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In fairness to Tilda Swinton, they decided to entirely rewrite the character to be a Celtic woman instead of a Tibetan man. This was probably to avoid being censored in China, but getting away from the racist 1930s, "oriental mysticism," trope was probably a good idea. It's certainly a lot better than letting Jonny Depp pretend to be a Native American because he's one-eighth Cherokee.
I remember reading he was one third German and sometimes I cannot sleep at night because I am trying to figure out the math. This has been like 15 years ago and it still bugs me.
Sprinkle in a little incest and we are good to go.
I also have no idea, I thought it was all halves of halves.
You can get some odd fractions by two parents having similar lineages. Like, if your mother is Irish, and your great-grandmother on your father's side is Irish, you would be five-eighths Irish. I'm having trouble finding a combination that gives you thirds, though.
Doesn’t exist, 3 is prime. No combination of 2^-n will get you a 3 in the denominator.
…unless somewhere along the tree there’s a person who shows up twice.
Gotcha. Three-eighths is roughly one-third, so I guess that? One-quarter German on one side, one-eighth on the other?
That rounding error would be small enough that most people would consider it less bad than incest, maybe.
It is a rounding and reduction of genetic markers.
21/64 Germanic markers equals 1/3 German in speech because everybody hates the twenty-one sixty-fourths German guy.
If you really want to get into the weeds, you get one half of your chromosomes from your mother, and one half from your father (most of the time, oh boy!), which should start the train rolling on the 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16.... BUT there is a chance for crossover events, where the chromosomes can, well, cross over each other and exchange parts of themselves. So your dad should be passing on 1/4 of your genes from his mother, and 1/4 of your genes from his father (and even that isn't 100% true, the only certain one would be if you're a male, you're going to get your grandfather's Y gene, you could get 23 of your grandmother's chromosomes and none from your grandfather), but he might pass on 52/106 of your grandmother's genes (not chromosomes, to those of you counting along at home... and I'm not saying you only have 106 genes, good lord) to you, and 54/106 of your grandfather's genes.
And that's just getting started on genetic funkiness.
If it makes you feel better, "one third" is realistically a reduced precision approximation of something like 23/64 (from a genealogical perspective) or near 33% of certain markers on a genetic panel.
I mean I guess that's what they referred to, some approximation, but it still breaks my brain every time I think about it
Just like I once watched a video titled something like "this boy did the unthinkable" and then he did something very thinkable (he just ate someone's face) and I am still mad about that
Liam Neeson is also like Samual L Jackson.
I don’t give a shit was race the character was originally, the character is about to be transformed into a next level badass.
I have mixed feelings about Liam Neeson in that role. His performance is great, and given that they got rid of the whole, "immortal genius from the Islamic Golden Age," backstory, I guess the character's race is less important. It feels very strange that an Irish guy is somehow the leader of a group of Asian ninjas, though.
The Sam Jackson/Nick Fury story is pretty hilarious. When Marvel created the Ultimate Universe in the comics, they changed a lot of characters' backstories. One of those changes was making Nick Fury black, and one of their artists started drawing him looking a lot like Sam Jackson. Jackson talked to his agents, and Marvel was basically like, "Well, instead of suing us, would Mr. Jackson like to play the character in any future projects?"
It feels very strange that an Irish guy is somehow the leader of a group of Asian ninjas, though.
I don't think League of Shadows are Asian only. It's an organization founded by an Arab, is headquartered in Himalayas, and uses techniques from Far East Asia. It's clear it's a diverse cult of terrorists.
That's definitely the impression I got in the third movie. In the first one, we only see the Himalayan headquarters, and it seems like there's a white guy inexplicably in charge of an all Asian team of ninja assassins (although I think I remember one black guy being there when they burned Wayne manor).
Well, the Ariel thing is basically the same kind of 'rewrite'.
Also Ariel isn't even "white"... she's a mermaid
Well, I think it's a bit different. The Little Mermaid takes place in an unidentified kingdom on the surface (it seems vaguely Italian or Mediterranean, I guess?) and an underwater Atlantian kingdom, so race doesn't matter. The original Dr. Strange comics have all sorts of uncomfortable racial and religious tropes; it's about a white guy who finds magical order Tibetan monks, not only learns their magic, but becomes even better than them at it, and moves to New York with an Asian man-servant named Wong who serves him tea. Changing up the races and backstory on that one isn't just acceptable, it's advisable.
Exactly Ariel is basically fish,
It’s certainly a lot better than letting Jonny Depp pretend to be a Native American because he’s one-eighth Cherokee.
"Johnny Depp made honorary member of Comanche nation" - TheGuardian
So maybe he's not Cherokee or Creek, but he's definitely Comanche now.
Yeah, but they did that specifically because Disney convinced the Comanche to adopt him before the movie came out. He certainly wouldn't be a member of that tribe if he hadn't been cast as a member of that tribe.
Why can't Disney be the company we thought they were when we were kids,