JK Rowling defends Johnny Depp casting decision for FB 2, fans are not happy

Comicbook.com

Damn! One post even tweeted that in a post-Harvey Weinstein world, this is not a good idea, given Depp and abuse allegations by his ex-wife, Amber Heard (who also works at WB... yikes).

She did the right thing. You're innocent until proven otherwise and those allegations were never proven in court. Only Depp and Heard know what actually happened and they settled it, that should be enough for us too.

Problem with "that should be enough for us."

Look dude, you don't speak for "us", you speak for yourself. If you're fine with Depp's casting, then fine. If Rowling and WB are fine with Depp's casting, then fine. People who have a problem with the casting are free to f*** off and not watch the movie.

But "that should be enough for us"? That sort of implies that the complainers don't have a good enough reason to not support the movie, when the reality is that NO ONE IS OBLIGATED TO SUPPORT THE MOVIE for any reason. If I just plain choose to not see the movie because I think Depp is a crappy actor or I just don't like his f***ing face, is THAT good enough reason? Oh, but J.K. Rowling apparently thinks that Depp is a good enough actor, so I'm automatically supposed to say, "dur, I think he sucks as an actor, but J.K. Rowling is fine with him so I guess I'll just give away my money."?

No, it doesn't work that way.

Having said that, I actually like Depp as an actor, and I don't give a crap about the abuse allegations. But don't freaking sit there and try to tell other people what THEY should be okay with when we're talking about THEM spending THEIR money.

My understanding is that the reason why some people are upset is because of what happened between Depp and Heard. That issue is between them and they've settled it between themselves. Depp has already paid for his alleged crimes, which is why I don't get why people are upset anymore. I believe in second chances. If you **** up once it shouldn't mean that you're fucked up forever.

Oh, so you're saying that he DID f*** up?

How about if we're talking about, say, an ex-convict? If a dude has been in prison for burglary, the issue is "settled", he has "paid for his crimes", and he "deserves a second chance". Does that mean you're supposed to let the guy into your freaking house?

Hmm, the internet

Sometimes it´s obvious that when you give every idiot a place to speak its not a great thing.

Deep despite being high 90% of the time is still a good actor.

Remember when everyone thought Johnny Depp was the coolest guy in the world, now he's this slightly annoying 50 year old man who dresses silly.

Well, you cant drink and do drugs like he has since the teens and not take a bit of damage :D

It´s insane if you look at him in his earlier roles and then see him today, he is so messed up that he finds it hard to even complete a sentence.

@MrGeezer: well said. Tired of people acting like having an opinion on someone is somehow a bad thing.

Non-issue to me. I enjoy the majority of his work.

I'm not going to tell people what to think or what is "good" for them.

With that said, I do hold society to a certain standard, and that is to be objective in the face of certain things, i.e. extremely serious allegations of crime. I don't think it is fair to punish someone preemptively before they are proven guilty. People are taking the low-road as far as justice goes, whether it be in the court of public opinion or the literal courts. I don't care if I was accused of killing a dozen babies and turning them into yummy tasty human-veal fritters; until I am proven guilty (or there is sufficient evidence) I should not suffer any harm for said accusation.

I mean, if any of these things go to trial, do you think there is going to be an objective, unbiased jury anywhere? We need to hold people to a higher standard.

Having an opinion is fine.

Having that opinion play a role in our legal system, society, and so forth is not so fine.

It's like, idunno...having a pet alligator. There's nothing wrong with having a pet alligator if you are responsible with it, but let's be honest; anyone with a pet alligator is probably not responsible with it because the kinds of people that have pet alligators are probably a little nuts.

Opinions are dangerous and irresponsible for the most part, unfounded; if you keep them to yourself and just talk a bit about it, fine, but because they are opinions you know people won't be responsible because humans gossip like little kids well into adulthood.

Opinions are a dark aspect of human nature and while they're fine and manageable on a personal, local level, at the national "mass opinion" level they might as well be classified as a WMD, a weapon of psychological warfare. I'd like to think that most of us could see this and go "OK doesn't matter what my opinion is, someones life is more important than my sense of entitlement to gossip and bullshit."

