AAPI actors made strides on TV but future diversity is iffy

Mindy Kaling's "Never Have I Ever" stars a diverse cast.

With a snap of the fingers, relatively speaking, we have three shows on television with South Asian leads. If you count reruns of Priyanka Chopra's Quantico and Mindy Kaling's The Mindy Project, South Asians have gained unprecedented visibility on US TV.

The Asian Pacific American Media Coalition (APAMC) on March 24 heralded the premiere of two new television series on cable networks that feature South Asian Americans: the unscripted Family Karma on Bravo and the animated Mira: The Royal Detective on Disney Junior. The following month, Kaling's sitcom Never Have I Ever debuted introducing an Indian American perspective to the coming-of-age genre

For years, APAMC has advocated for greater diversity and inclusion of Asian Americans in Hollywood-produced programming.

“While South Asian Americans are glad to be represented, they also yearn for the chance to tell their own stories. That is why we applaud the entry of two new series that center Indian or Indian American life and culture.

Click here to read the full APAMC report.

“When APAMC met several years ago with NBCUniversal, we noted the absence of Asian Americans on the cable network Bravo, known for its pop culture personalities. We’re glad the network found a way to include us,” said APAMC Chair Daniel Mayeda.

The APAMC—the only organization to have graded the top four television networks since 2001—issued its annual Report Cards for the past 2018-19 season, assessing the four major TV networks on their progress toward diversity and inclusion of Asian Pacific Americans (APAs) onscreen and behind the camera.

Although ABC and CBS maintained their same grades for Actors and NBC increased (from C to C+), the Coalition fears that the unprecedented success of Crazy Rich Asians in the Summer of 2018 failed to boost significantly the number of APA-led series on network TV. ABC had three pilots in contention that would have starred APAs (first name in the credits), including two that would have featured Asian American families. NBC had a pilot about an Asian American magician, and CBS was considering an Asian American family sitcom including Ken Jeong as a cast member. But none of them made the 2018-19 line-up.

“Since the APAMC began meeting with the networks in 1999,” noted Mayeda, “we have generally seen an improvement in the various categories (such as Actors, Unscripted, Writers/Producers, Directors). For example, in the 2002-03 season, onscreen representation of APAs was so bad, we gave two networks Fs in the Actors category. As part of the larger Multi-Ethnic Media Coalition (MEMC) —which also includes the NAACP, National Latino Media Council, and American Indians in Film/TV—we pushed the networks to sign Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs), create diversity departments, actors showcases, writers and directors programs, and other pipeline programs.”

But progress has plateaued in many cases for the networks, with Fox recording its lowest grade in the Actors category (D+) in the past 18 years.
The biggest gains for APAs now seem to be happening in non-network media, including streaming services Netflix (Master of None, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before parts 1 and 2, Ugly Delicious, Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, Always Be My Maybe, Tigertail, Never Have I Ever, The Half of It), Amazon Prime (Man in the High Castle, Warrior), and Hulu (PEN15); cable channels Comedy Central (Awkwafina is Nora from Queens, Ronny Chieng: International Student), AMC (Into the Badlands, Killing Eve, The Terror: Infamy), Bravo (Family Karma), and Disney Channel (Andi Mack, Mira, Royal Detective); and theatrically-released motion pictures (Searching, The Farewell, Plus One, Stuber).

“While we continue to advocate for the networks to feature more APAs in leading roles, the Coalition applauds the increased inclusion of APAs in other venues,” Mayeda said. “We recognize that many of these programs and films would not have been possible without the training and opportunities created by the networks’ diversity efforts. But the networks themselves need to redouble their efforts to avoid slipping behind their streaming and cable counterparts in representing APAs.”

ABC received the highest overall grade -- a "B" -- for the third year in a row and led with the highest grade in five of the seven categories: Actors (A-; third consecutive year), Commitment to Diversity (A; likewise), Development (B+), Directors (B+; tied with CBS), and Writers/Producers (B).

CBS came in second earning an overall grade of B-, Fox maintained its C gradevfollowed by NBC's C- (a huge improvement from the previous year's F grade). 

