I feel iffy on this. I loved the original Karate Kid growing up, but absolutely hated the 2010 remake. Partly because I feel like it is following the trend of just lumping every Asian character into a generic “Kung Fu Guy” stereotype with no room for nuance.
Like, in the original, Mr. Miyagi’s backstory as a Japanese war veteran was pretty significant to his character, and karate being a specifically Japanese fighting style made sense for him to teach.
Not to say you have to be Japanese to learn karate, but that wasn’t even the premise in the 2010 movie, where Mr. Miyagi was swapped out for the Chinese Mr. Han, and the discipline being learned is kung fu, not karate. But that doesn’t matter, does it? Because as far as the white people in the audience are concerned, there’s basically no difference. Asian is Asian, right?
(And being a movie made in cooperation with China Film Group, which is a propaganda arm of the Chinese government, they definitely couldn’t have Mr. Han also be a war veteran who regretted his years of service, because who could ever regret fighting for glorious communism?)
I never saw the Jaden smith film, but that’s a bad joke right? That it’s kung fu, not karate? How did they even think it appropriate to still call it karate??
Yeah, it was fine but as an Asian American, the name bothered me. I dunno why they didn’t just call it “The Kung Fu Kid” and market it as a spiritual successor.
I love that we’re getting all this Asian cinema nowadays, but there’s still more to do. Like you said, lumping all Asians together still. And even still, a lot is all about being Asian. Say what you will about the Fast and Furious movies, but the character of Han is what we need more of. A character that just happens to be Asian, and his whole personality isn’t just “Asian dude”. He’s just a guy, and that’s awesome.
I have a theory 80s kids that turned producers later on are replaying out some 80s nostalgia out the wazoo. The most egregious examples imo being two! Two giant Pac-Mans being used independently, one in that Adam Sandler movie and the other in GotG Vol 2.
Sometimes it's worth it. I actually quite enjoyed Cobra Kai, and watching Johnny change from the bad guy into the hero and watching Daniel struggle to not become the bad guy. If they can springboard a movie off of that setup, it could be good.
it could be interesting in that the grown 'karate' kid befriends a chinese kung fu artist and theres all kinds of nuance learned between the japanese artform he knows and this new, foreign form, artist and its history.
Aww heck, I think Jaden and Willow are both pretty cool (their parents, not so much). Everybody has an akward teenage phase, his just couldn't be hidden because he's will smith's son.
The Luthor they haven’t done on film yet is my favorite, the Luthor who is physically fit, super intelligent, successful, charming.
Luthor was the pinnacle of what a human could be. Like ozymandias in watchmen. His name is Alexander, and he is supposed to be a modern day namesake. He is the perfect human, who is almost destined to be a world leader, then suddenly Superman appears, and can fly without effort, making Luthor who worked his ass off #2
Then Luthor finds out supes is an alien. Luthor believes that it is his human right to rule over earth if he is capable, and an alien has no right to stop him. If Superman had appeared in ancient times, would be have stopped Alexander, or Caesar or Augustus, would he have had the right to interfere in human affairs to that extent? Luthor went mad when Superman appeared, and won’t stop till he’s dead.
I like this take off Luthor as a xenophobe who thinks Superman, an immigrant has no business stopping his rise to power
I like it because you could see how it could be convincing if you didn’t know him. And I always figured that’s how it is with both Lex Luthor and Doom, they sound like good guys to the people they manipulate, but their motivations are based on pure ego.
Both their New York and Vancouver studios have joined IATSE in the last few years - the Canadian studio was the first animation house in the country to join a union, ever.
It might be a mistake by Deadline or they are casting The Authority as the villains of the film which suggests they are taking the place of The Elite, probably drawing from “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?” The Engineer would then be replacing Menagerie.
and isn’t The Authority another property on the film list?
It is indeed. With the wealth of characters in this film it looks like it will be laying a lot of the foundations for the Gunnverse.
What I was unsure about was how they’d make The Authority work. Gunn knows his comics, so he presumably understands that having the team as part of the main DC Universe just doesn’t work (they are a commentary on the Justice League and have too many analogues). So he either needs to have them in their own universe but using The Bleed to bring them over as needed, possibly in an antagonistic way (at least initially as they are anti-heroes) or he first introduces them as The Elite or a version of it which leaves the door open for a (semi?) self-contained Authority film.
As he knows his comics, and is clearly taking inspiration from the best of them, it shouldn’t be any surprise that he’s eyeing “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?”
I’m assuming the movie will have to have Jenny Quantum instead of Jenny Sparks since they represent the turn of each century.
So they think it’s better to get a tax write off of half the cost, and sell it to a streamer to cover the other half, than make money and profit with a global cinematic release?
Well, I’m not going to assume that every decision made by the senior decision-makers in a company is rational for the firm or for ‘maximizing shareholder wealth’ in the long term.
CEOs and executives may act in their own, or their firm’s short term interests, they can however also get complex decisions entirely wrong. Not to mention tax law can incentivize some sub rational behaviour.
There are enough historical cases of absolutely bad thinking running companies into the ground, with deceptive practices that leave lenders and subcontractors short.
The stock market’s reaction to act against bad management can be tardy.
(I’m setting aside corporations taking responsibility for larger societal benefits here because US SEC norms for publicly traded corporations don’t provide for that the way they are in Canadian or European law. In the other hand, there may be some arguments that some of these actions are anticompetitive, and worthy of antitrust investigation.)
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