@mrbojangles25: "Having that opinion play a role in our legal system, society, and so forth is not so fine."

Well, I'm pretty sure that Johnny Depp isn't on trial here. So some dude saying that he won't see the movie because Johnny Depp is in it really has nothing to do with thelegal system.

As far as opinions playing a role in "society and so forth", I very much disagree with you. If there was no value in having opinions then people wouldn't f***ing have them.

For example, you also posted this: "but let's be honest; anyone with a pet alligator is probably not responsible with it because the kinds of people that have pet alligators are probably a little nuts."

Do you know what you just posted? AN OPINION. This opinion is also not based on any kind of hard scientific evidence. Such an opinion also "affects society, and so forth" since such opinions make it more likely for laws to be passed that prevent RESPONSIBLE owners from legally keeping alligators.

Now, here's the question: was it "not fine" for you to state that opinion?

I really don't see a problem here, just more snowflakes crying over everything they possibly can.

Depp is a good actor. Him being in this movie is a little odd, perhaps, but the majority of new movies suck so much balls, complaining about this seems unnecessary. There are much bigger problems with movies to complain about.

Wouldn't the "snowflakes" be the people who are upset that some random nobodies don't want to spend their own time and money on a f***ing movie?

Like, "OMG, Jimmy Joe Shabadoo doesn't want to spend HIS own money on a movie! What an outrage!"

I think they're both snowflakes........

I either did not write well, or you misheard me; I said having an opinion is fine, but having it play a large role in our society is not fine. That is what I am trying to get at here.

You want to judge Johnny Depp before he is technically guilty or not guilty, fine; but don't let that opinion-based judgement actually impact his life.

You are one funny cat! I liked him better as Glen in NOES compared with his newer more "sophisticated" offerings.

She doesn't have any problem taking any self-declared victim's word at face value when they're accusing someone she doesn't like though. It's not "the right thing" when the logic you wrote here obviously doesn't apply to her.

How the hell is that supposed to work, exactly? You think the guy's a scumbag so you don't want to support his movies any more. But wait...refusing to pay to see his movies would be "impacting his life." After all, if people start avoiding the guy's movies simply because they don't like him, then that's OBVIOUSLY going to affect the kind of work he gets in the future. So we're supposed to think the guy's a scumbag, but then PAY TO SEE HIS MOVIES ANYWAY just because we don't want our opinions "affecting his life?"

Hey, suppose you go to a restaurant and the food is disgusting and the waiter is rude. That's called AN OPINION. But god forbid you post a bad review of the place on Yelp, because then that might affect business or maybe even lead to someone getting fired. You can't state your opinion until they're proven guilty, even though they're never going to be proven guilty since THEY HAVEN'T COMMITTED ANY CRIMES. Nope, you've just gotta keep eating there, and don't tell anyone about how much the restaurant sucks because that would be "affecting their lives."

No more reviews of video games or movies either. If you tell people that a movie or video game sucks, that might convince someone to avoid seeing it, and that would be "letting opinions have an effect on people's lives".

What did I miss?

@MrGeezer: it's pretty simple. When an actor gets involved in a scandal, a special police force will round up random civilians and force them to buy tickets for the film to make up for the potentially lost sales. Just last week I was made to buy a dozen copies of Baby Driver.

If not being allowed to choose who you support or not is the price we have to pay to live in a free society, then so be it.

You can think whatever the hell you want about Depp provided you admit to yourself you dont know anything about his scumbaggery.

See the difference, there?

I'm talking about his employers or whatever actors do to find work. And not just him, but us; I'd like to think that if I worked for a company without incident for a number of years, and was suddenly accused of a crime, my employers would not just cut me loose. They'd wait to see what the facts say.

And again, I am not saying "opinion or no opinion", there is obviously a middle ground. But to use your Yelp analogy, there are a lot of bad opinions out there responsible for ruining good businesses. The light's were too dim, the water was too cold in my ice water, the waiter made a joke and I didn't think it was that funny.

I mean, opinions are not objective, but they can be objective-leaning. That's where knowing your place comes into play; someone who eats Easy Mac five night a week shouldn't be offering his or her opinion on Yelp (btw that Yelp analogy was way off, you were comparing the quality of something to whether or not the waiter did a crime) about an excellent French restaurant because, idunno, the portions are too small? Conversely, someone well versed in food or at least knows a little bit about fine cuisine can offer a more objective-leaning opinion.

