Whitewashing had been the bane of the existence of Asian actors in Hollywood.
Asian erasure was the easy way for Hollywood to cast big-name established white actors to play Asian roles. Hollywood use to do yellow face. They give makeup to white actors so they can play Asian roles because of anti-miscegenation laws. When people started seeing it as offensive. They just cast white actors for those Asian roles and change the ethnicity of the characters.
Here is a trip to the memory lane to some of the most recent whitewashing
Hollywood did to Asian characters in adaptations.
Starship troopers is an Adaptation of the science-fiction novel of the same name. It is about Juan “Johnny” Rico. He is a rich kid who joined the military against a war with an Alien insect race. The movie version turned him into an Argentine so they can cast Caucasian...