Asian Representation in Movies: Best and Worst Examples Through the Years

GOOD: Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as 'Appa' on 'Kim’s Convenience'

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee’s heartfelt portrayal of a Korean “Appa” in “Kim’s Convenience” brought the old trope of a traditionally minded Asian patriarch to life while staying away from cliches.

The TV show, which follows the travails of a Toronto immigrant family that runs a convenience store, was Canada’s first with an all-Asian lead cast. Although Lee puts on an overblown Korean accent he doesn’t actually have for the role, he’s said that it’s in service of creating a nuanced, three-dimensional character — an archetype, rather than a stereotype.

From the first scene of the first season, in which he tries to prove his acceptance of LGBTQ customers by making up a “gay discount,” Appa’s humor and choices have defied set expectations of how a Korean immigrant of his generation might act. His grounding presence in the store also sets the stage for an effortlessly multicultural picture of Toronto as customers of all stripes file in.

GOOD: Leah Lewis as Ellie Chu in 'The Half of It'

Writer-director Alice Wu, who took on closeted Chinese American lesbian love and immigrant mother-daughter culture clashes in her first feature “Saving Faces (2004),” places the Cyrano de Bergerac story in a high-school setting in the Netflix original “The Half of It.”

Leah Lewis stars as Ellie Chu, the well-read and articulate Cyrano of the film, who discovers her attraction to popular girl Aster as she helps bumbling boy Paul try to win her affections through love letters. The film would have been refreshing enough just for featuring a Chinese American lead at the center of an otherwise recognizable coming-of-age drama, but questions of LGBTQ identity, race and religion twist the film into a less conventional mix. Particularly touching is Chu’s relationship with her widowed immigrant father, who watches old black-and-white films at night to learn English, and her unlikely but charming friendship with Paul, which transcends the politics of the town and classroom hallways around them.

GOOD: George Takei and John Cho as Sulu in 'Star Trek'

The sight of Japanese American actor George Takei in his most iconic role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the U.S.S. Enterprise, was an inspiration when “Star Trek: The Original Series” first debuted in 1966. At a time of rising racial tensions, creator Gene Roddenberry imagined a world set in a post-race utopian future, where it would be unremarkable for an Asian character like Sulu to command both a ship and equal screen time as his caucasian counterparts.

Since 2009, Korean American John Cho has played Sulu in subsequent “Star Trek” films, with the character coming out as gay in “Star Trek Beyond.” Although Takei has said he disapproves of the choice because he feels it “twists” Roddenbery’s original intentions for the character, Cho said he hoped seeing Sulu unremarkably appearing alongside his husband and child would be revelatory for some viewers.

“Seeing George Takei on television was very meaningful to me, and I hope there’s a similar effect for gay kids watching,” he said in 2016 while promoting the film.

GOOD: Sung Kang as Han Lue in 'Better Luck Tomorrow' and 'Fast & Furious' Franchise

Han Lue has crossed genres and defied death to become one of the first and still few cool male Asian American film characters. First depicted in the fictional world of Taiwanese American director Justin Lin’s low-budget indie “Better Luck Tomorrow,” he has gone on to anchor a multi-billion-dollar tentpole franchise that has been one of the biggest, and perhaps arguably the best, Hollywood vehicles for Asian American representation.

Played by Sung Kang, Han first appeared in Lin’s groundbreaking 2002 Sundance hit “Better Luck Tomorrow,” a landmark film that centered nuanced and imperfect Asian American characters in a way no movie had really done before through its story of bored suburban high school over-achievers who slide into petty crime and chaotic delinquency.

Lin later transposed Sung’s character directly into “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.” Han became a fan favorite, reappearing in four more films in the series despite his apparent death at the end of his first.

Under Lin’s watch, the two-dimensional Asian villains, cliche Chinatown settings and Confucius statues of the early movies disappeared, replaced with lead roles with equal weight for AAPI characters like Han and Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), as well as a rare interracial on-screen romance between Han and Gisele (Gal Gadot) that culminates in a high octane kiss.

