The Impossible

[DarkSovereignty]

Agreed.

 

[Lord]

So what if they are white? The color of the skin doesnt make the characters. Besides, if they were spanish, we couldnt have Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor in the movie.

Maybe because the world is bigger than that? Maybe because you're presenting a tragedy in Thailand without focusing on the Thailand people? Maybe because in that tragedy 200.000 Thais died and it affected roughly 2 million people in Asia? Or because other ethnicies allways come 2nd to the white main characters in films? Or maybe because Hollywood has been doing that for almost a century by now?

 

[danoyse]

Maybe because the world is bigger than that? Maybe because you're presenting a tragedy in Thailand without focusing on the Thailand people? Maybe because in that tragedy 200.000 Thais died and it affected roughly 2 million people in Asia? Or because other ethnicies allways come 2nd to the white main characters in films? Or maybe because Hollywood has been doing that for almost a century by now?

Or because it's based on a true story about a Spanish family caught in the tsunami who weren't Thai either.

They ultimately cast it the way they did because of the language barrier being a hard sell for the movie internationally, not because they're a bunch of racists who think only white people are affected by natural disasters, which is what you seem to be needlessly implying.

 

[danoyse]

Here's what Maria Belon - the woman who is portrayed by Naomi Watts in the film - had to say about it:

http://voices.yahoo.com/tsunami-survivor-maria-belon-reflects-impossible-11937174.html

In "The Impossible," Belon is portrayed by Naomi Watts in a performance full of strength and raw emotion. We watch as she struggles to make her way to safety in the aftermath of the tsunami which decimated the coastal zone of Thailand, and it's unnerving to see the injuries she received which included a nasty wound on one of her legs. Despite that, Belon said that "nothing happened to us" (her and her family) because they survived. So when J.A. Bayona, director of "The Orphanage," came to her wanting to make a movie about the tsunami, she had to ask why.

"Why our story if we survived? Why in a story full of pain and full of loss pick up our story in which nothing happened? But then we understood that it was the only way of explaining the others' pain was picking up a story of a family which nothing happened to," Belon said.

For Bayona, the story of Belon's family's survival helped she a light on the devastation left in the tsunami's wake. Hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives, and "The Impossible" never ever loses sight of that. But more importantly it is a story about many people and what they suffered. It is not just about this one family. Belon made this clear when asked if it bothered her that her family was being portrayed by English actors instead of Spanish ones.

"I am fed up with this question all the time," Belon said quite strongly. "This movie is not about nationalities, not about races, not about colors. It's about human beings. One of the conditions we put is that there should be no nationality for the family. I don't care if they would be black, brown or green skin. I wouldn't care about anything."

 

[Laderlappen]

Maybe because the world is bigger than that? Maybe because you're presenting a tragedy in Thailand without focusing on the Thailand people? Maybe because in that tragedy 200.000 Thais died and it affected roughly 2 million people in Asia? Or because other ethnicies allways come 2nd to the white main characters in films? Or maybe because Hollywood has been doing that for almost a century by now?

The plot of the movie is that a family travels to another country for a nice vacation but they end up in the middle of a big tragedy. They could have made it about a family that was effected in their home, but they just didnt. Its more important that a movie is enjoyable than it is PC.

 

[Lord]

I know what it's about, and it's why i feel like it's a waste that almost every film like this ignores the people who live in the country affected by these disasters is never the focus, but instead a bunch of white, middle to high class characters to make it more marketable or because they instead prefer to focus to not focused on the more "exotic" people.

I know it's a story about people, but that's besides my point, the problem is that the same kind of people are generally the ones used for these kinds of interactions, minorities are generally used in minor roles and the same excuse is allways used.

Why should heroes be more ethnically varied? Why should we get more female heroes? Aren't they all the same? That's exactly the same thing, the world is varied, we're not in the 60s anymore. And we're talking about a tragedia that affected millions in Asian Countries, i think it's a little disrespectful to make a film out of the tragedy on the perspective of the tourists instead of the people who actually lived there. I don't see Japan making a film, or any kind of media project about a Japanese family that was affected by the 9/11.

It's also why i give some major points to films like Django Unchained, Pacific Rim and Brave, films that used many elements we're very familiar with but also used them in a different scenario or "people", instead of using the same excuse for not doing it over and over again:

Django Unchained: A save the princess story which didn't feature priviledged white guys.
Brave: Relationship between a mother and a daughter, something which as hard as it is to believe is actually very rare since it's usually between a Son and Father or at most between a Father and daughter.
Pacific Rim: Asian female character with a complex backstory, more interesting than the main protagonist, as well as the fact that they didn't force a relationship between the two, while keeping it there as a possibility. And the male protagonist has also lost a sibling brother, instead of his girlfriend or the usual female in the refrigerator, the bond he lost was actually quite deep and severe, gotta compliment Del Toro and crew for that.

Those are tropes that are quite rare to see in major films, once in a while we get things like this but it's usually not the norm.

 

[Green Goblin]

Just watched it. Amazing