>lack of japanese actors. hell i didn't even notice half of
>the stuff you pointed out.

>more japanese actors simply wouldn't have made that dry ass
>script any better. or the direction for that matter.

I'm not convinced this is necessarily true. Different casts provide different spheres of influence on the proceedings. You're right that the script was not good and the direction wasn't good either... but making the film more specifically about Japan very well may have forced the creative team to make different decisions that would've made the film more interesting. It certainly would've made the film more interesting from a cultural perspective, bare minimum-- and an all-Japanese cast save for the corporation and the shells would've undoubtedly added layers.

My point is really that one can't accuse critics of needing to "get back to their jobs" when the takes being lobbed out there were, for the most part, exceedingly fair. I'm usually the first one to point out a critical dogpile when I see one-- and honestly, Gods of Egypt, another film that got dogged for whitewashing, is a pretty good example of a movie with way more interesting shit than it gets credit for, albeit a movie that's overall quite uneven-- but this really wasn't an unfair critical consensus. Yeah, some critics got assholish and hyperbolic, but that's the nature of the biz at this point. The points being made underneath those layers were definitely legitimate opinions, imo, and telling critics to stop being "social justice warriors" when the issue of culture and race is woven directly into the fabric of the film through setting and identity isn't a terribly constructive path.

For the record, I know a few people who feel similar to you re: ScarJo's whiteness not having a negative impact, and I've had this debate with those people as well, so I know you're not alone... I just can't get around how fucking easy it would have been to remedy literally *every* issue in the film with an all-Japanese force surrounding ScarJo. They could've had their white cake and eaten it too, so to speak.

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