don’t we have to take the artists word for it?

Pontificating knows no shame.

My thoughts exactly. Why are a bunch of white people playing Thought Police to a Chinese director? The world may never know.

The West or Europe was not colonizing China in the 11th century which this movie is purported to be set. This was the high point of classical Chinese civilization, technology and science. The Song dynasty was the first government in world history to issue banknotes/true paper money nationally and the first Chinese…

“(Sometimes, it is really tough to digest Jezzie outrage. Like when y’all freaked out over the Westworld pilot without considering what the show is actually striving to convey.)”

If the director says it isn’t the savior troupe I’m willing to trust him. He’s an established artist who’s made a number of great films and I think it’s disrespectful to suggest he’s being dishonest. More likely than not the focus on Matt Damon in the western trailers is because Hollywood thinks its audience is dumb…

It’s kind of hypocritical outrage, too. A white blogger, no doubt along with many commenters here, is complaining about ‘white saviors’ by trying to be the savior who explains to a Chinese director how to correctly recognize and address issues supposedly holding back non-white actors.

Its not a racist trope at all. Damon is not a savior, he plays one of five heroes ( the other four are played by some of the biggest stars in China/Asia). The filmmakers added a western movie star Asian audiences know to help the movie appeal to a global market. No different than having Donnie Yen fight Mike Tyson in…

How is he refusing to admit it’s an attempt at a crossover hit? He said people have been asking him to do something like this for decades. It’s in English. It’s being marketed with Matt Damon featured in the trailer. It’s being released in both countries within a relatively short timeframe. You seem to want Zhang…

You’re making a lazy, dull argument. A Chinese filmmaker can cast whomever he or she wants; the white savior trope you’re knee-jerk reacting to isn’t pervasive in the Chinese film industry. And it’s not uncommon at all for American filmmakers to twist or alter aspects of their films to appease Beijing or render their…

You are so cynical. “Using the racism of an international audience”? This is an international collaboration to make a movie that will be bigger in China, where it’s being released first, than it is in America. Nobody in China will be offended that Matt Damon is in this movie or think that he’s stealing work from…

I think one can be very much anti-whitewashing and also accept that a foreign director wanting another huge hit

Frankly, if the Chinese director using Chinese money to make a film with a white lead actor and wrote that role specifically for one, he’s allowed to do that regardless of what someone else feels should happen. Find another hill to die on.

They didn’t dance around it. He stated quite clearly that the character Damon plays wasn’t intended to be Chinese. Rather, the fact that he is a white man defending China along with four other Chinese heroes fits the narrative. If the director says it wouldn’t make sense to have Damon’s character be Chinese, don’t we…

So the director says

Damon’s comments are stupid, but I’m far more disturbed by the people being so dismissive of the greatest living Chinese filmmaker (a man whose 20s were spent as a victim of the Cultural Revolution) wanting to make a crossover hit. The utter absurdity of arguing that Zhang Yimou hasn’t done enough representation of…

Zhang Yimou has a fairly significant western following. I reckon this film will do just fine in the US market.

As a bleeding-heart liberal, I find it endlessly frustrating that no one is safe from the PC police.

Much ado about nothing.