Post by the guy in Control on Sept 6, 2008 13:11:19 GMT -5
at least one viewer was more impressed with Masi Oka's character than with the overall film... thought this was an interesting read...
www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/080905/article.asp?parentID=96672
www.asiaarts.ucla.edu/080905/article.asp?parentID=96672
An Everyday Hiro
By William Hong
Date Posted: 9/5/2008
In Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control, Masi Oka finally gets to play your average American leading man -- kind of a jerk, but gets the girl.
After watching Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control, a spin-off DVD movie released the same time as Get Smart in theaters, at first I felt that there wasn't much to write home about. It's your typical, low budget spin-off featuring secondary characters. Mildly amusing in its best moments and cringingly corny at its worst, nothing really stood out. The lead characters, Bruce (Masi Oka) and Lloyd (Nate Torrence) played their geeky characters well, but without any kind of unique distinction.
Then it hit me. Masi Oka was actually playing a "normal" guy. Not a foreigner or even an spefically "Asian American" guy. For once, he was the lead of a film, playing just your average guy with worries that anybody can relate to: job security, hooking up with that cute co-worker, partying behind your boss's back, etc. Then I realized: Masi Oka has come a long way.
Oka was born in Tokyo and moved to New York at age six. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in computer science and mathematics, eventually landing a job at George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic special effects company. He worked as a digital effects artist for hit movies like Terminator 3, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the three Star Wars prequels. Then he decided he wanted to become an actor. After moving to LA, he made several appearances in the medical dramedy hit Scrubs as a Japanese lab assistant named Franklyn. He played a somewhat stubborn character, but like most of the Scrubs cast, he had a likeable eccentric personality. Racism became a point of contention in an episode where Scrubs lead character JD is tricked into uttering the word chink in the presence of Franklyn. And then Oka's big break came when he was selected to be one of the core characters in Heroes, a show inspired by superhero comics and known for its ethnically-diverse ensemble cast.
As the plucky computer engineer turned time traveler-teleporter Hiro Nakamura, Oka quickly charmed millions of viewers with his geeky, excitable personality. The Heroes writers made a conscious effort to play up both Oka's Japanese heritage and his "geekiness." Oka, who speaks English fluently in real life, adopts a high-pitched accent when speaking English as Hiro. In season one of Heroes, he goes on a quest to recover the sword of legendary samurai Takezo Kensei. He even meets a future version of himself where he's a bad ass time traveling samurai, sans the artificial English accent.
In season two, he actually travels back in time to feudal Japan to relive his favorite Takezo Kensei stories and falls in love with a princess. The writers, recognizing that blogging is a popular past time in Japan, created a "real-life" blog for Hiro -- filled with very appropriate references to Star Trek, time-traveling role-playing game Chrono Trigger, and Days of the Future Past X-Men comics. That's some real geek cred there, a far cry from the fancy Oakley's shades and suave Italian designer shirt Oka wears in Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control.
The movie follows the shenanigans of Bruce and Lloyd, who work for a fictional US intelligence agency called Control. As Control's star technicians, they invent an invisibility cloak which is stolen by a Maraguayan spy. The R&D chief forces Bruce and Lloyd, despite their lack of field experience, to retrieve it, as Control's only non-compromised Agents, Maxwell Smart (Steve Carrell) and 99 (Anne Hathaway), are occupied in Russia in their own Get Smart story. The movie takes a few sharp jab at American policies, including spying on its own citizens and installing puppet dictators in South American countries, like the film's aptly named villain, El Presidente.
While it's decent but unimpressuve spin-off, the most laudable aspect of the film is Masi Oka's performance as Bruce. There's nothing really exceptional or over-the-top about it, which makes it great. He's not playing off cheesy Japanese stereotypes in certain previous Mike Myers comedies. He just plays a regular guy that's worried about his job and getting along with the girl he likes. Unlike the haplessly adorable Hiro, Bruce is more assertive and even a bit of a condescending jerk, and seeing Masi Oka play a character like that is a refreshing change.
He's the straight man of the comedic duo, the one that dishes out the jokes -- with Lloyd as the butt of almost all the film's jokes and gags. No phony accents or the need to have him represent anything. The only reference to his race is when he randomly tells Lloyd "eat crap fatass" in Mandarin, to which Lloyd responds by saying "wo ming bai," or "I understand." As the hopeless, bumbling underdog, Lloyd is surprisingly the more endearing of the duo. That makes Bruce the "cool" guy, smart and assertive, strutting around in designer shirts and fancy shades, and yes, even getting the white girl -- all culminating in a romantic on-screen kiss.
While it might not seem like much at first, it's an Asian American male character that I rarely see in a Hollywood-backed production. Although it might be difficult to picture Masi Oka making the transition to a leading man in a theatrical Hollywood feature, it's good seeing Asian American male actors (BD Wong, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Daniel Dae Kim, Archie Kao) doing well on television. I won't be crossing my fingers for a Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd 2, but hopefully his average guy performance as Bruce will help lead to more diverse roles... and perhaps to a Hiro that eventually speaks in a more realistically Asian American way.
