People Are Rewatching 'Flash Gordon' and Calling It 'Downright Offensive' | 22 Words
Flash Gordon has recently been slammed by former fans and now the reason behind the backlash has been exposed...

Flash Gordon has become a serious talking point in the past few days...

via: imdb

 "Why?" I hear you ask. Well, because people have done a complete 180 on the storyline.

When it first came out in 1980, it brought audiences joy due to it's highly unrealistic and dramatic scenes.

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 What else can we expect from a movie with a storyline that is based on a football player saving the world from rainbow tin-foil wearing aliens?

For those of you that have never heard of the movie...

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 First of all, count yourself lucky, and secondly, here's the official description as per IMDB. It sums it up slightly better than my take on it. Flash Gordon tells the story of "a football player and his friends [who] travel to the planet Mongo and find themselves fighting the tyranny of Ming the Merciless to save Earth."

But it's not just the storyline that's a little bit uninteresting...

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 The characters are also pretty weird, but I guess that's the vibe they were going for. The title character, Flash Gordon (played by Sam J. Jones) is a dashing quarterback protagonist that uses his football skills to fight off a "psychotic dictator" and all of his weird little minions.

I can't lie to you, his skills are pretty lame...

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 Remember the scene where Flash is literally destroying a whole bunch of red, power-ranger looking aliens with a fake football? Yeah, that really would not cut it if aliens actually took over... but in 1980, that's what we assumed would work.

At one point, he just starts rolling on the floor and knocks the evil guys down like skittles...

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 I don't even have the words.

Overall though, it is a pretty enjoyable watch...

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 It's one that you could probably sit down with the entire family and all of you will laugh at one point or another, even if it's out of pity like I do.

But recently, the movie has been slammed as "offensive."

via: imdb

 That's right, out of nowhere, a film association in the United Kingdom has branded it as "dubious, if not outright offensive."

And no, it's not because of the tin-foil outfits... which are disgustingly offensive enough.

Fashion faux pas much? It's something entirely different...

However, not everyone agrees with this new opinion...

Instead, they've picked on the character of Ming the Merciless (played by Max Von Sydow).

via: imdb

 Brace yourselves for this one, ladies and gentlemen, there's a pretty solid argument for it...

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) has now said that the character can be seen as "discriminatory."

via: imdb

 It warns audiences that choose to watch the film of the discriminatory depictions of certain characters (Ming), saying they are "no longer acceptable to modern audiences" when older films come in for reclassification.

Ming was "coded as an East Asian character."

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 But this is despite him being portrayed by a Swedish actor, which can be forgiven because he's not actually playing an "East Asian."

Matt Tindall, a senior policy officer for BBFC spoke about the issue in a podcast saying this:

via: Getty

 "Flash's arch-nemesis, Ming the Merciless, is sort of coded as an East Asian character due to his hair and make-up," he said.

He continued:

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 "But he's played by a Swedish actor in the film, he's played by Max von Sydow, which I don't think is something that would happen if this were a modern production."

Now, he has got a slight point there, as symbolism has a huge impact on audiences.

via: imdb

 You might not think so as an individual, due to this being based on "fiction" or "aliens," but the character plays on traditional appearances stemming from historical East Asian dynasties.

Let's make a positive impact on the arts.

It really paints a sour picture, but rather than getting outraged at a film that's been left behind in the '80s where it belongs, let's apply what we now know about actual/more offensive stereotypes and make sure they don't happen in the modern era. Keep scrolling to see one cast that managed to do this by giving the world their first-ever black prince... Now that's what I like to call an impact.