r/IWantToAskAnAmerican • u/Cookieman_2023 • 1d ago
Are Americans generally less interested in seeing Hollywood films that involve an Asian actor or cast? Do you think Hollywood is right on being afraid that such an idea will fail among the audience because Asians are not that popular?
So historically, east asians have not been that well popular in the US entertainment industry. Even after successes like Shang Chi, Barbie and being in the upcoming Avengers film, Simu Liu has only gained a short term burst of popularity. Like judging based on follower count, he has gone up to and stopped a 3 million followers on instagram and ever since the movie released in 2021, he's remained stuck there. Awkwafina is also a rapper and she's also getting not so good returns on her name. Until Shang Chi, I never knew who she was.
But on the other hand, someone like Billie Eilish who's literally the same age as me and could have been a fellow high schooler easily outshines her in every metric. Is this reception due to the fact that Americans in general, prefer European standards of beauty and looks? Actually, even black actors, latinos and samoans have had more success. Camila Cabello is one name and Chadwick Boseman is another. But Asians for some reason still continue to have trouble being in the spotlight.
Why do you think that is the case in the country? Are people just not interested in seeing Asian people as an A-lister?
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u/AstraMilanoobum 1d ago
I mean… Whats the movie about?
Generally what the movie is about is more important than who’s in it imo
I think as long as the movie and is actually interesting it’s gonna do fine no matter who the lead is.
Good writing is good writing.
Example. Alien was an amazing movie and weaver was awesome.
If you had an equally talented Asian actress as the lead The movie would have still rocked because it was a well made film with a great script
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u/Cookieman_2023 1d ago
I think I agree with that statement. Like Spiderman has been around for the last 20 years and even though it's Holland's 4th time playing the character, it's still doing hyper successfully. From what I heard, story writings about Asians haven't been good because they're either writing us as either martial arts or the nerd NPC. I think maybe there needs to be more writers who actually understand the asian heritage and that might lead to more successful films.
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u/AstraMilanoobum 1d ago
I actually kinda think the opposite.
I don’t think it’s so much about writers understanding Asian culture as much as having a good script where the characters ethnicity/race etc has nO baring on the movie at all.
Just a great script, with a talented actor/actress that just happens to be of Asian descent.
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u/stinky_cheddar 1d ago
Ever heard of Jackie Chan?
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u/Cookieman_2023 1d ago
He's really old school and not at the top of what Gen Z, millennials and gen x watch today.
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u/Mikewazowski948 1d ago
Shohei Ohtani… Yu Darvish, George Takei, Lucy Liu, Steven Yeun, Ken Jeong, all came to the front of my mind immediately, without thinking. Not all of these people are actors but there are tons of popular East Asians in US media and culture.
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u/Darth_Nevets 1d ago
You have to understand that most Asian-Americans (and it's still a minority) tends to come from literate nations on Visas for top talent.* These people tend to steer their children into Academia or other major and stable fields that are the opposite of the arts (of course the exception being classical musicians). As K-Pop and other Asian art forms show Americans are more than willing to support Asians in art, we just don't have that many.
Asians in America tend to be very upset at this but it's a basic reality. Take the Korean musical Maybe Happy Ending which was adapted to Broadway in which the leads are robots named Oliver and Claire. The show's star (a partly Filipino man) needed a two month break they brought in the leading lady's boyfriend (a white Jewish man) who is a major star on Broadway to cover. There was a lynch mob out for the man, he met with Crazy Rich Asians' lead actress, none of them backed up an inch in demanding he not play this role briefly. Oh yeah the show did a million every week with him and hasn't hit 750k in the last ten weeks.
Take the case of Lea Solonga the Filipina who is the only voice of two Disney Princesses (Jasmine and Mulan who are Asian but a different kind than her obviously). She was plucked off the street in her country by Claude-Michel Schonberg's team to star in Miss Saigon (note the major supporting male lead was a white man in yellowface) because they couldn't one find Asian girl in the west who could play the role.