APAMC members include Asian Americans Advancing Justice-AAJC, East West Players, Japanese American Citizens League, Media Action Network for Asian Americans, National Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans, National Federation of Filipino American Associations, OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Visual Communications.

With the loss of Fresh Off the Boat and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., ABC will be hard-pressed to maintain its grade next year.

In fact, with the 10th and final season of Hawaii Five-O, The Good Place, the single season of The Terror: Infamy largely set in a WWII Japanese American internment camp, the final installment of Man In the High Castle, the cancellation of the martial-arts dystopian Into the Badlands and the end Disney's Andi Mack, television will likely be lacking in an AAPI presence overall.

Long-running "Hawaii Five-O" with its diverse cast of secondary characters has said 'Aloha."

One area the networks can improve on is coverage of AAPI in the news.

“Given the backlash many Asian Americans have faced because of COVID-19, we urge the networks to also produce news stories on this rising concern as well as the remarkable contributions our communities have made to this country,” added Rita Pin Ahrens, Executive Director of OCA—Asian Pacific American Advocates, an APAMC member organization.

The AAPI audience is moving to other media for their news and entertainment. According to Nielsen, the Asian American community is the most plugged-in ethnic group and mostly depend on online sources for entertainment by AAPI artists, vlogs and communication via social media.

"After the mega success of Crazy Rich Asians,” says founding APAMC member Guy Aoki, “other Asian American projects have done well, including Always Be My Maybe, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and The Farewell. And the Korean drama Parasite became the first international film to win the Oscar for best picture. We don’t want to lose momentum and want to remind Hollywood that what we learned from those successes still holds true: people of all races are interested in stories about Asian people and are willing to pay money to see them."

Aoki adds: “We want the networks to re-commit to getting Asian American family shows back on the air, which people will gladly watch for free.”

Sunday Read: 'Hawaii Five-0' failed to reflect the real Hawaii

The latest version of 'Hawaii Five-O' will end this season.

By Akemi Tamanaha
ASAM NEWS
For one Asian American activist, Hawaii Five-0’s recent cancellation represents the end of years of trying and often failing to improve the show’s diversity.
Guy Aoki, an activist and media advocate who grew up in Hawaii, spoke with AsAmNews about his decades-long fight to help the cop drama reboot accurately reflect the state of Hawaii, where over 60 percent of its residents are Asian American and Pacific Islanders.

Aoki has spent many years pushing to increase Asian American and Pacific Islander representation on screen. He is the founding president of Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), a non-profit organization advocating for equitable representation of Asian Americans in media. He is also a founding member of the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition (APAMC), which works with CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox. The networks give APAMC data on the AAPIs they’ve hired each season. APAMC grades each networks’ performance in a number of categories and makes recommendations that are meant to improve representation.

The 1997 'Hawaii Five-O': A Show that Never Came to Be

Aoki’s fight to improve AAPI representation on Hawaii Five-O began with a 1997 continuation of the original show years before the 2011 reboot was developed. The 1997 show was not a reboot of the 1960s Five-O, but rather a continuation of the original story.

The series would retain some original cast members while also adding new leads. By that time, Jack Lord had already retired from acting due to his Alzheimer’s. In early 1997, CBS was casting for the pilot episode of this 1997 series.

According to Aoki, one of the lead descriptions was someone “from Southern California who worked at the FBI, moved to Hawaii and is accepted by the locals.” Another described someone “from California who moved to Hawaii.” The third description asked for someone who “looked like he stepped out of a GQ Magazine.”

Aoki contacted casting directors and asked why Asian Americans couldn’t fill these roles. He was told that the pilot was supposed to be shot in two weeks. In order for CBS to recast, the descriptions would have to be rewritten. This confused Aoki who saw nothing in the casting descriptions that would explicitly exclude Asian Americans from auditioning.

“This is the mindset of these people only seeing authority figures as being White even in a show in Hawaii,” Aoki said.

