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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
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My only gripe with this is that they obviously knew that it was just a weather balloon, or at the very least that it wouldn't shoot back so I don't think this really supports your point even though I think you're right. Though I personally think the Euros would shoot first.
As much as I love Villeneuve's movies he does seem to have a ... hesitance when it comes to asian characters/people. The stuff in Arrival can obviously be waved off as just 'China bad' but I think it goes deeper. His next movie, Blade Runner 2049, has a lot of superficial asian influence but has even fewer (none iirc) asian characters than the original. Obviously Dr. Yueh is in the book so its hard to lay blame for him on Villeneuve but there's no other asian actors despite the Fremen being descended from Zensunni Wanderers. Presumably they weren't all just Middle Eastern and obviously Zendaya and Javier Bardem are neither so it seems like an odd omission.
Not really sure if its an intentional bias or not but Blade Runner especially would have benefited from having at least one named asian character. Why is everything in Japanese but there's no Japanese people?
The prevalence of Japanese stuff in Bladerunner 2049 is an artifact of cultural worries in 1983 with the first movie. It seems odd now, but in the early 80s Japan was briefly seen as the primary economic rival to the US. There was a genuine fear for a bit that the Yen would take prevalence over the dollar in some sectors, namely tech. Go look at magazine covers from the late 70s and early 80s. They couldn't shut up about how Japan would rule the world soon.
So why is there so much Japanese stuff but no Japanese people? Because at it's core it's xenophobic. It edges on being outright racist, by presenting Japan as like a cultural colonizer in the futuristic LA. I don't remember any of the Japanese stuff in the PKD story, it wasn't until the 80s did the ambient western worries start.
They'd culminate with the Plaza accords, which was a currency manipulation measure to ensure the dollar wouldn't have to compete as heavily with the yen. And that lead to Japan's asset bubble era and subsequent recession.
Villeneuve never seems interested in the portrayal of ordinary people outside the main characters, for example in Dune there’s a long scene where the city is being bombed and there is just no people in it, it might as well be a city of empty houses