The racist backlash to The Little Mermaid and Lord of The Rings is exhausting and extremely predicta

Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta immediately comes to mind. A great actress, but her accent was so fake it almost ruined the movie for me.

 

Sadly, it really doesn't.

 

Come to think of it, that blonde curly haired girl from Ozark played Anna Sorokin (Russian / German) using an accent that I found horribly annoying. It was like 1980s valley girl with a hint of Indian ...

 

Same with Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare in Love, in my opinion

 

Won an Oscar, but we know why. And I don't mean that to slight her - she was the victim, even if she is weird, or maybe that helped cause her weirdness

 

I thought that, too. He was born in NY and moved to Australia when he was in his early teens.

 

Actually, no idea what you mean. I think she acted well in that movie. It was just painfully obvious she was an American faking an English accent.

 

You can glean it from these two articles which were published before you got convicted. Harvey basically muscled through Oscars for SIL for everything, including Gwyneth, largely because it was good for him but also because he had assaulted her, but thought that it would show that if you played ball with him, you'd get the Oscar. He would always use her later as the example of the good things that could happen to an actress if she went along. Every time he would try to say it wasn't right, it was that actresses went along with him because he was such a starmaker, that was his main example.

Again, I don't blame her.



Shakespeare in Love and Harvey Weinstein’s Dark Oscar Victory
Harvey Weinstein Reemerges to Fuss About Gwyneth’s Shakespeare in Love Anecdote

 

Yeah, but Gwyneth Paltrow is awful in a lot of movies, IMO. #HotTake?

 

Robert Downey Jr. in those Sherlock Holmes movies. His english accent was so bad I couldn't understand what he was saying half the time.

 

Black women honestly. And I don't care either way. But I think it's just a matter of time before the backlash will come.

And the issue isn't Hollywood being reluctant to do Black Hero with White female couples, although that is probably true, also. But Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel, two of the biggest action stars, are both Black for example. And two upcoming MCU releases Blade w/ Mahershala Ali and Captain America with Anthony Mackie will have have white female leads.

I think Hollywood doesn't want use women who look African (for lack of a better term) opposite handsome White men. And that's because they don't think it viewers will like it. And it's pretty obvious what they are doing.

 

That was Julia Garner, who was great in the criminally underappreciated The Assistant. I don't know that I fault her for having a terrible accent in that series, as the whole point was that she was trying to pretend to be from somewhere else than where she actually grew up. I think that's why the accent was was be deliberately a little bit off.

I analogize it to another criminally underrated movie "Bad Times at the El Royale", in which I was going crazy because Jon Hamm was supposedly playing a traveling salesman from the South but had the most ham-fisted fake southern accent. I couldn't believe how bad an accomplished actor like Hamm was until you learn later on (spoiler alert), that his character is undercover, from a different part of the country, trying to pretend. And that he is not supposed to be especially competent. Hence, the bad accent, which was then "perfect".

 

Yeah, after I posted that I realized I've never heard the real Anna Sorokin speak, so maybe she nailed it. She got some major award nominations for that show, and it was pretty good. Her accent just grated on my nerves.

Edit: Alright, I take it back ... she was pretty close ...

'I deserve a second chance': Anna Sorokin says she has regrets - Bing video

 

That would make it a good english accent.

 

Come to think of it, Ben Affleck’s accent in Shakespeare in Love was far worse. It’s like he wasn’t even trying.

 

LM not doing too well in China/SK/Japan

Movie cost $250M before marketing.


“In South Korea and Japan: Similarly, many South Koreans were also negative in their reception of “The Little Mermaid.”

‘The Little Mermaid’ flops in China, S. Korea as moviegoers pick on Ariel's skin color


“Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid has flopped at the box office in China,”

Disney’s The Little Mermaid sinks in China

 

New opportunity to listen to her voice. Think I’ll pass

 

People like to make things about race because it's easy. I don't like a bunch of Disney's remakes but one that I thought was excellent was the live action Mulan. The cartoon was good but the live action one was better I thought. Maybe being asian isn't the preferred minority.

 

Gotta take issue with this one. As a hillbilly with 99% of the family still in the hills, she would fit right in in a trailer park in the coalfields of VA. I was surprised to find out she was a NotOneOfUs. Some of the other locals were a little forced, although pretty good overall. Timothy Oliphant in Justified comes to mind when I think of a N1OU. A for effort, but dude, you ain't from around here. Love both of those shows, BTW.

 

I have not seen anyone argue that any single person's dislike of the movie can only be attributed to racism. I have seen many people argue that the substantial financial underperformance of the movie is likely due at least in part to racism. And they have strong evidence for that conclusion.

You will note that this thread started in September 2022, talking about a backlash to the movie, which would not release for approximately 9 more months. That backlash was based upon the trailer, which showed a black actress. Hard to believe that they were effectively extrapolating to the quality of the movie as a whole when they started that backlash. And there has been coordinated review bombing which has been documented by the online services. And of course it has underperformed even other mediocre Disney live action films that were much less reviewed.

That's not necessarily dispositive, although I don't know how you ever amass dispositive evidence about the decisions of millions not to consume a specific piece of media. But there's plenty of evidence that there was a very coordinated and massive racist backlash to the casting. It began long before these people had seen the movie, when they had only seen a trailer.

Parenthetically, I have seen summary articles that attribute the underperformance in the Asian market to racism. They point to a few articles supporting the conclusion. Obviously I'm not commenting specifically on the underperformance in those markets, because I don't know enough about that culture. But based upon living in this country all my life and being familiar with this culture, I certainly think it's plausible if not likely that racism is playing a very significant role at the meta level.

I have not seen the movie. Disney live action remakes are typically mediocre, so I would not be surprised if I agreed that the movie was not worth the money. I certainly haven't spent money on it yet. But we're talking about population wide behavior, not individual behavior. That's a completely different analysis.