequel trilogy didn't focus on a white male lead, they lost their minds because it was ****ing awful and there was apparently a lot more emphasis on establishing and maintaining diversity (looking at you Rose and admiral people hair) than on actual story or characters.
Now, if you still want to believe the negative reaction was because it didn't revolve around a white guy, did anyone lose their minds over Rogue One having a diverse cast with female and Hispanic leads? How do you explain Ahsoka's popularity as a character (the latest series notwithstanding)? Or Leia's? Or any of the other myriad Star Wars characters who aren't white guys? Why is Andor, a very diverse show, considered so incredible while Kenobi, centered around a white guy, is considered so bad? It's almost like people don't care whether or not it revolves around a white guy and just want great storytelling and well developed characters.
What does making movies for everyone look like? Story first, everything else second. The only time race or gender should come into play is when it is time period or setting sensitive. For example, unless you're talking about Yasuke, a black man in feudal Japan isn't realistic. Neither is a white man. All of those characters would need to be Japanese because Japan was closed to foreigners. Aside from instances like that, characters and story should not be bound by a quota on what the cast needs to look like.
Alien is the perfect example. Story first, everything else second. Everything about the basic plot and the xenomorph was decided and written before anything else. The rest of the characters were generic until it came to casting. In the script, it was spelled out that all of the parts were unisex and interchangeable for anyone, man or woman, and there was no box around any of them. No one set out to create a sci-fi movie with a "strong female lead," but the end product was one of the most influential sci-fi movies in all cinema with a female lead so good that she launched an entire franchise.
Tenet is another example. Great movie with an original story. The lead could have been played by just about anyone, but Nolan picked John David Washington because he liked him as an actor. Him being black played 0 part in it. Nolan focused on the premise, story, and characters long before ever deciding on what they were going to look like. He didn't set out to make a movie with a black lead, he set out to make a movie and a black actor was just the right fit for his vision. Story first, everything else second.
Your solution is just more of the same problem. You don't fix anything by trying to establish a quota system of balancing out leads and supporting cast based on race or gender. You have a good story with good characters and you fill in with good actors. Sometimes race or gender necessarily plays a part in casting based on time period, location, etc, but that doesn't mean you start with those as part of a quota and build the rest of the story around it.
