10 Times Hollywood Whitewashed Minority Characters And Sparked Outrage

10. The Ancient One - Doctor Strange (2016)

This casting was so bad that eventually, director Kevin Feige accepted that he committed a mistake in the casting for the role of the Ancient One. The character, who serves as Doctor Strange's mentor, was changed to a Celtic woman and played by Tilda Swinton, but in source materials, he was a male Tibetan sorcerer.

9. Motoko Kusanagi - Ghost in the Shell (2017)

Scarlett Johansson was cast as the lead character, who had a distinctly Japanese identity in the original manga and anime. The controversy centered on Hollywood's inability to trust a non-white actress to lead a major sci-fi blockbuster, a decision that led to the film's financial and critical failure.

8. Allison Ng - Aloha (2015)

Emma Stone was cast as Allison Ng. Director Cameron Crowe admitted he made a poor choice, and the film was heavily criticized for casting a white actress in a role meant to reflect the diverse population of Hawaii. The casting was cited as disrespectful to the culture the film was set in.

7. Maria - West Side Story (1961)

Maria, played by Natalie Wood, was a Latina character and for some reason, the filmmakers decided to chose Wood for the role even though she didn't look remotely similar to the ethnicity she was playing. n addition, the original film used excessive makeup to darken the skin of some non-Latino actors playing Puerto Rican characters. The musical direction was good but the bad casting forever remained as a scar.

6. The Aang Gang (Aang, Katara, Sokka) - The Last Airbender (2010)

this was unforgivable for a movie trying to cover a franchise so big as Avatar: The Airbender. Director M. Night Shyamalan cast white actors (Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone) as the heroic leads, while people of color were largely relegated to the antagonistic roles (The Fire Nation). This comprehensive erasure of the source material's diverse cast sparked massive fan outrage.

5. Jill Taylor and Other MIT Students - 21 (2008)

This film is supposedly based on the true story of brilliant Asian-American MIT students. The primary roles in the film, including the lead role of Ben Mezrich (a pseudonym for the real-life Jeff Ma), were given to white actors like Jim Sturgess. It was a huge controversy considering the fact that the movie chose to eliminate the ethnicity of the very people they were using as the foundation of inspiration.

4. Dastan - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)

Jake Gyllenhaal's European descent didn't stop the filmmakers from casting him as a Persian prince. it was literally a nonsensical decision considering the fact that, the film was about an entirely different ethnicity of people. The decision to cast a white actor as the lead in a film set squarely in ancient Persia drew criticism for its failure to hire actors who reflected the Middle Eastern culture being portrayed.

3. Tonto - The Lone Ranger (2013)

This was a major mess. Johnny Depp claimed that he had distant Native American heritage and as such he got the role. But Depp's portrayal and performance was so bad that critics widely condemned the casting as a misrepresentation of Native people, arguing that the film leaned into tired, offensive stereotypes with Depp's highly caricatured performance.

2. The Transgender and POC Activists - Stonewall (2015)

The 1969 Stonewall Uprising was led by Black and Latina transgender women (such as Marsha P. Johnson) and drag queens. But for some reason, the director of the movie thought that the revolution would make much more sense if it was led by a fictional, white, cisgender male character from the Midwest. The movie was bombarded with negative reviews for literally erasing the history and struggle of the real members of the movement.

1. Genghis Khan - The Conqueror (1956)

If we talk about the most famous miscasting in Hollywood history, this one stands out the most. John Wayne, the quintessential American cowboy, was cast as the Mongolian leader Genghis Khan. He literally had to wear an obsolete amount of makeup on his face to look Asian. The casting is an example of the racial insensitivity of the film and literally adhered to most of the stereotypes about Asian people.