I generally agree, but I don’t think Theron or McConaughey did such a stellar job. They were monotone and leaden. Professional voice actors of any race would have been better.

I don’t know about you but I heard a lot of complaints about TLA, and not just because of the main actors. All the actors were typecast e.g. waterbenders were white, earthbenders Asian, etc.

I personally agree that actor capability should come first and foremost, but the issue is representation. White actors, European/American setting, that stuff isn’t upsetting because that’s already the vast majority of representation in entertainment. The problem here is that you have a prime opportunity to cast Asian actors–a population thoroughly underrepresented throughout the entertainment industry–and instead the cast is white.

I am not american, neither am I asian, neither do I live in America. Kubo was a fantastic film, I cried, the message was pure, the stop motion was incredible, set design..animation…characters..this movie really made me happy. That being said, even though I was jumping with joy over this movie, in the back of mind was the thought that the movie was japanese and the cast was, once again, white. So why? When it comes to animation, if you really pay attention to it, it is never about how famous a voice actor is. Really, that rarely helps. If you’re a good voice actor then people will remember you, if you sucked then people wouldn’t bother with you. It is about how good the voice actor is.

That being said: this talk about the company wanting publicity with big name actors is upsetting. You had charlize theron and matthew mcconaughey (huge stars) and people in my country still don’t know this movie is in theatres or know anything about the movie on the whole. But when they do watch it…no one cares about how famous the actor is. Was it done well? Yes..well somewhat to be honest. So, why not just cast a more diverse group of actors? It’s tiring, and instead of relying on the fame status, they should try to bring out new actors, divorced actors. I think animation is a great platform for that!

And please when debating the point of race in entertainment stop with the having to fish out the non white actors in animation etc.. Its actually very disrespectful. “oh look big hero six had two half asians..you seeeee theyre being diverse!” Stop. now. That fact that you had to do that…really…

Anyway have a good day.

I thought the Moon King as a dig at religion in general – by trying to become perfect and cutting himself off from the world, he cut himself off from the very things that made him human. The message I got from the film is that an eternity in Heaven isn’t worth it if it means giving up your humanity here on Earth.

I don’t think the Moon King was a matter of “reinforcing Western values” so much as it was the writers telling the story they wanted to tell. Honestly, I think a lot of Christian families would be upset with the film if they really stopped to think about what it was saying.

Some sense. Thank you!

Couldn’t agree more!

I don’t think it’s going to be released in Japan.