What we do sense is it's ingenuity and honesty. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. In the movie, the role went to Tilda Swinton, who has been considered possibly the whitest actor out there. That is tokenism. More from The Verge The studio is best known for its stop-motion feature films Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link. On the run from gods and monsters, Kubo must find a magical suit of armor once worn by … He is best known for his role as Rickon Stark on the HBO series Game of Thrones, and Kubo in the film Kubo and the Two Strings. But by any measure, Laika and Knight failed to recognize the complexity of this issue, perhaps feeling that they'd be buffeted by animation and non-human characters. Those are the things we see, but there are the things we don’t see like faith and worldview and gender identity.” After getting tripped up over a few words, he took a few swigs of water and continued. It looked like it was going to be an interesting film…until I read the cast list. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Bobby Hundreds and ThankYouX on the Future of Cryptomedia, Daniel Kaluuya on Chadwick Boseman Story, His Unimpressed Mom & Judas & the Black Messiah | 360 With Speedy Morman. What matters more than most of the human characters being voiced by Asian actors is that the movie's most visible characters are not. Our editorial content is not influenced by any commissions we receive. This film has some kind of holes in it. “If you must blink, do it now.” You know what the most unfortunate type of films are in the movie industry besides indies? MixedByAli Talks Kendrick’s New Sound and Plans for His Audio EngineEar Program, TDE’s MixedByAli Talks Kendrick’s New Sound and Plans for His Audio EngineEar Program. That's it. ( Log Out /  Kubo should have repeated that effort. The source code for the WIKI 2 extension is being checked by specialists of the Mozilla Foundation, Google, and Apple. The need for representation is more amplified when a story is set against the backdrop of a particular culture, though, and staying faithful to that should be of the utmost importance. © Complex Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Ralph Fiennes? Two villainous sisters. ( Log Out /  In August 2016, the animation studio Laika released Kubo and the Two Strings, a beautiful stop-motion movie about the young, one-eyed son of a lost samurai. You can use them to display text, links, images, HTML, or a combination of these. Last month, Constance Wu made headlines when she called out The Great Wall for their casting of Matt Damon as their hero. Kubo and the Two Strings isn’t the first film in the last couple of years to be criticised for whitewashing. Rooney Mara? Here’s a Timeline of His Legal Troubles. “For a leading man, Matthew McConaughey was an obvious choice,” Knight explained to me. Kubo and the Two Strings. Kubo and the Two Strings torna a mostrarsi con un meraviglioso trailer che include anche le voci di Matthew McConaughey, Charlize Theron e Ralph Fiennes, il tutto sulle note dei Beatles reinterpretate con lo shamisen. Aug 23, 2016. “We saw it at the Oscar’s this year and it’s interesting how it gets framed in a very binary way; recently it’s literally been framed as black and white. Although I do think the accusations against Laike, the studio behind Kubo, have been a bit exaggerated especially considering the entire film is done with stop motion, so it’s impossible to know the voice actor’s identity. Most of the characters that are human characters are [voiced by actors] of Asian descent.” Statistically, Knight is right, but this conversation isn't just about reaching a ratio quota. But with the case of McConaughey, it was something else. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Kubo and the Two Strings is just the latest target for MANAA, which has called out such films as The Martian, Aloha, 21, The Last Airbender and the upcoming Dr. In the original comics, the Ancient One was a Himalayan high priest, with long, white facial hair, a bald head and a penchant for Buddhist aphorisms. Kubo and the Two Strings isn’t spun from whole cloth: It’s a prototypical hero’s journey, and as a prototypical hero’s journey it echoes other prototypical hero’s journeys, notably Star Wars, which is as significant a touchstone for the film as any samurai or coming-of … “Our heroes don’t look like Matt Damon.” She could have also said they don't sound like them either. I think that the way we look at it is: diversity is the accumulation of the seen and unseen characteristics that we go through. Change ), This is a text widget, which allows you to add text or HTML to your sidebar. Just like African American people expect to see themselves and feel their back of house influence in roles on the big screen, so too do other people of color, or of different genders or religions. That is whitewashing. “We have to stop perpetuating the racist myth that only a white man can save the world,” she wrote on Twitter. From the same creators as Coraline, Kubo earned critical attention, for better and worse: It was commended for its character models and set structures, which were all carefully hand-made, yet condemned for its, to a great extent ,white imaginative group and voice cast recounting a Japanese story with Japanese characters. This isn’t an isolated incident. Mathew McConaughey? YoungBoy NBA’s $540K Bond Could Set Him Free. Whitewashing has manifested itself in everything from Breakfast at Tiffany’s to West Side Story to The Hunger Games. It’s a difficult issue to address and to make a definite decision of whether it is or isnt whitewashing. “For those that are humans, it was important for us to have authenticity in terms of the characters. Knight is right: diversity is more than just a black and white issue. This very white group of actors voicing a mostly Asian film has been an issue tied to Kubo since the casting decisions were made, however. Aug 12, 2016 - 'Kubo and the Two Strings': Film Review Charlize Theron Matthew McConaughey Rooney Mara and Art Parkinson lend their voices to this beautifully rendered 3D stop-motion film. Straight away, I broached the subject with Laika president, Travis Knight, the son of Nike founder Phil Knight who made his directorial debut on the project. Kubo and the Two Strings … How to transfigure the Wikipedia . 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