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We tried this a couple of months back, and though I didn't think it proved popular enough to be a very regular feature, this being the weekend of D23 (The major Disney Expo) there are a few movie and TV related bits of comic book news that might be of interest.



First up, the opening titles for the Big Hero 6 cartoon have been released

Watch on YouTube

I think I'm going to like this.

Avengers: Infinity Gauntlet

We've had our first glimpse of what the Infinity Gauntlet will look like in the movie



Some new characters for the bad guys were revealed too. In case people want to avoid spoilers, I'll link, but not post to the images. Here they are, if you want to see them

The Tick (2017) trailer is also out.

Watch on YouTube

The Gifted

Something which seems to have slipped into the schedules almost unnoticed with the kerfuffle over "Inhumans", is the new Fox series, "The Gifted", which features several X-Men chartacters and is set in the X-Men universe.

Watch on YouTube

The brief character trailers have been compiled here but the poster has requested no embedding, so if you want to see them, go to the link.

Slightly odd choice of established characters perhaps (Polaris, Thunderbird and Blink?) and new ones Eclipse, and the name Strucker is asking for trouble (A little too close to Von Strucker, unless it's going to turn out that the kids have an Auntie and Uncle who go by the name Fenris or something) but I like the idea of Sentinel Services (Which does sound like the way such a program would be intorduced rather than "Let's cut straight to the forty-foot tall murder-bots".

And so we're not totally based on US products, the final trailer from Luc Besson's "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" based on the French bande dessineé series "Valerian and Laureline" by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières.

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[cyberghostface]

"The movie wasn't about a Japanese superhero team, "

But they were based on one. Like what if they took an African superhero team and made them American so there's only two black characters on the team and a Tutsi character was white. And the city was in America but it was combined with an African city so they used African iconography to make it look 'exotic'. Disney would be steamrolled.

[long_silence]

You could at least acknowledge some of my other points.

1. The original Big Hero 6 comics barely gave their characters any personality or characterization. They were based on Japanese stereotypes (the sushi chef, the kaiju, the girl with the hammerspace bag)
So in this case I don't mind that the characters were completely reimagined in this adaptation from the ground up, since they were exponentially more interesting here than they were in the comics.
2. You're ignoring the fact that TJ Miller, Fred's voice actor, is Jewish. Stan Lee is Jewish and he essentially played himself in the movie as well as Fred's father. The movie version of Fred is probably Jewish, not white.
3. Marvel and Disney literally used Asian iconography to make Kamar-Taj look exotic in Doctor Strange. Still the movie made money and Benedict Cumberbatch is getting a huge role in future Marvel movies. I'd hardly say they experienced any real blow back.
4. There is a difference in appropriating Japanese iconography to make the setting look exotic and actually respecting Japanese culture. The fact that Japanese American characters were still at the heart of the movie is part of that distinction.
No one in the movie itself said anything about how anything about San Fransokyo was exotic or strange, it was all normalized. And that was another part of it, the creators were also recognizing the fact that San Francisco (and California in general) has a significantly large Japanese and Asian-American population, so the San Fransokyo setting was also about acknowledging those people, descendants of immigrants whose cultures have blended with American culture into something new and unique.

I get that the Ainu are a poorly represented minority group and it sucks that one of the few examples of an Ainu character in Western media got erased in an adaptation. And yes they probably could have gotten an Ainu voice actor and left the character as Ainu and nothing would have changed about the story. I hope they do better in future adaptations.

[cyberghostface]

"You could at least acknowledge some of my other points."

Because they don't mitigate any of my initial points.

"1. The original Big Hero 6 comics barely gave their characters any personality or characterization. They were based on Japanese stereotypes (the sushi chef, the kaiju, the girl with the hammerspace bag)"

That's more or less the same excuse used for Tilda Swinton. That the original character was racist so therefore changing the race was nbd.

"2.You're ignoring the fact that TJ Miller, Fred's voice actor, is Jewish. Stan Lee is Jewish and he essentially played himself in the movie as well as Fred's father. The movie version of Fred is probably Jewish, not white."

That's all debatable but If that's the case then you should have no problem with them replacing a character like Cyborg with Michael Cera or Jesse Eisenberg. Because they're not white because they're Jewish and so therefore not whitewashing.

"3. Marvel and Disney literally used Asian iconography to make Kamar-Taj look exotic in Doctor Strange. Still the movie made money and Benedict Cumberbatch is getting a huge role in future Marvel movies. I'd hardly say they experienced any real blow back."