After raising his concerns, Aoki was granted a meeting with then-CBS President Leslie Moonves and other CBS executives. He praised Moonves for casting a Japanese American police captain in Nash Bridges, a show set in 1990s San Francisco where nearly a third of the population was Asian American. He challenged Moonves to accurately reflect reality in his new shows and Moonves accepted his challenge.

When the pilot aired, however, it starred Gary Busey, Russell Wong and Steven Flynn. Only one Asian American actor had been chosen for a new lead role. The pilot was not picked up.

The 2010 Reboot

Nearly 15 years later, CBS began working on the Hawaii Five-O reboot that viewers across the country now tune in to watch every Friday night.

Aoki got a hold of a script for the reboot in early 2010. He contacted Peter Golden, who was head of casting at CBS and gave him a few suggestions for the lead. He floated names like Jason Scott Lee and Daniel Dae Kim for the role of Chin Ho Kelly. He suggested that perhaps half Japanese American actor Ian Anthony Dale could play McGarrett.

“I said, ‘Look, you have the opportunity to not repeat the racial hierarchy of the original Hawaii Five-O. You don’t have to have two main White actors and the next two be Asian and Pacific Islanders,'” Aoki said. “But that’s exactly what they did.”

Golden and the showrunners cast two White men as their leads: Alex O’Loughlin as Steve McGarrett and Scott Caan, son of James Caan, as Danny Williams. O’Loughlin had previously starred in Moonlight and Three Rivers, two shows for CBS that flopped.

“This just goes to show White actors can fail over and over again and somebody will still give them another chance,” Aoki said. “If you had an Asian American actor starring in two flops with the same network he wouldn’t be given a third chance.”

CBS cast Daniel Dae Kim as Chin Ho Kelly and Grace Park as Kono Kalakaua. Kim had risen to mainstream prominence for his role in the critically acclaimed show Lost. Park had gained popularity for starring in Battlestar Galactica. They cast Aoki’s suggestion Ian Anthony Dale as Kono’s love interest Adam, the son of a Yakuza boss.

According to Aoki, the president said that he considered all four to be the stars of the show. Aoki, however, knew this wasn’t true. The order in which the names were listed reflected the order of the character’s importance Aoki said. He understood that the show would focus on the dynamic between Danny and Steve and the personal, familial lives of both men more than it would for Kim and Park.

Both Kim’s and Park’s true value to CBS was reflected in their 2017 pay dispute. In July 2017, both Kim and Park announced that they were leaving the show after they could not reach an agreement on their contracts. Reports at the time said that Kim and Park were seeking pay parity with their White colleagues O’Loughlin and CAAN. Executives said that both actors were offered “unprecedented raises,” but chose that they both ultimately walk away after seven seasons on Five-0.

Aoki said he was surprised when he heard Kim and Park were demanding equal pay but not surprised that showrunners refused. His goal had always been to subvert the racial hierarchy in casting, which may have prevented the dispute in the first place.

“This would not have been an issue if they had been the stars,” Aoki said.

.Grace Park, left, and Daniel Dae Kim, right, left Hawaii Five-0 amid a pay disparity dispute.

The show added Ian Anthony Dale as a main cast member for Season 8. Up until that season, Dale had only been a recurring cast member who played Kono’s love interest. The show also added Meaghan Rath who is half South Asian and Beulah Koale who is of Samoan descent as main cast members.

It wasn’t just the main cast that concerned Aoki. He says he also struggled to get CBS to improve AAPI representation in more minor roles. During the first few seasons, it added AAPI recurring characters like medical examiner Max (Masi Oka), shrimp truck owner Kamekona (Taylor Wily) and Kamekona’s cousin Flippa (Shawn Mokuahi-Garnett). Oka, however, also left after seven seasons.

While CBS cast a few AAPI actors in recurring roles, Aoki noticed during the debut of the first season that they struggled to incorporate AAPI in certain minor roles. The first two governors of Hawaii, for example, were played by a White woman and a Black man.