Concerning reviews, those are not really opinions, not entirely. There are objective things listed in reviews that can be measured or interpreted by the trained eye/ear/nose/whatever, i.e. if a musicians pitch was off, that is objective; or if a video game is using a dated engine and the visuals look old (but not retro old, just bad old). The reviews might have some personal annotations thrown in, but a good review will not have a lot of those. That's the difference between offering an objective review, and giving your opinion; you can give a game you don't like a good review (I don't like every game I play, but that doesn't mean they're all bad, just some of them).

I guess the point I'm trying to get at is this: opinions hold too much power in society, and people offer them up without really knowing WTF they are talking about. It's not so much that opinions are inherently bad because they are opinions, it's just it has sort of devolved into word garbage. No one offers up an "educated opinion" these days.

Here's the thing...in a hell of a cases, IT DOESN'T MATTER whether or not you know the facts. Especially in high profile celebrity stuff. These people aren't just getting hired for their skills, they're also getting hired for their PUBLIC IMAGE and the money that that public image brings in.

Joe Schmoe who buys a movie ticket has no obligations of being "objective", he has no obligation whatsoever to spend money on a movie ticket. And if there are enough Joe Schmoes out there who refuse to buy a movie ticket just because they don't want to support a certain actor, then that's OBVIOUSLY going to affect the work that that actor gets.

We can talk all we want about that being unfair, but I don't see anyone complaining when it works the other way and an actor gets MORE work because they have a good public image. Sorry, but this is kind of how "being a celebrity" works. So, going back to Johnny Depp...if he ends up losing work because of this then it's either because other people in the industry refuse to work with him, or because he's seen as a financial liability because THE PUBLIC doesn't want to work with him. And yeah...if it's thought that his public image is going to turn the public off from the movie then OF COURSE it's fair to deny him a role based on that. What, the movie studio is just supposed to throw away millions of dollars and hire him anyway even if he's clearly a liability? Is that fair to the OTHER thousands of people working on the movie whose careers also depend on putting out a well-recieved movie?

You can say that opinions hold too much power in society, but it also works both ways. We're talking about an industry that deals in celebrity, public image is their thing. It's hard to be okay with ignorant masses going out and blindly buying tickets that help thousands of people get employed just because of the presence of some hot actor, and then turn around and say that UNPOPULAR actors shouldn't get canned even if that translates into a loss of money. That's beside the point anyway since Depp DIDN'T get canned. He's still in the movie, so all we have are some people complaining about him being in the movie. Which is perfectly fair. They're the ones spending their own money on the movies, they're the ones who won't be seeing the movie because he's in it, so it's perfectly fair for them to complain. The people complaining about this aren't the ones in charge of hiring, dude. They're just random assholes who are calling stuff out as they see it. That's just the reality of what you have to deal with when you're in the business of selling multi-million dollar entertainment THAT ONLY SURVIVES BY BEING POPULAR. It's the nature of the industry. Hell, there's a new Star Wars movie coming out. Remember when people were saying that they'd never pay to see another Star Wars movie if it was written or directed by George Lucas? Speaking hypothetically, would it be unfair for the people in charge of any new Star Wars movies to ditch Lucas' story ideas if they thought that doing so would remove some of the ill-will associated with the brand and help them to make more money? After all, it's not like the man has been "proven guilty" of f***ing up the franchise, I don't recall him ever getting dragged to court and put on trial for making Star Wars a joke.

Rowling's statement:

Grindelwald casting (7 December 2017)

When Johnny Depp was cast as Grindelwald, I thought he’d be wonderful in the role. However, around the time of filming his cameo in the first movie, stories had appeared in the press that deeply concerned me and everyone most closely involved in the franchise.

Harry Potter fans had legitimate questions and concerns about our choice to continue with Johnny Depp in the role. As David Yates, long-time Potter director, has already said, we naturally considered the possibility of recasting. I understand why some have been confused and angry about why that didn’t happen.

