I Need to Clear the Air on "Ninja Assassin"

I'm not trying to declare war on movie reviewer BionicSlime--let me make that clear now.  I do, however, think that by the way he reviewed Ninja Assassin, he's in desperate need of being bitchslapped.

This in not in defense of the plot (there was none) nor another one of my complaints about its glaring lack of explicit Blasian love (I'm getting to that later, just wait).  No, no, kids; I'm talk about the way he describes the starring actors Rain and Naomie Harris.  Listen to how he talks about these two: he thinks Rain is "a singer or something" from either "China or Japan" even though all the hype surrounding the film consistently stated Rain is a popular R&B/pop singer from Korea.  More importantly, Rain is a highly successful singer, with an impressive international following, so there was no way interviewers and commercial designers were going to leave out that particular piece of info when promoting a movie that's little more than blood...and yet more blood.

So then this "reviewer" (who really does this whole, you know, "film-reviewing" thing with other films) briefly talks about Naomie Harris.  He compares her to "that actress in the first Alien vs. Predator movie" and he's "not sure if she is her or not" but hey...she reminds of him her.  Now, just to be clear, kids, this supposed movie buff who saw AvP just confused Naomie Harris with motherfucking Sanaa Lathan.  Say what?!?!

What irks me even further is that Mr. BS goes on to praise notably-not-one-of-the-two-primary-stars actor Ben Miles, who--surprise, surprise--is a white guy.  The reviewer knows his name, praises his acting (which is not more remarkable than that of the other two) and considers it one of the better parts of the film.  Even though we don't see Miles that much or really care about him at all.  Even though Miles got to use his natural accent, while Naomie had to convince us her character's American, and Rain had to speak English with a Japanese accent--did people even notice or try to appreciate that?  (By the way, I read this really annoying article in which the [Asian] author tells fans they'll be disappointed about Rain not speaking in "improved English".  Uh...come again?  Level with me, y'all.  His sentences were complete.  His overall grammar was correct--verb tenses, pronouns, all of it.  So WTF is the real problem?  He spoke with an Asian-sounding accent--period.  And hell yes, it was sexy--I said it.  Shit, I'll admit that any day.  We heard a lot of different accents in the film--Russian, American, German,  British--and I don't recall any of them being a problem!  Now, gee...what could they possibly have in common?)

You know, I've seen this trend before.  I tend to make my male protagonists Asian (duh), and I noticed early on that white readers will skip over the main character to ask for more details about the first white character they come across.  They don't ask for more about the Asian lead male or the black lead female...no, no...they skip right over all them colored folks.  It's like they don't even try to identify with them; they are, after all, just so very "Other"...like, they're not human or anything like that.

In the world of film and literature, just go ahead and tack this on the list of things which do not endear whites to us.

(By the way, if you're interested in a better done review of Ninja Assassin (much better) check out this one, done by the pros.)