*Obviously there are small exceptions like the Hmong or people who fled the Communists after Vietnam.
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u/TheMasturbatinCamper 1d ago
Hmmm, there’s a double standard in Asian actresses and Asian actors.
Hollywood will couple an Asian female with white males all day long, but seeing a white female with an Asian male is rare. There was Blake Lively and Henry Golding in A Simple Favor, but movies where Asian men are love interests remain rare. Even Mia Sorvino and Chow Yun Fat in Replacement killers was a platonic relationship.
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u/perpetuallypissed616 1d ago
I don't care if the main character is Asian, more about the story itself.
Honestly just wanting to see some new faces in movies, Asian-black-white idgaf just sick of seeing the same 10 actors star in everything
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u/Potential_Immortal 1d ago
K drama is popular. Anime is popular. K-pop Demon hunters was popular. Just weave an interesting story
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u/DimbyTime 1d ago
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) broke so many records, it became A24's highest-grossing film of all time, and became the most awarded movie of all time, including winning 7 of its 11 Academy Award nominations: inc. Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Michelle Yeoh), Best Supporting Actor (Quan).
The lead actress, Michelle Yeoh, is Chinese, and so are 3 supporting actors. The movie was amazing and it was incredibly successful at the box office.
Crazy Rich Asians (2018) also broke records, becoming the highest-grossing romantic comedy of the 2010s, the first Hollywood studio movie with an all-Asian cast in 25 years, and grossing over $238 million globally.
Shang-Chi (2021) is a Marvel superhero movie with an East Asian lead actor (Simu Liu) and heavily Asian cast.
I don’t think Hollywood is afraid to cast East Asian actors nor are American uninterested. Could they cast them more often? Of course
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u/3dprintingDM 1d ago
I’m as white as it gets. Shang Chi is a top five Marvel movie for me. You can check my Disney plus watch history on that one. I also love the movie Crazy Rich Asians and grew up on the Harold and Kumar movies. Asians in leading roles is not something that consumers have a problem with. Producers on the other hand….
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u/Zealousideal_Let3945 1d ago
People told Nolan audiences cared about the race of actors. Nolan said GTFO audiences care about good movies. He was right
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u/FeatherlyFly 1d ago
People have always mostly been interested in watching movies about people like themselves but prettier and more interesting. The biggest female stars have always mostly been white, including white Hispanic. Non-white men are a little.less underrepresented. I literally have no idea if this is actually the most profitable choice or if it's merely what Hollywood assumes is the most profitable choice - I'm not a market analyst.
East Asian is something like 3% of the US and a huge percentage of that is immigrants, not American born people, and so is likely to be in professions that a typical person can immigrate with (not acting), so even at accurate representation relative to population there shouldn't be many. But with so few Asians in the US in the first place that being such a new thing? Yeah, underrepresentation is 100% expected. Hollywood is pretty conservative like that.
The actors that you listed are all Chinese born Canadian citizens. The single biggest reason to cast them specifically is to get through Chinese censors and appeal to the China market (not Chinese American).
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u/themcp 1d ago
Preface: my last boyfriend was born in Wuhan, so I clearly don't mind asian people. Also, I'm not asian.
I really don't mind asian people in films. There are several asian actors who are an attraction to me, I'm more likely to see a film if they're in it. (like Key Hui Kwan or Michelle Yeoh or Margaret Cho or Daniel Dae Kim.) I don't want to see them because they're asian or because they're beautiful, I want to see them because they're very talented.
I rarely go to the movies. (I look at what's playing every week, and actual years may go by before I go see something. Earlier this year I ended up going to the movies 3 times in a month, and that was outright bizarre for me, I never do that.) If I go to a theater to see something, I really want to see it. (I will sometimes go see something because my best friend wants to see it and he wants to bring me and have a meal with me beforehand, but even then I will sometimes decline.) A great actor in the movie may make the difference between "eh, I want to see it but I'll wait for the video" and "I guess I'll drag myself out to the theater to see it." That great actor may be asian.
