Annihilation comes out on February 23rd. The trailers have been out there and widely discussed for months now, and basically the film looks like a really terrible acid trip. The cast seems interesting: Natalie Portman plays the lead, and the ensemble includes Oscar Isaac, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson and Gina Rodriguez. But there’s a problem, apparently. An Asian-American advocacy group says that Portman’s lead character should have been played by an Asian-American actress, and Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character should have been played by a Native American actress.
As the trailer for the upcoming movie Annihilation suggests, Area X seems to be fundamentally altering the nature of anything, or anyone, who ventures inside its borders. But unless Area X is switching around everybody’s race all willy-nilly, advocacy group Media Action Network for Asian Americans says the film’s director has some explaining to do.
“Writer/director Alex Garland is not being true and honest to the characters in the book,” MANAA board member Alieesa Badreshia told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement, referencing the source material of the same name written by Jeff VanderMeer. “He exploits the story but fails to take advantage of the true identities of each character. Hollywood rarely writes prominent parts for Asian American and American Indian characters, and those roles could’ve bolstered the careers of women from those communities.”
American Indians in Film and Television founder Sonny Skyhawk echoed the sentiment, telling THR, “We are not surprised by the Whack-a-Mole diversity replacement that goes on; just when you finish objecting to one white-washed casting, another one pops up.”
While the Annihilation cast might feature several performers of color, including Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Benedict Wong, and Sonoya Mizuno (who movie-goers might remember as Kyoko in Garland’s 2014 film Ex Machina), the group points to the characters played by Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh as evidence of whitewashing. In the sequel to Annihilation, author VanderMeer describes the trilogy’s protagonist, portrayed by Portman in the film, as having physical characteristics including “high cheekbones that spoke to the strong Asian heritage on one side of her family.” Meanwhile, Leigh’s character is characterized as being half white, half American Indian.
In an interview with Nerdist in December, Garland denied claims that he had whitewashed the film’s main character. “I did not know that stuff,” he said, intimating that he had drawn his script only from the information provided in the trilogy’s first book. “It would not be in my nature to whitewash anything. That just wouldn’t be like me. I read a book and I adapted it because I thought the book was amazing.”
Since I haven’t read these books, I’ll ask book readers: was Portman’s character really never described physically in the first book? Was JJL’s character never described physically in the first book? That seems odd that it would take the second book for a character to be revealed as Asian-American or someone mixed-Asian. But the whole “I never even heard about that” is a weird excuse from the guy who was tasked with adapting the work of fiction, you know? It’s not like this is some historical film – this is 100% science fiction and they could have done whatever they wanted and cast the film however they wanted, and they could have chosen to adhere to the original author’s racial descriptors. We’re past the moment where the default lead of every film has to be a white person. For Jennifer Jason Leigh’s role, they really missed their chance to cast noted Cherokee actress Blake Lively though.
Photos courtesy of ‘Annihilation’.
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