Sometimes the situation is so pathetically ridiculous, you just have to shake your head and laugh. In response to the widely-decried casting of Scarlett Johansson in the live-action remake of Ghost in the Shell, here's a funny video from the folks at RocketJump, in which they imagine the behind-the-scenes special effects tinkering it takes to turn the movie's white star into a Asian robot cyborg.
I wonder if they made this before or after news broke that the studio actually did commission visual effects tests to make Scarlett Johansson and several of movie's other non-Asian actors look "more Asian."
When asked why they don't just cast an Asian actress in the role of Ghost in the Shell's Major Motoko Kusanagi, the nefarious movie executive (played by Freddie Wong) drops the cold, hard truth:
"Because, as a studio executive, the immorality of whitewashing a beloved work of Japanese culture is outweighed by my fear that audiences won't want to watch a movie starring an Asian woman. And I don't have the balls to take that risk. Besides, whatever political outrage this decision evokes doesn't materially effect how much money I make."
And boom. It's gong time.