Here's my issue. We have a character who leads a Japanese organization. He was canonly born and raised in Japan with a Japanese name. Why is a ninja clan leader from Japan now a white guy? Why is it so hard to find a fucking Asian actor to play the guy from Japan? He doesn't have to be Japanese! Just East Asian!f you weren’t already annoyed enough with the Jonathan Liebesman-directed, Michael Bay-produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, you will be now. It’s been confirmed a white actor will play the role of Shredder.
It’s not the first time it’s happened in Hollywood, particularly with important Asian characters, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Actor William Fichtner, previously in an unknown role in TMNT, has revealed he’s playing Shredder. He spoke to HuffPost TV Canada:
I play Shredder. It is cool. It’s one of those things that came along where I thought, “Really? Let me think about this for a minute.” [Laughs] Then I was like, “Yeah, OK, this sounds like a journey.” I’m very glad that it worked out, I’m really glad that I’m doing it.
Perhaps Fichtner should have thought about taking the job for more than just a minute and considered it might not sound all that great to say he’s playing a classically Asian character. It’s a shame really, I love Fichtner’s work, I think he’s a fantastic actor and while some might say, “Isn’t that all that matters?” in an acting gig, I’d have to answer, “No, representation matters.”
Add this to Alan Ritchson, Jeremy Howard, Pete Ploszek, and Noel Fisher, four white men playing the Ninja Turtles, as well as Danny Woodburn as Splinter and Megan Fox as April, and you’ve got a resoundingly one-note cast as far as race is concerned. Although just recently we were praising the film for adding Whoopi Goldberg in what appears to be not only a racebent, but a genderswap role as well.
What are your thoughts on a white Shredder?
I'm not entirely against changing the race of a character, as long it can make sense with their backstory. To use a TMNT character, Dr. Stockman has been shown as both white and black. Either race works with his backstory. In minor characters (April's coworkers for example) you can change race and gender because well bluntly it's not very important. There are some characters for which race is an important element in their backstory. Magneto needs to stay a white dude for his origin to work (granted you can change the origin and we may need to someday). Black Panther needs to stay black. You make Superman a Russian and everything changes. So on and so forth.
I gotta say I'm glad the Turtles aren't fucking aliens anymore, but this with Megan Fox (my objection is frankly... She's not that good of an actress and all I've seen from her is TnA eyecandy acting. I'd like a bit more for April O'Neal) as April O'Neal only feeds into my dark suspisions and frankly I doubt I'll be watching this movie.
Some of you may scream "But Frigid! It's Ninja Turtles!" My response is gonna be "If we care about this, we should stop rewarding people for making shitty products that ignore the fundamentals of the characters and story and just slap on a brand name."
