I hear some youtubers say that the tide is turning and they cite things like the Chappelle special or the Gervais special. I can kind of see where they are coming from, but people still flock to see Marvel movies and Marvel along with other studios still can't shut up about representation.
I would have to see the following to believe a major tide is turning:
Black character in a movie where they don't need to discuss race
Male character doesn't need to be surrounded by "much better" women
Gay character has a devout Christian friend/relative who still loves and respects them despite their beliefs
A book adaptation where the main character is white..... is actually white in the show/movie
Period pieces actually look like the people from that period.
Any show/movie that addresses immigration doesn't make anyone who isn't for open borders an evil person.
Yes, I know that is unrealistic but seeing as how Wheel of Time was a book that had plenty of females and non-white characters once they leave their area and they still had to butcher the source material I have little hope and will continue with my rule of "be very wary of anything made after 2014".
What do y'all think? Is the tide actually turning and I'm just too cynical to see it?
That's the whole fucking point! The only characters allowed to have any obvious character flaws are the white guys. Sometimes they get to redeem them, sometimes they don't. But nobody else has any goddamn flaws. Sticking up for your friend and taking the piss out of a hothead aren't flaws. Also "cool, collected" has nothing to with testing human limits and passing out in the process. That's not a character flaw.
And yeah, Phoenix wasn't super special or terrible. I never said she was. In fact, I said:
But as soon as I saw her, I knew she was flying the mission. Because Hollywood is predictable. The only reason it didn't hurt the movie was because it didn't really end up mattering who flew the mission; they were all just interchangeable bland characters except Rooster, who obviously had to be special because the story required it.
The thing is, the non-white/non-male characters don't have any particular strengths either and are backgrounded. Phoenix standing up for the nerd happens in the first quarter of runtime and is irrelevant to the plot. The notion of a "cool" group simply does not exist.
Dimensionality and screentime determine the importance of a character, so basically most of the important characters are white males. That even includes Jon Hamm's admiral, because he actually shows he's got a tiny bit of guts and principle near the end.
It's not a character strength either, it's portrayed as a neutral training accident.
When the student pilots were introduced, I saw what looked like a pretty easy-going, cool group that was getting along well, and a couple of obvious (white male) misfits. I guess you didn't see that. Even though you agree that all of the flawed pilots were white men and the other pilots had no flaws. Whatever. Fortunately, the pilots' individual personalities had very little to do with the rest of the story, which is why I said it didn't really detract from the overall movie experience.
It's also not a trope or a climax or a dinosaur or an encyclopedia or a Volkswagen, but I never claimed it was any of those things, so I'm not sure what your point is. Unless you're just disagreeing to disagree. In that case, feel free to list all of the other things that you think it isn't until the end of time. I promise I'll read it when you're through.
Either way, I'm out. You've just repeated my arguments back to me and then split some irrelevant hairs about what you think is or isn't "cool," and I don't feel like clarifying for you further.
My point is very simple, that characters without obvious flaws or strengths are insignificant to theme.
Flaming out because you were pressed on this, not even with a hint of personal attack, shows you're not very "collected" yourself.