Good points. Which begs the question, if she’s alive but in suspended animation, what’s keeping her alive? She’s not eating, there’s no IV…wtf?
It’s magic.
Let’s not forget the context: this was Mr. Dinklage riffing off the cuff on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. Trying to be entertaining. Grandstanding.
Mr. Dinklage is by now of significant power in the industry. If he had actually cared there were ways he could have proceeded.
Odds are that if he called for a private meeting with the powers at Disney he could have found out how the characters were actually planned to be handled (rather than how he imagined they would be), and odds are gotten some appropriate short community member involvement in consultative capacity.
This was not a thought out action intended to impact. It was having a fun rant on WTF.
So for kicks I found the ep and found the section in which it is said. Have a listen. It’s an hour 18 so just the section is fine!
Start around 50 to 51 minutes in for context (the lead in is about the balance with comedy, balancing being able to be provocative without lazily being “anti-woke”) … to Dinklage pontificating about hypocrisy (with some self mockery in the “haven’t I been loud enough”) at about minute 54 on. He doesn’t know what studio is even doing the movie. Which of course he could have realized if he thought about it, but …
This was not a call for action. Or something he intended to act on. Or anything fully thought out or considered. It was just an off hand thought nearly an hour into a long rambling somewhat interesting back and forth conversation.
You can start at 54:30 and listen for just one and a half minute, but continuing through 58 or 59 has some irony as he complains about those who beat up on him for playing a Latino that they didn’t know the whole story but knee jerked. And he then offered up the possibility that could do it well he didn’t know.
Not really a rant but clearly not more than a conversational thought.
True, but the drinking game and the dwarf tossing were a bit too much.
The (mostly unemployed ) actors yes. Read my earlier cite. They made it clear- “Dinklage is not King dwarf”.
Well, sure. But those that are actors would like to eat.
Several actors, including Dylan Postl, Jeff Brooks, and Katrina Kemp, spoke to the Daily Mail to say that they did not want the dwarf roles in “Snow White” canceled… “When he was cast as a little person role in Lord of the Rings or in a Game of Thrones or in Elf or this that or the other thing… those checks cashed just fine,” he continued. “He had no issue then. But now he wants to be progressive? Come on man.”
“I don’t know if Peter Dinklage is still acting or if he is done now but I don’t know… it’s pretty selfish,” he went on. “People came before him. If it is his mindset that he wants to be the only one then you gotta grow up man.”
“It’s not helping our community it’s taking jobs away from our community that are very few and far between as it is,” he added.
## Dwarf Actors Say That Dwarves Are Not As ‘Offensive’ As Some People Think
Not really. Anybody can do a Snow White movie, and many other than Disney have. This is one of the most recent:
Just don’t call Dinklage an “Elf”.
I’m inclined to think this is yet another overly PC woke nothingburger. I’ve seen the original animated Snow White fairly recently and I was under the impression the Dwarves were a race of humanoids, much like Gimli and Thorin Oakenshield and his band from Tolkien’s works. Humans have five fingers on each hand, not four.
Or is the concern that this film will perpetuate a common stereotype about people with Dwarfism in that they tend to be brave, boisterous folk with thick beards who often work in mines?
Reasonable point.
Still. He was not reacting to the old Disney classic, just to the concept that some studio would be progressive in casting a Latina while, presumptively not even considering that the dwarf characters could be problematic. Debate about how the Disney classic handled the cartoon characters is moot. He hadn’t cared about this issue enough to even know what studio was doing the project or anything about it more than the casting choice for Snow.
Thoughts that he was trying to preemptively get a dwarf-free version made are as much a fantasy as the woodland creatures helping Snow cook and clean.
Seems to me this was a storyline on Life’s Too Short, where Warwick Davis was running a talent agency for dwarves but keeping the best roles for himself.
It appears Disney has managed to box themselves into a position where they cannot win. This is, of course, wholly consistent with their recent run of bad movie decisions. Nothing good could have come from trying to remake this, though in fairness I am sure pre-production started before some of their recent failures.
I’m going to predict that the movie will be way too long, have some cringingly bad CGI, and have unnecessary songs added.
I feel bad for Rachel Zegler, who seems like a perfectly nice person and is very talented, but who, if this movie flops, will have, through no fault of her own, been the star of two epic commercial disasters.
Indiana Jones, Antman, and Elemental have been losers. I’m not sure though that the problem was that making them were bad decisions versus poor execution.
More to the point, execution is what will make a Snow movie “win” or “lose” and it is still possible that they can deliver a creative funny and touching movie with new twists on the story we think we all know.
Mind you I doubt they will, but that pessimism holds based on recent poor execution, not on the nature of this product itself.
She’s part of picking the movies she’s doing. And she’s chosen two creative redos of past beloved movies rather than something completely fresh. If that tactic flips twice she’s not devoid of responsibility for those choices.
So, no.
Yes, the link from the Daily Mail, which interviewed three actors who are dwarfs and one agent who is not a dwarf, and who paraphrased one of the actors saying that “she does not pin the blame on Dinklage.” That is not even remotely close to a reliable cite that “the (mostly unemployed) actors…seem to be very angry,” much less that the “dwarfism community” seems to be very angry. Come on.
Now I’m imagining a world where the Puerto Rican population complained about their traditional depiction in West Side Story and all of the Sharks were replaced with random-raced magical creatures. Which, actually, I think I would watch. (And now I’m imagining a CGI version where the Sharks and Jets are actually anthropomorphic sharks and jets, and I’d watch that, too.)
Here ya go:
Three – West Side Story and Shazam 2 were both box office flops. And those are the only two acting credits on her IMDB page.
She’s an actress. Her job is to act; the movie’s failures aren’t her fault at all. She’s not positioned to pick her roles, anyway.
“The Little Mermaid” will break even if it’s lucky, so that’s also no success. Well, it’s hard to say where one problem ends and another begins. “Elemental” is different, of course, in that it’s an original story, not “Content for a franchise,” as distinct from Indiana Jones 5 and Ant Man 3, ongoing examples of Disney’s “Remember this character? Remember? Come look!” approach to moviemaking.
“Snow White” didn’t start with someone saying “hey, we could do something different with this,” it started with Disney bigwigs stating “Make live action remakes of all our cartoons” and eventually Snow White came up. They barrelled into these controversies not because they wanted to insult anyone or make a statement but because they were checking off the boxes of “Cartoon Movies We Have Made That Were Successful” and it was the turn of Snow White. Lilo and Stitch is in pre production, and has already started a lot of anger over racially insensitive casting. Apparently The Aristocats and Hercules are planned as well.
Yup. An actor has no choice but to accept any role offered.
Exactly. Because, as already pointed out, historically doing that has worked out very well for them, relatively few duds and several a billion box office plus. And toy/clothing/other marketing revenue on top.
Again look at this year’s previously linked top box office number movies. They are almost all playing off “remember this character”, from the video games, from the iconic doll (soon), sequels, so on. The new idea is riskier.
On the scale of possible projects to greenlight they have seemed lower risk.
A few flops that lose substantial sums may get them to reconsider, but the hope of pulling out another billion dollar one may push that change of course out. Especially when the new idea one, Elemental, also did badly. Even though it should have been a safe bet, being Pixar.
This is not just Disney. Saying yes to “Everywhere Everything All at Once” took lots of nerve.
Well Finding Nemo and the Planes franchise were both produced by Disney. So I think it could happen.
Why didn’t they just do the LOTR route with the Dwarves??*
- Height challenged people cant win. Cast actual dwarves as dwarves and its ‘problematic’. Don’t and you could argue that one of the few roles as such are being given to abled people.