Straight Shootin’ with Chad Cruise: Diversity in Film

I’ll come right out and tell you that I haven’t yet watched Exodus: Gods and Kings but it hasn’t stopped me from getting pissed off about it. Allow me to elaborate:

The idea that every picture show that Hollywood puts out these days has to be as diverse as Noah’s Ark and can’t just be about the director’s vision is absolute malarkey. I’ve read several articles about the film already (*pats self on back*) and I can’t find the proper words to describe how sad this world has become with its political correctness. It’s absolutely ok if a “person of color” plays any character in any movie but let’s all freak out because someone cast all Caucasian people in a film! No one ever mentions how the main cast are from all over the world; Bale is from Wales, Edgerton and Mendelson are from Australia, Turturro is from Brooklyn, the only thing people say is “Look how white they are!” Cry me a freakin’ river! Are we going to riot every time a film comes out and one of the greatest director’s alive doesn’t hire local people to play roles in his 140 million dollar film? Get over the fact that not everything is going to be exactly the way you want it to be. Soon they’ll have to digitally insert a gay Puerto Rican onto the Millenium Falcon just so Disney doesn’t get sued.

There was a director who had the balls to cast unknowns. He would do entire films in essentially “dead” languages and wasn’t scared when studios backed away and he was forced to fund most of the films out of his own pocket. His name was Mel Gibson. Remember him? He was metaphorically crucified by the same people who should love his commitment to diversity and instead of getting an endless amount of BJ’s, which he happens to love, he’s instead making films about beaver puppets and watching Mad Max in the dark while sobbing.

I wish these same people would get fucked and start talking about stuff that I care about like why is Jackie Chan teaching Kung Fu to a kid but they call the movie The Karate Kid? How about the fact that studios can change ethnicities or sexual orientations of characters as long as it’s from “white” to anything else and not the other way around? How many ethnic characters have been changed to white in the recent explosion of comic book movies? Here is a short list of the white to ethnic just off the top of my head:

Harvey Dent – Tim Burton’s Batman (1989)

Kingpin – Daredevil (2003)

Johnny Storm – The Fantastic Four (2015)

Aquaman – Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Nick Fury – Every Marvel film

Perry White – Man of Steel (2013)

Deadshot – Suicide Squad (the future)

 I didn’t even have to try for that shit but let’s see them try to change Luce Cage or Storm into some blonde-haired British person and see the internet explode. I really don’t give two shits who is in a movie as long as it is good. I’ll watch every one of those films listed above and you won’t hear me complain about Lawrence Fishburn’s lack of whiteness. Who cares? You will also note that I write a piece each and every Friday on a foreign film from different parts of the world. Africa, Asia, Europe, Antarctica… I don’t care where it’s made as long as it doesn’t bore me to tears. No actor consistently makes amazing films and even Mark Wahlberg has made a couple of decent ones so that should tell you that if he can do it, anybody can. I’m all for a studio trying to make a movie as accurately as possible to the source, whether it be a book, some kids wet dream, or history itself. I loved Apocalypto and I can’t name one person in that movie.  I guess what I’m trying to say, since you’ve no doubt already stopped reading, is that quit your bitchin’ cause every film doesn’t look like the cast of Real World. If David Fincher wants to direct a movie about 5 astronauts in space he doesn’t need to cast two Africans, a Peruvian transvestite, a gay yoga instructor, and my Aunt Connie. Just let these people do what they do best; ENTERTAIN us. They are entertainers, ya know, not historians.

This graphic is pretty sad, though. They need to get their shit straight….