If it’s Filipino, it’s in Forgotten Island.
An unspeakable joy radiated from the audience at the screening I attended at the Pacific Design Center whenever any Filipino totem, gesture, or figure graced the screen. The audience was mostly, if not all, Filipino.
Unless it is specifically a Filipino film festival or a special screening of The Debut with the Basco Brothers (there will never not be one), a theater filled with Filipino folks watching a feature film from a major studio does not happen a lot.
One-half of the writing-directing team, Januel Mercado, is of Filipino descent. As far as I know, the other half, Joel Crawford, is not. (Based on the Q&A after the screening that night, I believe he is honorary)
For the most part, the entire cast is of Filipino or Asian descent. H.E.R. and Liza Soberano are the stars of the animated DreamWorks fantasy. They star as Jo and Raissa, respectively. They are BFFs who have known each other since grade school. They have reached the age where they are about to graduate high school and about to go on separate journeys — but then a magic portal to a magical, mystical island of Filipino lore changes all of that.
On the fantastical island of Nakali exists a population of mythical creatures and Gods voiced by actors – also of Filipino descent. Manny Jacinto provides an unlikely cutesy voice to the big boy baby demon Bungi. BAFTA-nominated actress Dolly de Leon voices Lola Fatima, Jo’s grandmother. Tony Award-winning icon Lea Salonga voices the evil Manananggal who is feared by everyone on the island. Jo Koy voices Datu, a tree creature called a kapre, while Ronny Chieng plays Truffle Wuffle, the king of the duwende people.
There are a couple of fun cameos from Filipinos, including Sophia from Katseye (who performs a cover of INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” for the movie), while Nico Santos plays one of the starfish pasties on Mermahn’s (Kevin McCann) nipples.
While I appreciate the inclusion of so many Filipino voices in this narrative, I really wish they would have completed the circle of Filipino inclusion when it came to the casting. Not to say that I didn’t enjoy Dave Franco as the mangy aspin with a heart of gold, Raww, or Jenny Slate as the memory-stealing demon Batiba, but giving two of the major roles to Filipino actors would have been a chef’s kiss to a cultural beacon of cinematic representation.
With Kpop Demon Hunters and Coco as blueprints, Forgotten Island places Jo and Raissa as the emotional – and very queer-coded – core of the movie. They reach a point in their lives that is all too familiar to many of us. Jo is ready to enter the next chapter of their lives together as BFFs in the Philippines, while Raissa is ready as well, but she is also ready to build a future for herself by attending Caltech in the States.
The story hits the beats of the typical animated BFF comedy where the bonds of friendship are tested and come out stronger on the other side. However, Forgotten Island uses memories as glue that holds the bond between Jo and Raissa together. Mercado and Crawford’s use of the charm bracelet as the source of these memories is clever and gives the audience something tangible for us to connect to – and provides a prime opportunity for merchandising.
The thoughtful inclusion of Filipino folklore in the Forgotten Island brings Southeast Asian culture to the mainstream forefront. What has been peppered throughout film and TV throughout history is now concentrated in one film. From overgrown baby demons to short-tempered, cuddly mythical gnomes to dancing the tinikling to the matriarchal prowess of a lola to the time-honored Filipino tradition of karaoke, every inch of Forgotten Island is covered with Filipino representation. Therein lies my biggest joy and biggest problem with this movie.
Being in a theater full of Brown Asians, many of whom are Millennials and Gen Xers who seldom had the opportunity to see a mainstream movie like Forgotten Island in their lifetime, was an undeniable treat. As I watched and saw each morsel of Filipino representation grace the screen, my joy turned into skepticism. Not to the filmmakers, but to the greater system of Hollywood and the “burden of representation” films like Forgotten Island hold, whether intentionally or not.
When there are few Filipino-centered stories (and there aren’t many in Hollywood), it results in fewer Filipino writers, actors, and filmmakers who have control of the stories. As a result, Filipino productions become rare, and when features like Forgotten Island come along, the movie is put into an unusual position.
When major studios decide to release a mainstream Filipino-forward project, there are great expectations for it to represent the culture. It’s as if the filmmakers are forced to pile on as many Filipino references as possible because it is uncertain whether or not an opportunity like this will ever happen again. It’s textbook scarcity mentality and it’s a default mechanism in Hollywood when it comes to anything “diverse”. It’s the equivalent of Hollywood saying “I have a Filipino friend, do you know them?”
The last time I was in a theater filled with a majority Filipino audience watching a Filipino movie from a major Hollywood studio was in 2022 for Easter Sunday. At this rate, we won’t have a moment like this again until 2030. But if there are so many Filipinos in the country, why aren’t we seeing more of their stories on screen? Hell, why aren’t we seeing more Filipino faces in general on screen?
According to the folks at Pew Research, the Filipino population in the United States grew about 89% from 2000 to 2023, from 2.34 million to approximately 4.24 million.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2024 American Community Survey estimates approximately 5 million people of Filipino descent in the U.S. That puts Filipinos as the third-largest Asian-origin population in the country behind Chinese and Indian Americans.
That said, look at the Asians to your left. Look at the Asians to your right. At least 1 out of every 5 Asian Americans is Filipino… or something like that.
In a perfect world, what we see on film and TV should reflect what we see in the real world. Although a little delusion never really hurt anyone, Hollywood is the land of delusion, and that’s exactly what we see on screen… or some version of it.
Hollywood narrativizes stories. Reflecting the real world has never been the primary goal. Otherwise, every actor on The CW wouldn’t look perfectly symmetrical.
Despite the contraction of anything highly melanated, queer, or cultured in film and TV as of late, there has been an overall uptick in AAPI representation — and I’m being very generous.
Of course, the country was not as racist, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic as it was, let’s say, 20 years ago, but we haven’t traveled too far from where we started — and that ain’t sayin’ much.
In 2006, we were starting to see a small bloom of AAPI representation. Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, and Naveen Andrews were on the main cast of ABC’s game-changing sci-fi drama Lost, while Sandra Oh was holding it down as Dr. Christina Yang on Grey’s Anatomy. And before we had the MCU, we had Masi Oka starring in Heroes on NBC alongside Sendhil Ramamurthy. It was also the same year Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was released.
We also saw the rise of YouTubers like Filipinos Christina Gambito and AJ Rafael. But still, Filipino representation was and remains low.
A large Filipino population would equate to a reasonable amount of Filipino visibility and Filipino-centered stories in Hollywood, but it doesn’t. One Filipino-centered studio movie every four years is cute. The third-largest Asian diaspora in the U.S. deserves more.
As much as I love seeing the culture, I hope that Hollywood will move past this thought that films about “authentic representation” are the only stories from “diverse” filmmakers worth greenlighting.
Forgotten Island doesn’t suffer from the “burden of representation” so much as it embraces it. It leans into Filipino folklore and imagery that becomes the film’s bread and butter (or pan de sal and butter). At times, it may weigh the story down, but it’s worth it. DreamWorks’s latest offering is a candy-coated animated sweet treat filled with surprises like halo-halo and vibrant with cultural specificities. Sentimental and charming, Forgotten Island opens a portal to Filipino joy that has replay value to keep children occupied for hours on end.
*Full disclosure: I am Filipino. My thoughts in this article might be slightly skewed, obviously. Apologies for the inconvenience.
