MovieChat Forums > The Call of the Wild (2020) Discussion > It seems like a woke version of the stor...

It seems like a woke version of the story

posted 4 years ago by kuku (3510)
8 replies | jump to latest

I used to read Jack London stories when I was a kid. I loved this one (though White Fang was still my favorite).

The trailer doesn't ring any bell. Yeap, it has the dog, and it's set in Canada, and that's it. It doesn't convey the wild feeling of adventure in Jack London's stories. This is more like fluffy adventure.

Not to say they have the typical gallery of multicultural archetypes: the usual charming and kind black guy, the usual wise and tough female savage, and so on. Out of curiosity, I checked whether they had 'diversified' the miserable guys that owned the dog until Thornton finally gets it... and it seems that the answer is nope, they're all white and very white, thank you. it even seems that they even made the Hispanic gardener that sells the dog a normal evil white male character.

In a nutshell, it seems that they took the title of the story, the basic plot structure and then filled it with the usual diversity PC tropes.

[–] huwdj (4562) 4 years ago

They have never managed to produce a version of Call of the Wild that is anything like the story so it's no surprise that this one sounds the same - though I admit I've not even seen a trailer yet. The story is always filmed to match the tastes of the times and doubtless it is the same this time. Which in many respects I think is OK - I don't understand why a very few but loud idiots find diversity and equality so frightening - but I do wish they'd film the book (which is something I seem to be saying quite often on these boards).
PS Also, it's always worth revisiting Jack London. They are good stories and not just for younger readers.

[–] kuku (3510) 4 years ago

I've not even seen a trailer yet

The trailer is in the imdb page:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7504726/videoplayer/vi264945433?ref_=tt_ov_vi

I don't understand why a very few but loud idiots find diversity and equality so frightening

Well, there's many reasons for that. Historically, heavy diversity, as the one right now, uses to end in poverty and war. Besides that, you're importing cultures with rule systems that are far less efficient (compare Europe and North America with Africa or South America), and they'll influence you. Not to say the highly probable ethnic conflicts that will arise eventually.

You know... the thing is that 'diverse' movies in Hollywood it's that they are not really diverse. They cast racially diverse actors, true, and they keep whites playing the bad guys, true, but at the end of the day... all of the characters seem to belong to the American yankee white culture. They use to portray other cultures by adding some folkloric quirkiness, but deep down, core values are the same. Every culture, and even every historical period, they seem just a bunch of middle class standard American. You see the 'wise female savage' in the trailer, who is supposed to be a inuit: the diversity, beyond the actress' race, is that she talks funny. At the end of the day the character is built taking some American archetype as a base and adding some eco-friendly chitchat, some modern female empowerment stuff and some aesthetic tribal funny stuff. It has zero relation with inuits.

CONTINUE...

[–] kuku (3510) 4 years ago

...CONTINUE

A couple of weeks ago, I was starting to read some murder mystery book with a female inuit as a main character, the Kiglatuk series. I thought the author would have some real knowledge and it would be an interesting way to read about that culture. Well, it was ludicrous. The white males looked deeply stupid (as usual), and the inuit female main character looked like the usual powerful American female lead mixed with some 'noble savage' tropes.

And that's the story with diversity. It's not really diverse, it's just a self-denial ideology that thinks that Western culture (and particularly, American culture) is some kind of Universal Standard and that everyone is just that way, with some aesthetical differences and some funny quirky folkloric adornments.

Also, it's always worth revisiting Jack London. They are good stories and not just for younger readers.

Well, that point, I agree.

[–] liscarkat (16638) 4 years ago

"I don't understand why a very few but loud idiots find diversity and equality so frightening"

I can't speak for loud idiots, but for intelligent people it's not that it's frightening. The problem is that taking a story that's over a century old and checking off all the current trendy diversity boxes (except, of course, the bad guys are white) is false to the time period, the setting, and the original work. It doesn't make it better; it just looks trite and stupid.

[–] brux (14666) 4 years ago

Take any classic story and the theatrical version is going to
be nothing like the book. Same with movies based on a
true story ... Hollywood could not tell a true faithful to the
book or based on a true story if its future depended on it.

[–] PrimeMinisterX (8321) 4 years ago

I think we may be pushing the "woke" label beyond its limits at this point. Not everything today is "woke" just because it has a black person or a woman in it.

Throw a person of color and a prominent female character in there and it's likely to draw more viewers from those demographics. That's just a money decision. When I watch the trailer, I don't sense any political message being pushed.

[–] kuku (3510) 4 years ago

Not everything today is "woke" just because it has a black person or a woman in it.

If you have read the original novel, there's quite a NASTY gallery of characters, including Native American ones. Thornton is mostly the only decent one.

Fast Forward to the movie, you have a Native American character who is suddenly wise and positive. They include a black character that is, guess what? charming and positive.

And what happens with the rest of characters? There was two half brothers that were really hateful. One of them was mixed race. In the movie, both of them are 100% white.

In the novel, you had a bunch of nasty characters, some white, some native, some mixed race. In the movie, the nasty characters are whitewashed while they include new positive non-white characters.

[–] brux (14666) 4 years ago

Anything that has Cara Gee in it is OK with me, she is so great in "The Expanse"