The show also struggled to incorporate AAPI guest actors. Often AAPI guest actors were forced to play suspects and villains. Many of those villains were killed and the actors couldn’t be used again because the audience had already seen their faces. Rarely did AAPIs guest star as characters that helped Five-0 solve a case.

After the debut of the first season in the fall of 2010, Aoki contacted Moonves and Golden. They arranged a meeting for October 31, 2010, to discuss the possibility of casting more AAPIs, specifically more AAPIs from Hawaii as guest stars.

The meeting was initially canceled after Aoki sent CBS a letter detailing his concerns. The letter included a column written by Wayne Harada in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that expressed concerns over the way AAPIs were largely cast as villains and suspects. It also included comments from locals expressing similar concerns.

Aoki was told his letter was not well received. Now, Golden wanted him to provide a list of Hawaiian actors who were just as good as someone like Tom Sizemore. At this point, Aoki had not lived in Hawaii for nearly 30 years. He reached out to casting assistants in Hawaii and did his best to create a list. After he provided the list, the meeting went ahead as scheduled.

At the meeting, Aoki says he was mocked for including actors were no longer alive. This frustrated him. Finding and casting AAPI actors, he felt, should be the job of the people actually working on the show. Although his list might have been undermined, Aoki insisted that there were great AAPI actors out there.

“I told them, ‘For every White actor you’re using as a guest star there is an Asian American equivalent who could have done just as well and who would have made it look like this is actually in Hawaii and not Idaho,'” Aoki said.

After the meeting, the show held “a series of panel discussions, headshot workshops and auditions at the University of Hawaii at Manoa” in the summer of 2012. The sessions held at the university were meant to sniff out local talent.

Despite those sessions, Aoki said that in the earlier seasons the patterns continued. In 2013, he wrote about his frustrations in a column for Rafu Shimpo, a Japanese American newspaper based in Los Angeles. Lenkov, he says, read the column and sent Aoki an email defending the showrunners.

In the summer of 2015, Aoki had a conference call with the CBS head of diversity and another person in current programming who was in charge of Five-0. He said he began to see small changes when the sixth season aired that fall.

Still, some things have remained the same. Aoki says he wishes they had cast more AAPI guest stars to assist Five-0 in their investigations.

“And in the history of the show (240 episodes when the series ends), I can only recall one episode where an API guest star tagged along with the team to help catch the bad guy,” Aoki added.

Representation Behind the Camera

As Hollywood struggles to increase minority representation, diversity behind the camera as well as in front of the camera has become a topic of conversation. On Five-0, producers and writers consult with Hawaiian cultural advisors to ensure their scripts are accurate, but Aoki pointed out that the show has hired very few AAPI writers and directors over the years.

“How can you be a network that says you care about diversity and there are several seasons of Hawaii Five-0 where Peter Lenkov did not hire a single Asian American writer or director?” Aoki said. “How hard is that to do?”

Five-0 has hired a few AAPI writers in later seasons, but a large portion of the writing staff is not AAPI. According to IMDB, the people who appear to lead the writing team are Peter Lenkov, Leonard Freeman, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. These are the only four writers that have been given writing credits for every episode of the show.

Aoki said he once suggested the name of a Hawaiian writer to a member of the Five-0 writing staff at a meeting with CBS showrunners. The Five-0 writer said that the Hawaiian writer could help ensure them make sure they were using the correct Hawaiian words.

“Well, that’s not the only contribution a Hawaiian writer would give to the show,” Aoki said. “He could have added a lot more to the plot. He could have told you a lot more about the attitude of locals towards tourists. There are so many things they could have written about.”

What Diversity Looks Like on Shows Set in Hawaii

CBS has championed Five-0 as an example of diversity. In 2017, Lenkov defended the diversity of the cast after Park and Kim left the show.

“Over our 168 episodes, Hawaii Five-0 has and will continue to showcase one of the most diverse casts on TV: Chi McBride, Jorge Garcia, Mark Dacascos, Ian Anthony Dale, Will Yun Lee, Masai Oka, Dennis Chun, Taylor Wily, Shawn Garnett, Kimee Balmilero, Kekoa Kekumano, Shawn Anthony Thomsen, as well as Daniel and Grace … all of these great talents regulars or recurring,” Lenkov said in a statement he posted on Twitter. I’m proud of that roster and of our show.”

