(11-18-2015, 07:37 AM)Mamushi Wrote: From what's shown in the trailer, it's a very poor retelling of the myth and I wouldn't say it's at all comparable.
Changing the cast to one that "looks the part" doesn't help much. In fact, it would probably hurt the film because unfortunately, white is what sells, white is familiar, white is safe.
I'm not expecting much fantastic story from the retelling, but the fight scenes will probably be nice.
Racial choices regarding what people go to see at the box office is a well-documented thing that I can't argue against, but it is still nonetheless reflective of the larger issue of cultural supplanting (I really hate the term "whitewashing" so I'm not going to use it), and is in fact something that feeds into it. The twisting of other cultures for the sake of the Caucasian moviegoing public is seen by many as a problem all its own.
I can't fight the unfortunate reality that we live in, but I still maintain that narratively and culturally speaking, unless the movie stops at some point and the characters go "hey, we're white people in Egypt, I wonder what this means for us and our outlook," then nothing is added to the film by their casting. It therefore seems that there really isn't any reason for the casting to be visually accurate to the people that would have lived there.
At the end of the day, there are two arguments that I want to get across. The first is that this is not accurate. As stupid as it may seem, there are many, many people out there that believe that the racial makeup in this film is an accurate portrayal of Ancient Egypt, and teach other people that this is so to this day. Casting of this caliber and cultural supplanting is even present in documentaries, as I said earlier, and believe it or not, museum exhibits. Unlike movies, these are things that are supposed to be presented as historical fact, and still manage to cast their reenactment portions and deliver their explanations in a similar manner to this movie.
The second argument that I want to get across is that this casting isn't done for any sort of narrative or artistic favor. It's done for the sake of pulling an audience. Unless the movie stops to reflect on or reference its casting choice in at least a subtle way, then it's not making any sort of artistic statement, and as a result, there's no reason to use the "it's a work of fiction / art" excuse for the casting, unless the point is to show that white people look pretty superimposed on Ancient Egyptian Greenscreens.