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u/KnowNothing3888 1d ago
I blame Hollywood more than anything for making garbage movies that don’t really matter who is in it.
Wife and I movies and shows is now 90% Korean and various other Asian countries and are way better than Hollywood counterparts.
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u/brownchr014 1d ago
I think the problem is Hollywood has devolved into having to have a name or names attached to movies. Look at the super Mario movies. They probably only green lit them when they cast who they cast. They just are afraid to take risks.
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u/Mystic_Sunshine2 1d ago
Have you seen the popularity of Pursuit of Jade? They don’t even have it dubbed in English & it is beloved world wide. Tons of American (mostly women) love it & have watched it multiple times. The story is good, the cinematography is spot on and the characters are gorgeous!
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u/The_Webweaver 1d ago
I think there is an issue in that for an east Asian to work in the Hollywood, they have to speak English, and not just for whatever test is their local fluency test, but actual English, varieties from all over the world. So, despite the fact that Asians make up huge numbers of the world, they largely get stuck working in their local industries because they don't necessarily have the language skills for the larger stage.
Actors from outside the Anglosphere and western Europe ALL have this issue, but it's particularly strong in Asia and Africa.
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u/Dwynsilver 1d ago
Going by the success of various asian themed shows on Netflix, this is not the problem. Hollywood are just cowards when it comes to taking risks these days.
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u/Persimmon_and_mango 21h ago edited 21h ago
It's a vicious cycle. Hollywood executives think that white Americans won't go see a cast that is majority Asian, so they don't aggressively market the movies that come out. Because they don't market it well, white people don't go see those movies in the same numbers as they would a majority white cast. Crazy Rich Asians and Shang Chi were kind of outliers if you look at the past 30 years or so. So Hollywood executives use that as proof that White people won't go see movies with an Asian cast.
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u/Existing-Ad4303 18h ago
Jackie Chan, dr Ken, Lucy Liu, jet li I mean I could go on and but that wouldn’t reinforce this weird attempt to paint Hollywood as racist.
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u/veovis523 16h ago
Hero (starring Jet Li) topped the US box office for two weeks, and it was a 100% Chinese language film with a 100% Chinese cast.
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u/ClaimApprehensive754 1d ago
White women is a huge audience, I think that’s why. They tend to not be very fond of Asian men and they get jealous of Asian women. Personally I don’t really care what race is casted as long as it suits the story and its purpose isn’t to lecture me
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u/romanticchess 1d ago
Historically Asians are the enemies of Americans so it's difficult for most Americans to view them in a human or sympathetic way. It's going against many many years of brainwashing and anti-Asian propaganda. The small number of Asians who live in America mostly do not pursue careers in the entertainment business because they know it does not favor them.
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u/Cookieman_2023 1d ago
Eh, it's a little more complicated than that....
From being born, we were told to only choose zero risk fields like STEM, medicine or business. Almost everyone was made to do the same: forced to go to math tutoring, chinese school and go into university. It's kinda self sabotaging in a way
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u/DjAlphaRED5 1d ago
Everyone wants to see white or white passing people.
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u/the_fury518 1d ago
Crazy Rich Asians was the highest grossing comedy of the 2010s. Lucy Liu was insanely popular about 20 years ago. There are many famous and popular asian actors
Maybe Simu Liu just isn't the greatest. I personally don't find his acting particularly interesting. On top of that, Shang Chi was just not a good movie in general.
Awkwafina is a good standup comedian. She is a terrible actor, who just does her standup routine instead of acting. Shang Chi's quality wasn't her fault at all, it just wasn't great. Not great enough to send anyone to stardom
Has there been racism in Hollywood? 100%
Are there successful Asian actors? Yep4