Five-0’s AAPI representation is unprecedented when compared to several other network television shows. But Five-0 is also a show set in Hawaii where over 60 percent of residents are Asian American and Pacific Islanders. What may seem like an “overabundance” of AAPIs to mainland viewers is very much the norm in Hawaii.

So it’s natural that people like Aoki, who grew up in Hawaii, might be frustrated when they see White men running the show in front of and behind the camera.

“Look I grew up in Hilo Hawaii,” Aoki said. “The mayor was Japanese American. The head judge was Japanese American. The civil defense head was Korean American. In reality, we run the state. To constantly have White guys running the show is just patronizing and really an insult because the reality is we are in charge of the state.”

Aoki, however, also pointed out that CBS is currently bungling another opportunity to create a network television show that reflects the diversity of Hawaii. In 2018, CBS aired the first season of a Magnum P.I. reboot, which is set in Hawaii.

The new Magnum P.I. is also being produced by Lenkov. Aoki says that when the show announced initial casting, none of the four leads were AAPI. Later, they added AAPI cast members Amy Hill and Tim Kang.

FACEBOOK

The original 'Hawaii Five-O' starred James MacArthur and Jack Lord.

Diversity at CBS

CBS has had a diversity problem that extends beyond Hawaii Five-0 and Magnum P.I. Last year former manager of CBS Entertainment Diversity and Inclusion Whitney Davis wrote an open letter to CBS about its “white problem,” which was published in Variety. Davis published the letter in April 2019 after she decided to leave CBS upon reflecting on the company’s lack of diversity.

As a member of the Diversity and Inclusion department, in her letter, Davis alleged that she did not believe Golden was committed to casting minority performers.

“It is my opinion that Peter Golden doesn’t find minority performers to be as talented as White actors,” Davis wrote. “He continues to reject the outstanding talent from the showcase because they aren’t good enough, they’re too green or they aren’t “right” for CBS.”

In 2016, minority advocates criticized CBS for its nearly all-white programming. Casting executives decided to bring in 12 performers of color they had carefully selected to do workshops and screentests. Davis says that Golden expressed disappointment that none of the performers “popped.”

“Two years later, one of the participants, KiKi Layne, is the star of Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, for which she has received rave reviews,” Davis wrote.

Davis concluded her letter by asking CBS to make strides towards improving diversity within the network. Aoki expressed similar sentiments.

“It comes down to not that we don’t have enough talented people of color actors it’s the people at the networks or at the movie studios who decide to use them not,” Aoki said.

Golden and Moonves, two of the men who played key roles in Aoki’s long saga with CBS, are no longer with the network. Moonves announced his resignation in September 2018 after following numerous sexual harassment and abuse allegations.

In May 2019, Golden stepped down as head of casting after complaints from CBS workers like Davis and other complaints made against him surfaced during the Moonves sexual misconduct investigations. Golden had worked as a casting executive at CBS since 1996.

A changing of the old guard might bring new opportunities. Aoki hopes that one-day network executives will produce a show set in Hawaii with an AAPI star.

“Moving forward, this is a challenge that CBS — and all the networks, for that matter — must reflect upon and take steps to correct,” Aoki said.

'Fresh Off the Boat' to bid viewers a fond farewell Friday after six seasons

ABC

Behind the scenes of 'Fresh Off the Boat,' Hudson Yang and Randall Park go over their lines.

By Louis Chan

ASAM NEWS

The Asian American community is reacting with both sadness and appreciation in anticipation of the series finale of Fresh Off the Boat airing Friday night (February 21) at 8/7 Central on ABC.

Sixteen-year-old Hudson Yang who plays Eddie on the program debuted with the rest of the cast at the age of 11. The thought of life without the program is hitting him hard.

“It’s weird—it’s kind of like waking up and not knowing who you’re going to be next week! I know I’m going to miss it, I miss it already!” he told AsAmNews.