BAD: Luise Rainer and Paul Muni as O-Lan and Wang Lung in 'The Good Earth'

Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American movie star, wanted to play the main character O-Lan in the 1937 film adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s novel “The Good Earth.” Instead, MGM passed her over for German actress Luise Rainer, telling Wong to test instead for the role of a scheming courtesan.

Wong understandably bristled. “You’re asking me, with Chinese blood, to do the only unsympathetic role in the picture, featuring an all-American cast portraying Chinese characters,” she reportedly said. She eventually turned her back on Hollywood in favor of Europe, where she felt less likely to be typecast.

Meanwhile, Rainer went on to win a best actress Oscar for her performance, acting opposite Paul Muni, also in yellow face.

Yellow face continued in later adaptations of Buck’s works, notably in the 1944 war drama “Dragon Seed,” which starred Katherine Hepburn as “Jade,” a strong-willed Chinese villager.

BAD: Gedde Watanabe as Long Duk Dong in 'Sixteen Candles'

There are few Asian American movie characters as cringe-worthy yet cemented in our cultural consciousness as Long Duk Dong, portrayed by Gedde Watanabe in the 1984 John Hughes film “Sixteen Candles.”

From his first on-screen moment, Dong’s Asian identity is caricatured and played up for laughs, with everything from his name and nerdy middle part to his sexual ineptitude contributing to the joke. Watching today, it seems unbelievable that a literal gong sound plays every time he appears or has a revelation.

The “Chinaman,” as his American host family calls him, is painted as lustful but also sexually unappealing, and is contrasted against his towering love interest, Marlene the “Lumberjack,” in ways that make him appear weak and emasculated. When it seems like he may be dead lying face-down in their front yard, his host family’s biggest concern is that if so, they won’t make it to their social event.

Looking back years later, Watanabe said that although he still finds Dong funny, he was perhaps “naive” about the character’s portrayal. “I was making people laugh. I didn’t realize how it was going to affect people,” he said.

BAD: Emma Stone as Allison Ng in 'Aloha'

At the 2019 Golden Globe Awards, co-host Sandra Oh famously quipped that “Crazy Rich Asians” was “the first film with an Asian American lead since ‘Ghost in the Shell’ and ‘Aloha’” — causing the latter’s star Emma Stone to yell out “I’m sorry!” from her seat in the audience.

Stone was chastened by the blowback to her casting as rom-com lead Allison Ng — a quarter-Hawaiian, quarter-Chinese character proud of her ethnic heritage — in what Variety’s review dubbed “unquestionably Cameron Crowe’s worst film.”

“As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud quarter Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one,” based on a real-life red-headed local, Crowe wrote after criticism grew too prominent to be ignored. He offered a “heartfelt apology” in response to “all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice.”

Stone told the press that the experience taught her “on a macro level about the insane history of whitewashing in Hollywood.” She added: “I’ve become the butt of many jokes.”

BAD: Ashley Park as Mindy in 'Emily in Paris'

The Emmy-nominated Netflix show “Emily in Paris” has been criticized — particularly by the French — for its stereotypes of French people, but less has been said of its Asian characters.

The character Mindy was clearly added to series to give it a much-needed diversity bump and provide a foil for Lily Collins’ titular neophyte, the whitest of white girls. But while actor Ashley Park proves her chops as Mindy, there’s little she can do to make her character feel more authentic in the way the role is written.

Although Korean American Park is supposed to play a mainland Chinese character, every gesture she makes and sentence she utters is clearly that of an Asian American, not someone who spent their formative years in China. And sure, it’s not yellow face, but it’s hard to celebrate any supposed representation when Park is made to speak garbled, incomprehensible Chinese and her friends are portrayed as “Crazy Rich Asian” and “Bling Empire” caricatures.

While some form of Asian representation may be better than none, the lack of cultural specificity informing the Mindy character makes her seem like an invented American concoction of a person rather than a flesh-and-blood, believable human being, playing into the idea that all Asians are the same.