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Will Smith - not black enough to play Williams Sisters' father?

Drewbot said:
Only a few parts, why?
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Gary Oldman plays Churchill... he's almost unrecognisable as Gary Oldman.

gary-oldman-darkest-hour.jpg


I knew that Oldman was in the movie, I watched quite a bit of it, before it occurred to be that I hadn't seen Oldman's character.... but I had, I just didn't realize it was him.
 
I'm torn. Part of me thinks that, in a reasonable world, exactly matching skin tones shouldn't matter.

In a world where, for years and years, it has mattered if one is too black, I think it probably does.
 
smartcooky said:
Gary Oldman plays Churchill... he's almost unrecognisable as Gary Oldman.

[qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/s/solw4posqrjsf66/gary-oldman-darkest-hour.jpg?raw=1[/qimg]

I knew that Oldman was in the movie, I watched quite a bit of it, before it occurred to be that I hadn't seen Oldman's character.... but I had, I just didn't realize it was him.
Click to expand...

Yes now I get it.

It's OK to wear overweight old man-face, but not ok for Wil Smith to wear slightly-darker-black-face.
 
smartcooky said:
Gary Oldman plays Churchill... he's almost unrecognisable as Gary Oldman.

[qimg]https://www.dropbox.com/s/solw4posqrjsf66/gary-oldman-darkest-hour.jpg?raw=1[/qimg]

I knew that Oldman was in the movie, I watched quite a bit of it, before it occurred to be that I hadn't seen Oldman's character.... but I had, I just didn't realize it was him.
Click to expand...

That's what Oldman is known for. He's played so many roles and been unrecognized that a meme started about him a year or so back.
 
HansMustermann said:
Lead? That's the least of problems. Whitening your skin during renaissance involved getting chronic poisoning levels of ARSENIC.

That said the article still seems stupid to me. Equality doesn't apply when there is a substantive difference, i.e., relevant to the job. E.g., does anyone think it's "colourism" (whatever that means) if we don't cast Leonardo Di Caprio as Martin Luther King or Samuel Jackson as Churchill? :p

Mind you, IF make up can make up for it, sure, go for it, but the pretense that any mention of skin colour in a casting choice is racism is just stonking stupid.
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I don't see why Jackson couldn't be Churchill. Ossie Davis made a fine Kennedy.
 
Mumbles said:
They tried this when Zoe Soldana played Nina Simone. It was not well received by many, black women in particular.
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Without delving too deep, it seems that the complaints were solely based on the fact that Saldana needed make-up and prosthetics to "look more like" (obviously this is subjective) Simone. Meanwhile, as already mentioned in this thread, Gary Oldman under make-up and prosthetics is lauded for his performance of Churchill. It's actually pretty much a rock-solid fact that the vast majority of real people depicted in films and TV are played by actors who bear only a passing resemblance to them, at best. Why the desire to micromanage the depiction of one particular demographic?
 
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Drewbot said:
Yes now I get it.

It's OK to wear overweight old man-face, but not ok for Wil Smith to wear slightly-darker-black-face.
Click to expand...


You got it! :thumbsup:

If looks weren't important then why go through so much trouble for Churchill? People get nominated for Oscars for this stuff don't they?

Humans. Can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em all.
 
Drewbot said:
Yes now I get it.

It's OK to wear overweight old man-face, but not ok for Wil Smith to wear slightly-darker-black-face.
Click to expand...

Well, that isn't what I was implying, but there are some for whom that would be the take-away.

I think its important to distinguish between a director striving for authenticity and one who taking the racial piss. If a director wants his characters and props to faithfully and accurately represent who and what they are representing, then where's the harm in that?

Skin tone is part of how people look, as is height and weight and hair style, and clothing. If he wants to have his actor's skin tone closely match that of the subject he is portraying, how is it any different from wanting to have Wermacht and SS soldiers wearing authentic looking uniforms in a war movie, of having REAL Mitsubishi A5M (Zero) aircraft representing them in a movie about the attack on Pearl Harbor, rather than painting up some T6 Harvards in IJAAS drag, or having
 
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