He isn’t the only one who will miss it.

“It’s really difficult knowing Fresh Off the Boat will leave the airwaves after Friday night,” said Guy Aoki, founding member of both the Media Action Network for Asian Americans and founding member of the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition.

Aoki told AsAmNews he saw the pilot script back in 2014, a year before the program premiered. The network wanted APAMC’s feedback.

“Was the title of the show offensive? One of the characters uses a racial slur. Is that OK? I gave two pages of notes and all of the scenes that I felt didn’t work, were excised. When I saw the filmed pilot months ahead of its broadcast, I knew this was something I could get behind,” Aoki said.

Asians Americans took over social media the night FOTB premiered in February 2015. They held Twitter parties quoting from the script, applauding the performances and even shedding happy tears over the story line. The show network executives likely debuted nervously was trending.

“Fresh Off The Boat was a truly groundbreaking television series in several ways,” said Daniel Mayeda Chair, Asian Pacific American Media Coalition. “FOTB told a very specific and authentic story of Taiwanese American immigrants. And it was told from the perspective of Asian Americans, as reflected in the pilot episode when Eddie Huang, trying to fit in, asked his mother to take him to the market so he could buy “White people lunch” to take to school. Asian Americans had never seen such an unapologetic portrayal of ourselves on network TV and we reveled in it.”

The show also proved a national audience would watch a show starring and centered around an Asian American family with a predominantly Asian American cast.

According to Aoki, FOTB indexed at 100 percent among White audiences. In other words, 60 percent of the nation is White. 60 percent of FOTB’s audience was also White. Blacks indexed at 105%. Asian Americans also over indexed.

ABC

Part of the final episode of FOTB is the graduation of Eddie Huang (Hudson Yang)

The show catapulted stars Constance Wu (Jessica Huang) and Randall Park (Louis Huang) into stardom. Wu went onto to star in Crazy Rich Asians and Hustlers. Park is seen frequently in both the Marvel and DC comic universe. Most recently he starred alongside Ali Wong in Always be My Maybe. He also made his directing debut for the series finale of Fresh Off the Boat.

Eight months after FOTB debut, ABC also premiered Dr. Ken starring Ken Jeong. Quantico, Andi Mack and Killing Eve would follow.

“I started at CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) in March 2015, right after Fresh off the Boat premiered, so the show has always been a clear demarcation for me,” Michelle K. Sugihara, CAPE Executive Director, said to AsAmNews. “It’s amazing how much has happened since then in terms of representation in media, but we still have further to go. I’m excited to see what this pilot season brings.”

The show will end Friday night with an hour-long double episode.

“I wish we were still going on because there are a lot more stories to tell, but the good thing is … it feels like we have a lot more of us telling them now, not just one show,” said Hudson Yang.

Scarlett Johansson fails to save 'Ghost In The Shell' from so-so reviews

Scarlett Johansson plays a Japanese woman who is "improved" by making her white.

THE REVIEWS are in and box office receipts have been counted after the first weekend of the Ghost in the Shell debuted on American theaters and it doesn't bode well for the sci-fi action feature.

First off, Scarlett Johansson has got playing an artificial being down pat. In case you didn't pick it up, I mean that with a note of sarcasm. After playing a 'bot in the movies Her and in Lucy, playing a cyborg was a sinch since the role calls for a minimum of emoting.

The casting brouhaha over whitewashing - casting a white woman in a Japanese role  - required an explanation that is not in the anime originals. Major Motoko Kusanagi  is in fact, Japanese but her new outer shell is a white female. Uh ... OK.

That raises another concern even more insidious than whitewashing. By making the Major white, is that considered an "improvement" over the original Japanese body? The idealization of Major's synthetic body serves to advance Eurocentric (white) standards of beauty, something that eye surgeons in Asian countries are already too familiar as their patients seek to emulate the round-eye look.

