N.K. Jemisin made a point earlier today about black men dying in these movies and that leaving a bad taste in her mouth and I entirely agree. Del Toro makes a lot of talk about a lot of stuff but only seems to follow through on a very cursory level. The cast is really really white. When you actually think about it there are two characters of color in the entire thing. The triplets only appear in a scene and a half. While it was cool that Idris was in charge of saving the world, it kind of loses a good portion of it's impact when we realize that he's the only black person around. They didn't need to write it like that. They could have had him survive and still had a good movie. The movie doesn't hinge on his death. The decent Australian could've not hurt his arm and we could've been alright. They made a deliberate decision to kill him off and the more I think about it the worse that decision feels to me. If there were more black characters then it wouldn't feel as bad, but he's the ONLY ONE and he's gone.
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regna
Black Men Dying
Date: 2013-07-14 11:22 pm (UTC)While it was cool that Idris was in charge of saving the world, it kind of loses a good portion of it's impact when we realize that he's the only black person around. They didn't need to write it like that. They could have had him survive and still had a good movie. The movie doesn't hinge on his death. The decent Australian could've not hurt his arm and we could've been alright. They made a deliberate decision to kill him off and the more I think about it the worse that decision feels to me. If there were more black characters then it wouldn't feel as bad, but he's the ONLY ONE and he's gone.