White Egyptians

[Hyakki]

It doesn't even have to be historically accurate, I just want people that are billed to be from a place / culture to look like they are from that place and / or belong to that culture. I don't really care about the actual history, and I think the aesthetic actually looks great. It's just that the cast they chose does a disservice by perpetuating a widely believed and damaging inaccuracy about this culture.

 

Also, it's more than just the aesthetic and the names used; Set vs. Horus for the Throne of Everything is an actual Egyptian myth, complete with eye-gouging. This movie is comparable to a retelling of the Odyssey, in fact.

 

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.

 

Choosing to forego historical accuracy is damaging to the culture, and 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.

[Oli!]

 

 

 

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.

[LadyRochester]

Duh. Egyptians were white. Vikings were black. Romans and Greeks were east asian. Get your facts straight.

[Oli!]

Duh. Egyptians were white. Vikings were black. Romans and Greeks were east asian. Get your facts straight.

 

o shit ive been had!!!

[Sylentmana]

I think the most important point that we are neglecting to discuss is that this movie just looks plane cheesy as hell. Not because of a white cast, but because it just looks stupid with a ridiculous abuse of CGI. When you use that much, why not just animate the whole thing?

[Oli!]

When you use that much, why not just animate the whole thing?

 

They probably want to go with a "realistic" rendering style, which is good and all for weird-looking characters and static objects, but the creation of photo-realistic 3D people that don't hit the Uncanny Valley for a large chunk of your audience is still something that's being hammered out.

[Martiallais]

I get the impression that the movie is going for the heroic pseudo-mythical angle rather than anything that's historically accurate. Which is perfectly fine - it'll likely do fairly well for itself and as with so many things if someone happens to dislike it they can just avoid going to see it.

 

So a movie about Norsemen and Vikings punching their way through Valhalla and fighting with Valkyries and riding Hresvelgr with a cast of nothing but black people with Bostonian accents wouldn't be weird to you then.

 

Because that's what this is.

 

Would I find that weird? Sure. That's a bit more extreme than what's going on in the trailer for the movie though.

 

Not really?

 

I don't see how one is more extreme than the other, they're perfectly parallel examples.

 

People with little to no ethnic connection to the culture and location used as the backdrop for the film are cast in the entirety of its important roles and most others, to the point where the actual races that have a tie to that location and mythology have virtually no presence, while speaking with out-of-place accents.

 

That's both this film and the theoretical Black Norsemen film I have presented, to the letter.

 

This movie.

 

Still. This film you pitch Oli makes me think back to the glorious days of arguments on GW2 about how "there are no black norn/vikings/northmen11!1!1!!".

[Oli!]

 

 

Still. This film you pitch Oli makes me think back to the glorious days of arguments on GW2 about how "there are no black norn/vikings/northmen11!1!1!!".

 

Hah haaaaaaa I remember when this was a thing.

 

This and the arguments over waypoints were enough to give a person Roleplayer PTSD.

[Virella]

 

 

Still. This film you pitch Oli makes me think back to the glorious days of arguments on GW2 about how "there are no black norn/vikings/northmen11!1!1!!".

 

Hah haaaaaaa I remember when this was a thing.

 

This and the arguments over waypoints were enough to give a person Roleplayer PTSD.

I made a dark skinned char from Lordearon, that triggered the fuck out of people on WoW. It was glorious.

 

Gdi people, don't be so obsessive about skin colours and fantasy games. Unless you rp a white drow, then you can gtfo.

[-no longer matters-]

This movie looks horrible.. and I will go see it anyways, because it looks fun horrible.

[Jonexe]

Sometimes I feel like the only person in the world that doesn't care about skin color; especially in fantasy. I can't think of a single moment in my life where the color of a person's skin has positively or negatively affected my enjoyment of any form of entertainment.

 

That said, the movie looks terrible... but I'll likely end up seeing it. My friends and I get bored quite easily and make terrible movie choices when it happens (looking at you TMNT reboot).

[Sylentmana]

When you use that much, why not just animate the whole thing?

 

They probably want to go with a "realistic" rendering style, which is good and all for weird-looking characters and static objects, but the creation of photo-realistic 3D people that don't hit the Uncanny Valley for a large chunk of your audience is still something that's being hammered out.

 

I didn't mean they should animate the whole thing in a photo-realistic way. I just meant that if they are going to use so much CGI then they should just make an animated movie, stylized of course. I didn't bother to clarify. Sorry about that.