With ‘Turning Red,’ Domee Shi is the first woman filmmaker with sole directing credit on a Pixar feature

and 'The Batman' criticized for scene of attempted subway attack on Asian victim

“Almost half of all Asian roles serve as a punchline, study finds.”

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🏆 The Headlines

With ‘Turning Red,’ a Big Red Panda Helps Break a Glass Ceiling — Domee Shi is the first woman filmmaker with sole directing credit on a Pixar feature.

• Pixar has a well-deserved reputation for dudes — movies focused on dudes (20 out of 24 feature films), movies directed by dudes (23 of 24), movies written by dudes (50 of 59 screenwriters). But the Disney-owned animation studio has been trying to evolve, largely because many of its own artists have demanded it. “Get some ladies!” Domee Shi told me recently. “Draw from different creative wells!”

• Shi, who likens herself to a cat oscillating between “lazy and grrr,” arrived at Pixar as a storyboarding intern in 2011, when she was 22. She stayed on as a staff artist, contributing to films like “Inside Out” and “Incredibles 2.” In 2018, she became the first woman to direct a Pixar short. That eight-minute movie, “Bao,” about a dumpling that comes to life, giving an aging Chinese woman relief from empty nest syndrome, won Shi an Oscar — and put her on course to break an even bigger glass ceiling at Pixar.

• The studio’s 25th feature, “Turning Red,” will arrive on Disney+ on March 11. Shi directed it, the first woman in the studio’s 36-year history with that solo distinction. (Brenda Chapman was hired to direct “Brave” (2012), about a defiant princess in ancient Scotland, and retains a credit. But she was fired during production for “creative differences” and replaced by a dude.)  

'The Batman' criticized for scene of attempted subway attack on Asian victim — Critics on Twitter are calling the scene “triggering” and insensitive to Asian Americans during a time of increased violence against the community.

• Asian Americans are raising concerns over a scene in the new movie “The Batman,” which premiered nationwide Friday, depicting a group of men following an Asian man off the subway with the intent of physically assaulting him.

• The scene occurs within the first 10 minutes of the three-hour film, when Batman interrupts the attack and beats up the assailants, telling them that he is “vengeance.” This saves the Asian man, who appears fearful of Batman as well. 

• Critics on Twitter are calling the scene “triggering” and insensitive to Asian Americans during a time of increased violence against the community, regardless of whether the attack was intended as racially motivated.

  Dino-Ray Ramos @DinoRay

  Seriously, can we talk about the first 10 minutes of #TheBatman and how a gang of men attempt to beat up an Asian man on the subway? Was this supposed to be commentary? Was it a blindspot? Was this filmed before or after the surge Asian hate crimes? It was quite triggering.

  Jeff Yang @originalspin

  The Batman was a good two hour movie inside of a not as good three hour movie. And if you’re Asian American and have been paying attention the first ten minutes—in which a gang of subway thugs violently assaults an Asian American man on a platform—are triggering as hell.

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