The huge, mutually supportive community that has grown up around Harry Potter is one of the greatest joys of my life. For me personally, the inability to speak openly to fans about this issue has been difficult, frustrating and at times painful. However, the agreements that have been put in place to protect the privacy of two people, both of whom have expressed a desire to get on with their lives, must be respected. Based on our understanding of the circumstances, the filmmakers and I are not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies.

I’ve loved writing the first two screenplays and I can’t wait for fans to see ‘The Crimes of Grindelwald’. I accept that there will be those who are not satisfied with our choice of actor in the title role. However, conscience isn’t governable by committee. Within the fictional world and outside it, we all have to do what we believe to be the right thing.

Unless you disagree with said opinion.

It's not really like that at all.

I mean, if your opinion is STUPID then by all means people should call you out on it. But whether your opinion is right or wrong, I'm against the notion that people should stop stating their opinions JUST BECAUSE THEY AFFECT PEOPLE.

I mean, jeezus...of course the way that I feel about someone is going to affect the way the way that I act towards THEM. People are then free to call ME the asshole, but that's a different matter entirely. If you know some shady mother***er who you THINK is a creepy-ass dude, you're PROBABLY not going to invite him into your home to be around your wife and kids. And...fair enough since IT'S YOUR DAMN HOUSE. If someone else thinks that you're being a jerk for not letting the guy into your home, then THEY can invite the guy into THEIR homes.

@sonicare: I never said opinions can't be questioned. Some opinions are based on ignorance, and it's perfectly ok to call someone out for having a dumb opinion.

What I said is the simple act of having an opinion is not a bad thing. Because that's what the issue being discussed is, not that the opinions are dumb, but that people shouldn't let their opinions effect how they act. Which is pretty goddamn stupid (imo)

I'd go into more detail but yet again MrGeezer already said it pretty well.

Yeah, but that's the current problem in this country. is that having an opinion, makes you a massive target. Opinions, by their nature, can not be right or wrong. And one person's idea of "stupid" is another person's idea of valid. You're calling people out for criticizing one for having an opinion, but ive seen the exact opposite happen where people are destroyed for daring to mention their perspective. I'd rather live in a society where we are free to offer our opinions, than in one where we are condemned for having unpopular ones.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), that's an IMPOSSIBLE hypothetical society.

At least with regard to not being "condemned" for having unpopular opinions. At least in the USA (which is where I'm typing from), you're free to offer your opinions NOW. But your opinions might make you look like a piece of shit, because some opinions really ARE just awful. And if you're (the hypothetical "you", though this also applies to me and everyone else) offering opinions that make you look like a piece of shit, it's sort of hard to expect the rest of society to not treat you like a piece of shit. A society in which you're free from being "condemned" for your opinions is a society in which the rest of society is prohibited from letting their opinions influence their behavior. And that's a repressive society, not a free one.

Now, obviously there's a reason for labor laws. Stuff like employers being prohibited from firing a person on the basis of "it's my opinion that blacks (or whites or whatever) are scum." But that's not what was being discussed in this topic. Random Joe Schmoe buying a movie ticket isn't a Hollywood actor's employer, and he's perfectly free to boycott a movie for something as stupid as "it's got black people in it" or "it doesn't have enough minorities in it." Once he states his opinion that that's why he's boycotting the movie, you're perfectly free to call him an idiot and "condemn" his opinion as being a stupid one. But the fact remains that he doesn't owe ANYONE ticket sales, and he's free to withdraw support from a movie for ANY (however stupid) reason. It might be STUPID of him to hold that opinion. But once we establish that he DOES hold that opinion, then why the hell should he spend HIS money on the movie anyway just to avoid affecting someone's life? By that same token, it might affect his life if people in his circle of acquaintances start calling him out for being a racist. So...are people not supposed to point out racism because doing so might affect the lives of racists?

OF COURSE having "unpopular opinions" can get you "condemned". The only way that someone's opinions shouldn't affect how that person is treated is if opinions didn't matter. And opinions ABSOLUTELY matter. If someone goes the NAMBLA route and offers their OPINION that diddling kids should be legal, that's not a CRIME. But you're still not gonna hire that person as a babysitter, because opinions DO influence behavior.