Cultural appropriation is a phenomenon when a dominant culture borrows or adopts elements from another culture, often minority culture. It is often considered a problematic practice since the original meaning or value is usually lost or distorted, and the original culture has no control over it. The elements are often used as a “decoration” to the dominant culture.
In most Hollywood movies, we are used to seeing Asian culture or actors being made fun of, or can only represent stereotypes. Asian actors are either kung-fu masters, ninjas, or gangsters. In the movie Lucy, although the background was set in Taipei, all the Asian actors are from Korea, and they are mobsters that never survived more than ten seconds throughout the whole film. Asian representations are always inferior in those mainstream movies. It is similar to how some early movies they always portrait Latino as gangsters or dancing with bananas. Because of their ignorant, they are showing disrespect to minority cultures.