Tilda Swinton received a ton of shit for playing an Asian character. Far more than anything BH6 did. Benedict received crap for playing Khan in Star Trek, if he had actually played an Asian character he probably would have gotten crap for it.

"4. There is a difference in appropriating Japanese iconography to make the setting look exotic and actually respecting Japanese culture. The fact that Japanese American characters were still at the heart of the movie is part of that distinction."

If they cared about Japanese people they would have set the story in Japan. That's like saying if they made Moana take place in America in a city called "Polyfrisco" it would be respecting Polynesian people.

[long_silence]

1. Tilda Swinton replaced an Asian character and they kept the location in Asia. Do you see the difference? Why keep Kamar-Taj in the Himalayas if the Ancient One, the oldest and most experienced living sorcerer supreme wasn't of Asian descent? Because they wanted to use the exotic and oriental mysticism without actually giving focus or importance to Asian characters.

Big Hero 6 took an American made story about Japanese people, and changed almost everything but the names and still managed to give the main role to the Japanese-American protagonist.

2. I agree that it's debatable whether Fred is Jewish. But I never said that I was okay with him replacing the Ainu Fred. I simply wanted to point out that you were ignoring the coded Jewish representation by insisting on calling him white.

There's a huge difference in the visibility of a character like Cyborg and a minor Z-List character like Fredzilla. Fred's Ainu heritage was only mentioned once in his entire existence. And it was by another character not Fred himself. That's not to say that his inclusion isn't important, but that most people simply wouldn't have read that scene and thus they wouldn't know he was Ainu.
Cyborg has existed for decades, has appeared in multiple cartoons, games, and movies. He exists in the public consciousness as an African American man
Almost nobody had heard about Fred before the movie came out.
That's just not an equivalent comparison.

3. Khan IS an Asian character, his full name is Khan Noonien Singh. Cumberbatch got some critical blowback online but his career hasn't suffered for it at all. If anything its stronger than ever.
Tilda Swinton's career hasn't suffered either. She still has a number of major roles coming up.
It was a paycheck to them and they don't really care if anyone was offended.

And that's another side of the whitewashing issue. Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, Finn Jones and Scarlett Johanson didn't need these roles. They are successful actors who have plenty of other job prospects. Since these movies and shows were using Asian cultures to tell their stories, these were potential opportunities for Asian and Asian-American actors

4. First of all the Big Hero 6 miniseries by Claremont and Nakayama that introduced Fred and Wasabi wasn't even set in Japan. It was set in the US.
Could the Disney movie have been set in Japan? Sure

Secondly what about Japanese-American people? They have their own perspectives on the blending of Japanese and American culture. How many of them were offended by San Fransokyo?

I am not Japanese so I can't really say whether or not San Fransokyo was an offensive appropriation of Japanese culture. I haven't seen anyone Japanese complain about it, but maybe I'm just not looking in the right corners of the internet. But as the descendant of Asian immigrants to Canada, I felt that it was a beautiful combination of Eastern and Western culture, the design, architecture, art, and even food. To me it spoke to the immigrant experience, and the difference between assimilating to the American way of life and creating a new culture from pieces of both. But your mileage may vary.

[cyberghostface]

"1. Tilda Swinton replaced an Asian character and they kept the location in Asia. Do you see the difference? Why keep Kamar-Taj in the Himalayas if the Ancient One, the oldest and most experienced living sorcerer supreme wasn't of Asian descent? Because they wanted to use the exotic and oriental mysticism without actually giving focus or importance to Asian characters."

So if the Ancient One was in a non-Asian location there'd be no controversy? Not that they took an Asian character and made them white?

Also it doesn't excuse anything but Disney was concerned about China money and didn't want to get the film banned because of the Tibetan aspect.

"2. There's a huge difference in the visibility of a character like Cyborg and a minor Z-List character like Fredzilla. Fred's Ainu heritage was only mentioned once in his entire existence. And it was by another character not Fred himself. That's not to say that his inclusion isn't important, but that most people simply wouldn't have read that scene and thus they wouldn't know he was Ainu.
Cyborg has existed for decades, has appeared in multiple cartoons, games, and movies. He exists in the public consciousness as an African American man
Almost nobody had heard about Fred before the movie came out.
That's just not an equivalent comparison."