By William Hong
Date Posted: 9/5/2008
In Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control, Masi Oka finally gets to play your average American leading man -- kind of a jerk, but gets the girl.
After watching Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control, a spin-off DVD movie released the same time as Get Smart in theaters, at first I felt that there wasn't much to write home about. It's your typical, low budget spin-off featuring secondary characters. Mildly amusing in its best moments and cringingly corny at its worst, nothing really stood out. The lead characters, Bruce (Masi Oka) and Lloyd (Nate Torrence) played their geeky characters well, but without any kind of unique distinction.
Then it hit me. Masi Oka was actually playing a "normal" guy. Not a foreigner or even an spefically "Asian American" guy. For once, he was the lead of a film, playing just your average guy with worries that anybody can relate to: job security, hooking up with that cute co-worker, partying behind your boss's back, etc. Then I realized: Masi Oka has come a long way.
Oka was born in Tokyo and moved to New York at age six. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in computer science and mathematics, eventually landing a job at George Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic special effects company. He worked as a digital effects artist for hit movies like Terminator 3, Pirates of the Caribbean, and the three Star Wars prequels. Then he decided he wanted to become an actor. After moving to LA, he made several appearances in the medical dramedy hit Scrubs as a Japanese lab assistant named Franklyn. He played a somewhat stubborn character, but like most of the Scrubs cast, he had a likeable eccentric personality. Racism became a point of contention in an episode where Scrubs lead character JD is tricked into uttering the word chink in the presence of Franklyn. And then Oka's big break came when he was selected to be one of the core characters in Heroes, a show inspired by superhero comics and known for its ethnically-diverse ensemble cast.
As the plucky computer engineer turned time traveler-teleporter Hiro Nakamura, Oka quickly charmed millions of viewers with his geeky, excitable personality. The Heroes writers made a conscious effort to play up both Oka's Japanese heritage and his "geekiness." Oka, who speaks English fluently in real life, adopts a high-pitched accent when speaking English as Hiro. In season one of Heroes, he goes on a quest to recover the sword of legendary samurai Takezo Kensei. He even meets a future version of himself where he's a bad ass time traveling samurai, sans the artificial English accent.
In season two, he actually travels back in time to feudal Japan to relive his favorite Takezo Kensei stories and falls in love with a princess. The writers, recognizing that blogging is a popular past time in Japan, created a "real-life" blog for Hiro -- filled with very appropriate references to Star Trek, time-traveling role-playing game Chrono Trigger, and Days of the Future Past X-Men comics. That's some real geek cred there, a far cry from the fancy Oakley's shades and suave Italian designer shirt Oka wears in Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control.
The movie follows the shenanigans of Bruce and Lloyd, who work for a fictional US intelligence agency called Control. As Control's star technicians, they invent an invisibility cloak which is stolen by a Maraguayan spy. The R&D chief forces Bruce and Lloyd, despite their lack of field experience, to retrieve it, as Control's only non-compromised Agents, Maxwell Smart (Steve Carrell) and 99 (Anne Hathaway), are occupied in Russia in their own Get Smart story. The movie takes a few sharp jab at American policies, including spying on its own citizens and installing puppet dictators in South American countries, like the film's aptly named villain, El Presidente.
While it's decent but unimpressuve spin-off, the most laudable aspect of the film is Masi Oka's performance as Bruce. There's nothing really exceptional or over-the-top about it, which makes it great. He's not playing off cheesy Japanese stereotypes in certain previous Mike Myers comedies. He just plays a regular guy that's worried about his job and getting along with the girl he likes. Unlike the haplessly adorable Hiro, Bruce is more assertive and even a bit of a condescending jerk, and seeing Masi Oka play a character like that is a refreshing change.
He's the straight man of the comedic duo, the one that dishes out the jokes -- with Lloyd as the butt of almost all the film's jokes and gags. No phony accents or the need to have him represent anything. The only reference to his race is when he randomly tells Lloyd "eat crap fatass" in Mandarin, to which Lloyd responds by saying "wo ming bai," or "I understand." As the hopeless, bumbling underdog, Lloyd is surprisingly the more endearing of the duo. That makes Bruce the "cool" guy, smart and assertive, strutting around in designer shirts and fancy shades, and yes, even getting the white girl -- all culminating in a romantic on-screen kiss.
While it might not seem like much at first, it's an Asian American male character that I rarely see in a Hollywood-backed production. Although it might be difficult to picture Masi Oka making the transition to a leading man in a theatrical Hollywood feature, it's good seeing Asian American male actors (BD Wong, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Daniel Dae Kim, Archie Kao) doing well on television. I won't be crossing my fingers for a Get Smart's Bruce and Lloyd 2, but hopefully his average guy performance as Bruce will help lead to more diverse roles... and perhaps to a Hiro that eventually speaks in a more realistically Asian American way.