But, I digress. The lukewarm reception was reflected at the box office with Ghost garnering a weak $19 million in its domestic opening[ behind Boss Baby and Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

Internationally, it fared much better, finishing No. 1 in 11 markets, including the Hong Kong,China and Japan markets. Despite that success, because of its poor showing in the American market, It is now expected that the movie will not recoup the $110 million cost of production.

What is the big difference between the U.S. audiences and overseas? Since the casting of Johansson was announced, the movie has been under a cloud of controversy over the whitewashing of the Major's role. The choice of box-office star Johansson in the lead role was an issue only on this side of the Pacific.

The criticism was recently and especially strong in social media where AAPI users have greater influence than on the pages of mainstream media. The one certain thing the criticism did, it raised the discussion of whitewashing beyond the AAPI community, which has struggled with the issue for decades.

“Many in Japan have been so brainwashed by Western culture that they’ve developed an inferiority complex about their own. They assume that in order for an American film to be successful, it has to star a white actor," Guy Aoki, founding president of Media Action Network for Asian American, told The Hollywood Reporter. "Tell that to Zhang Yimou, who spent $150 million directing The Great Wall starring Matt Damon only to see it flop worldwide and receive terrible reviews. He’s not going to make his money back.”

The anime version of the Ghost.

Johansson named the top grossing actor of 2016 by Forbes, tried to defend herself in the March issue of Marie Claire magazine.

"I certainly would never presume to play another race of a person," she said. "Diversity is important in Hollywood, and I would never want to feel like I was playing a character that was offensive." That's a good rationalization, but her defense wasn't good enough for the AAPI community.

Johansson, who facies herself a progressive politically, just didn't "get it." She couldn't put herself in the shoes of the Asian/American actresses who were not even considered for the role. How can AAPI actors ever become "bankable" if they are never given an opportunity to "break through" with a substantive role?

“Apparently, in Hollywood, Japanese people can’t play Japanese people anymore,” quips MANAA President Robert Chan. The whitewashing controversy wasn't the only reason the film got such poor reviews, but it did cast the project in a negative light even before the first frame was edited. By the time the project was ready to be seen, critics already had high expectations because of the questions raised by social media networkersParamount could tell by the Google searches it was monitoring that in the final week before the film opened, potential moviegoers were checking out reviews before making a decision in higher than usual numbers.

Initially, the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score rose as high as 71 percent positive reviews, based on the first enthusiastic fanboy reactions and critiques from Europe. But as the week progressed and more reviews poured in, the movie’s score began to plummet, eventually falling to 42 percent. Ghost’s tracking, which initially suggested the film might open in the high-$20 million range, maybe even cross over into low-$30 million territory, hit a wall.

“It was very Rotten Tomatoes-sensitive. Lots of people were seeking out information about the film,” says Colligan. “And we got hit pretty hard by the print journalists.”

The reviews have not been that good. Get a load of this sampling

This is smart, hard-lacquered entertainment that may just trump the original films for galloping storytelling momentum and sheer, coruscating visual excitement. Full review
- Guy Lodge, Variety

... a heavily computer-generated enterprise with more body than brains, more visuals than ideas, as if the original movie’s hard drive had been wiped clean of all that was dark, poetic and mystifying.
- Jordan Mintzer, The Hollywood Reporter

Enjoy the credits because they offer some of the more arresting, inventive images in this visually cluttered yet often disappointingly drab movie. Full review
- Manohla Dargis, NYTimes

So heavily derivative it doesn’t feel like anything new, and there’s little depth beneath that slick surface. But it’s solid and attractive, at least, with a retro appeal to its cyberpunk stylings. Full review
- Dan Jolin, Empire

"Ghost in the Shell" struggles to dig below the surface of its thought-provoking concepts and bring real depth to its striking visuals. Full review
- Sandy Schaefer, Screen Rant

The filmmakers think little of the emotional and intellectual connection fans already have with this property, and have put all their chips on the aesthetic. Full review
- Emily Yoshida, Vulture

One can hardly blame cyborgs for not coming across like flesh-and-blood characters but it’s not easy to care what happens to any of the protagonists since they so rarely generate moments of human emotion.
- Lisa Nesselson, Screen International