No one cares about Killmonger from Black Panther. Would making him Jesse Eisenberg be ok then with you? Because again Jesse Eisenberg is clearly a POC under your definition so therefore no whitewashing.

But either way you're saying "in some cases erasing an Asian character is ok".

"3. Khan IS an Asian character, his full name is Khan Noonien Singh. Cumberbatch got some critical blowback online but his career hasn't suffered for it at all. If anything its stronger than ever.
Tilda Swinton's career hasn't suffered either. She still has a number of major roles coming up.
It was a paycheck to them and they don't really care if anyone was offended. "

But there was still far more controversy than anything in BH6. Which was my point.

But yes -- Asian whitewashing is never going to be a serious blowback period.

"Secondly what about Japanese-American people? They have their own perspectives on the blending of Japanese and American culture. How many of them were offended by San Fransokyo? "

I didn't do a polling but a number of Asian people on Tumblr found the name itself to be offensive let alone the whitewashing and appropriation of Japanese culture.

[long_silence]

1. Tilda Swinton's Ancient One? If they completely reworked the concept of Kamar-Taj from the ground up and moved the location so that it wasn't in the Himalayas and they didn't rely on Oriental mysticism when teaching Strange, then it would be a completely different situation. And at the very least it would be far less exploitative.

There'd still be controversy but personally I'd respect the adaptation more.

2. Erik Killmonger is an African man whose motivations have included "removing white colonialist cultural influences from Wakanda". Making him a Jewish man wouldn't make sense.



Meanwhile Fred was from Hokkaido but raised by Americans and was valuable to their mission in America because he could assimilate and act like a regular American. I've already said that it was unfortunate that they erased his Ainu heritage and that they should have done better.

But you know what, you got me, I concede. I do think sometimes it is okay to erase an Asian character. In this case where the characters are completely unrecognizable from their origins as 2 dimensional caricatures. In this case where the main protagonist is still Japanese. In this case where there is a great deal of representation for a number of other minority groups because intersectionality matters too. You have an African American male and two women of color all in STEM fields, they are all incredibly smart and responsible and capable of disagreeing with the protagonist when he goes too far.

3. So you're complaining that people aren't as offended by a feel good children's movie. People hold multimillion dollar Summer blockbusters that are intended for a wider and more mature audience to a higher standard, go figure. Doctor Strange had a larger target demographic. And with that larger audience of people who watch MCU movies comes the potential for a larger blowup.
And at the end of the day, Big Hero 6 still had better representation than Doctor Strange. It was still an opportunity for Asian American voice actors to be in the starring roles.

Yes I agree the name San Fransokyo could be better.
Are you Asian? Because like I said, I am and this movie didn't feel like appropriation. Maybe these people on tumblr have a different perspective, like I said earlier ymmv. But to me this didn't seem like a whitewashing of Japan, it was combining elements of San Francisco with elements of Japanese culture. There is a difference between sharing culture and stealing it or wearing it like a costume. This is a story of immigrants allowing their culture to evolve in a new country, and sharing it with their new neighbors.

[laughing_tree]

"And that was another part of it, the creators were also recognizing the fact that San Francisco (and California in general) has a significantly large Japanese and Asian-American population, so the San Fransokyo setting was also about acknowledging those people, descendants of immigrants whose cultures have blended with American culture into something new and unique."

I remember reading somewhere that an analysis was done and it turns out that, judging by crowd scenes, there is actually a smaller percentage of Asians in San Fransokyo than in the actual San Francisco. The place that's a blend of San Fran and Tokyo has fewer Asians than the real San Fran! So I'm not sure *too* much credit can be given to the film...

[sadoeuphemist]

But they were based on one. Like what if they took an African superhero team and made them American so there's only two black characters on the team and a Tutsi character was white. And the city was in America but it was combined with an African city so they used African iconography to make it look 'exotic'. Disney would be steamrolled.

This isn't exactly the same thing, but it occurs to me that Disney made a Tarzan movie without any Africans in it, or any sign that Africa was even inhabited by human beings other than a single white man. It was pretty well received.

[cyberghostface]

It's not even close to being the same thing unless the Disney movie whitewashed African characters.

[sadoeuphemist]

Why isn't that comparable to whitewashing? They took a story set in Africa and erased the African characters altogether in order to focus on the adventures of white people. I know it's not the same thing, but I think it's roughly comparable in terms of revisionism and offensiveness.