You hear that sound? It’s the sound of Paramount executives slowly digging themselves further into a big, big hole.
Yesterday, we saw our first image of the decidedly non-Asian Scarlett
Johansson playing the movie’s lead character, Major Motoko Kusanagi.
This immediately sparked the latest round of backlash about whitewashing in Hollywood. But it gets worse.
Screencrush
says Paramount commissioned screen tests for several of the movie’s
non-Asian actors, to try using computer VFX to “shift [their]
ethnicity,” in order to make them appear more Asian.
It’s alarming enough that it happened — but at least, according to
Screencrush’s sources, the idea was promptly scrapped, upon seeing the
results. In response, Paramount didn’t deny that the tests took
place — but insisted that Johansson wasn’t involved with them. Instead,
Paramount claimed these tests were just for a single background
character:
A test was done related to a specific scene for a
background actor which was ultimately discarded. Absolutely no visual
effects tests were conducted on Scarlett’s character and we have no
future plans to do so.
Either way, an idea as awful as this shouldn’t have been considered
in the first place, when there’s a far easier alternative option that
doesn’t involve CG face surgery: Cast some Asian actors in these roles
instead. It’s so simple, it might just work.
…
…
…
WHAT?!
And the only reason they decided to stop was because it didn’t look right, not because IT WAS AN AWFUL, HORRIBLE IDEA?
DEEP WORLD SEA 