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Ninneveh (8)
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This movie goes out of it's way to make her look like the Finn kid from Stranger Things as well as having the fashion sense of a bum living on the streets of Portland.
No, actually all of his points are fairly valid. Feel free to explain why they are nonsense with your own reasoning, I'm curious to see what you say.
I predicted it early on, and it played out exactly as I thought. If you can't see that they were playing the "flip the stereotype of terrorists being only muslim on it's head" angle, not sure what to tell you. Its exactly what happened on screen. All the muslim characters were good, and the white terrorists plus 1 token black guy at best bad, and at worst psychopathic. It was even referenced by Farid in a meta-context when he said something to the effect of how the terrorists set him up to look like he was the terrorist by faking the conference he was invited to, which is exactly what the movie tries to do to the audience in the beginning. To the movie's credit, it made the woke element tolerable to swallow since it was integrated into a clever plot. So regardless of it, the movie was A-.
If the movie was set in modern day in a retelling of the King Arthur mythology, I would have no problem with Patel playing a knight of the round table, as this would reflect modern times and the current Indian population of Britain and would be perfectly in context. But as this story is set in Dark Ages Britain, in a white anglo-saxon society that almost certainly didn't have any Indian people living there at the time, much less any of them even a knight, the main character being Indian when everyone else is anglo-saxon breaks the immersion.
So the skin color or ethnicity does matter for the sake of authenticity, fictional or not, magic fantasy elements included or not. And I see you had no rebuttal to my argument that there would be huge issues if a white actor was cast as Arjuna in the Mahabharata, and that this would be a huge issue for Indian people and considered off-putting and just as immersion breaking as it is when Patel plays the role of Gawain. By your logic, there would be no issues with a white actor playing Arjuna if he's as good of an actor as Patel. But I'm very sure that India would have a huge problem with that.
I agree 95%. The only tentative "woke" thread was early in the movie when we were shown Farid in the cockpit. At that point I knew they were going to try to fool the audience into thinking he was the terrorist because he was muslim, only to instead pull a bait and switch and make the terrorists white guys. My prediction was correct of course, but the movie was plenty enjoyable regardless of that. Would love a sequel.
No, this is a flawed premise. The King Arthur legends clearly center around the geography of Britain and the French part of Europe, where the majority of characters are descended from Anglo Saxon or Norman heritage. So regardless of whether these events are history or not, and regardless of the presence of fantasy elements such as magic, the tales very much are based on a primarily caucasian part of the world, depicting a society that was also primarily caucasian, with european-centric values. Seeing an Indian person as a Knight in Dark Ages Britain doesnt ring true, magic or no magic, headless knight or no headless knight. Try casting Arjuna with a white actor in the Mahabharata and see how well that would be received in India, and cue the cries of white washing roles.
Refn worked on this series with Ed Brubaker, who is known for his meticulous plots and characters from beginning to end. He says that Refn essentially took what he wrote and freestyled on it, which left a bad taste in Brubaker's mouth. The ending, changed and influenced by this female writer, while interesting, is clearly driven to deride men and to empower women. The only compliment I can give it is that it is a more artistic presentation of such an agenda than what we see in other media.
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