At the end of this summer, Warner Bros and Netflix released movies that have everyone talking: “Crazy Rich Asians” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”
The movie trailers brought a lot of viewers in.
One thing that will be brought up though is the Asian representation within both movies.
For a while, Asian actors were mostly known for being the comedic relief and not playing serious roles.
“Crazy Rich Asians” stars Constance Wu as Rachel Chu, an Asian American college professor. She gets invited to attend a family wedding with her boyfriend and gets introduced to his traditional family.
Since the story is fictional everything is highly exaggerated yet the movie still covers the structure of family, food and tradition.
“To All the Boys I Loved Before” was not based in the culture but the cast touched light topics of it within the movie.
Lead actress Lana Condor, plays Lara Jean Covey, an Asian American teen whose love letters mysteriously get mailed out.
In the movie they often show her white father trying to uphold the food traditions such as making his late wife’s traditional dishes.
“I’m not someone who typically watches romance movies, like if I saw the trailer for Crazy Rich Asians, as an all-white cast then I probably wouldn’t see it, because the plot wasn’t enough to get my attention but the representation was what kept my attention,” said Delta student Chanell Petingla.
Both movies were hits in the Rom-Com genre, but advertisement impacted the views.
For example, Crazy Rich Asians advertisement had the same new movie routine which is the movie trailer comes out about six months before the movie then commercials two weeks before and after the premiere.
The trailer for “To all the Boys I’ve Loved Before” was put out on the Netflix platform and was advertised over the weekend that it was released.
“I was waiting for it (To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before) because I saw the trailers, I saw it when it came out on Netflix.” said Delta student Jamaica Bonchita,“The romance and the people kept my attention throughout these movies.”
The trailers attracted viewers but just the representation alone brought people in.
“I wanted to watch it because I am Asian as well so I was curious plus I like romance and comedy, the graphics were well made in the movie,” said delta student Alyssa Lopez.
Both movies did so well that they both scored a four out of five stars on Vox and Crazy Rich Asians received a 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.