‘Crazy Rich Asians’ — Plan A’s Reactions to the First Trailer!

The summer blockbuster romantic comedy with an all-Asian cast, based on Kevin Kwan’s bestselling novel series, just dropped its first trailer! Here are our reactions.

Look at all that Asian excellence onscreen! August 17th can’t come fast enough. I previously wrote about why I wish I had this movie and book when I was a teenager.

– Eliza Romero

Let’s hope the actual movie has a white-people count as low as the trailer! In the same way that Black Panther felt refreshing because of the total representation of black people in a movie that is otherwise very white, the Crazy Rich Asians trailer felt that way for Asians. Even Singapore gets repped well, with a lot of scenes set in distinctly Singaporean locations like Chijmes and the Marina Bay Sands, and a hawker center.

– Filip Guo

The only way this movie won’t be a cultural disaster is if the biting satirical tone of Kevin Kwan translates onto the screen. So many Asians are approaching this as a literal celebration of the meteoric rise of Asian wealth and power, not a knowing skewering of pretension and pettiness. But releasing a movie titled Crazy Rich Asians in the America of 2018 strikes me as completely tone deaf. Imagine a movie called Royally Splendid Saudis and then imagine Muslim Americans putting faith that such a movie will do great things for them.

– Five Alive

Really looking forward to seeing it! This is a coming out party for the fabulousness and fun of being Asian. This is the summer movie I needed growing up.

– Jessica Rhee

It’s quite revolutionary seeing Asians on-screen with other Asians… and being happy about it! Remember the misery of stories like The Joy Luck Club and the implicit message that white people were the way to the American Dream? To be honest though, I’ve become skeptical about media rep. Showbiz activism is alluring because it’s glamorous and relatively easy. And it can breed complacency through the mere shiny image of progress, like a holodeck progress. But it’s better to show all-Asian joy than not.

I do have a quibble about Henry Golding’s casting. He’s decent in the trailer and at least he looks more Asian than, say, Jon Foo. But Hollywood’s distaste for the “too ethnic” is real and some Asian Americans need to stop being in denial about this when it comes to us. If major Asian male romantic lead roles keep going to hapas, then Asian men have a legit complaint about only being acceptable on center stage if we’re “improved” by some whiteness.

– Oxford Kondō

WATCH THE TRAILER HERE!