I got thru college on this film, watching it over and over again with a pal as I was learning the art of illustration / graphic design. I came to love the story, the movie, the graphic novel, the plot, the characters – which is exactly why I am incensed by the latest news that Hollywood is up to it again – in same fashion as The Last Airbender – “racebending” the entire cast.
Call me a purist, but it doesn’t take much to agree with me that this is some jacked-up nonsense going on here, co-opting a Japanese story to set it in “New Manhattan” with characters named Tetsuo and Kaneda who are still somehow white (think, Robert Pattinson, Garrett Hedlund, Chris Pine, Justin Timberlake, Joaquin Phoenix, even %$@*! Zac Efron).. I don’t have it in for white folks, but I do think this is a huge cultural breach, a complete disregard for the integrity of the original, an insult in the face of a growing Asian-American populace and just shameless Hollywood politics at its best/worst.
I’m in for the boycott. In fact, I might even get a bootleg and still not watch it, just to frustrate the execs and producers of this trainwreck following right behind Airbender.
“I’m guessing, but I suspect the American group most under-represented in modern Hollywood is young Asian-American males.” – film critic Roger Ebert, 2010
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