OMG, I didn’t want to believe it, but now I have no choice. I’m suppose to take my lil niece and nephew to see this movie tomorrow, but I’ve read nothing but bad reviews over and over and over. How can you mess this movie up? All he had to do was direct it, nothing needed changing. I don’t care if there wasn’t any diversity (ethnicity) in the cast, but Sokka needed to be Sokka, as well as every body else. Now I think I may take them to see Toy Story instead. I mean they are 12 and 8, and they really wanted to see it. I just don’t know if I can bare watching it, knowing how bad it’s going to be. Please, tell me it’s not that bad, please.
Infinite Brooklyn Rage!
Hunh. I could have sworn I posted a question last night asking if Jeong-Jeong got cut from the movie entirely, but I guess my post ragequit itself.
Awesome.
I love how divisive Katara is. It’s so great.
R.I.P. again Mako. He must be spinning his grave at this movie.
Okay, this is what pisses me off most since this is what I’m ultimately worried about.
And you guys were wondering why I said I wanted to maim the director as soon as I heard he was touching this?
Ugh. I can’t bring myself to read the interview if he’s going to be that delusional.
You’d think that he’d have a sixth sense by now or that he would see the signs, but the happening just shows how unbreakable his delusions are and that his every time he opens his mouth, his “intelligence” sinks faster than a fat lady in the water.
Between this, your current Genkai avatar and your current Kuja signature, you are officially awesome. (Although I can revoke that awesomeness at any time.)
Or that white people automatically easier to relate to because the majority of the viewers are more likely to be white.
They’re not entirely wrong (unfortunately), but I think they overestimate the effect of this.
I’m going to have side with specs on this that is a bullshit argument, and it’s not because of the negative reviews or that you happened to like it.
It’s because it’s based on something else. Why should I go watch an inferior form of a far better product that I already have? Especially when said support of said inferior product just enables Hollywood and makes them think that people liked said inferior product and thus encourages them make more because they at least broke even?
I’m not going to front that even if the movie had been excellent that there would still be some fans that would be hating on it, but telling people to come to their own conclusion in the thread dedicated to the original series seems a bit inane. We already came to our conclusion when we watched the original series that that it was excellent. We are thus understandably pissed that the current project not only is far from that, but also is the impression that more people are going to get about the original series since most Americans still don’t take animation seriously.
Oh, I’m sure that people enjoyed it, just like I’m sure that there are some people that enjoyed Gigli or 28 Weeks Later or 300 (I’m ashamed to admit that I was one of these people for a day or two) or TF2 or Wolverine or…
Just because people enjoy a movie doesn’t mean it’s good. Come on. You should know this from how much SRK loves Street Fighter: The Movie not because it’s good, but because it’s so bad it’s good.
Oh, it IS a bullshit argument because Tomahawk’s reply was essentially “enjoy the movie for what it is”, which does not translate to “it’s good” and isn’t arguing anything.
It’s a bullshit argument because of The Last Airbender being based off an already existing product. How the hell can you enjoy an obviously watered-down, cliff-notes, wholly whitewashed and soon-to-be-ridden with plot holes (if they actually get to, sigh, make a sequel) of something? It’s rather telling that people who have never seen the series proper seem to hate it too.
It’s like trying to argue with someone that, say, Batman & Robin was essentially good because you should “enjoy it for what it is”, i.e. an overly campy movie that doesn’t take itself or the act of writing seriously.
Even if it wasn’t based off something else, everyone should be weary to go see anything by Shaymalan because he’s a hack. So, it’s not like this is a totally new product by a completely new, unheard of director that needs support. It’s kind of impossible to judge this movie in a void simply due to the clusterfuck of bad decisions surrounding it.
Whitewashed? are you fuckin kidding me? There was like 5 white people in the whole damn movie. Everybody else was of different ethnicity.
I enjoyed the movie BUT i already laid out what things this movie did wrong. Even with the things they did wrong it didn’t mess up the enjoyment i had.
Saw the movie yesterday
I was quite faithful to the series. The only thing wrong with it was it felt quite rushed. They had a lot of story to fit into the movie so it moves quite quickly and if you aren’t familiar with the show I feel you might not know what is going on.
All the haters either:
A. Never saw the show
or
B. Don’t realize how hard it is to tell that much story in an hour and a half and still have it come out coherent.
I really don’t think the studio gave him the support he needed to fully expore everything Avatar has to offer. If Peter Jackson had to cram the fellowship of the ring into an hour and 45 minutes with no guarantee of the sequels ever being supported it probably would have ended up recieving reviews equally as harsh.
I really believe time constraints are the main issue the movie had. The acting and dailouge wasn’t bad it was just out of place. There would be dramatic scenes than had no build up or resolution, just a bunch of key plot points right after each other over and over with no segueway.
The film really felt like a fuck load of stuff was cut out and missing.
Final thoughts:
If you’re a fan of the show: the movie delivers but, you’ll have to fill in the blanks because there is a lot of stuff missing. Not changed or ignored, just missing. I feel the blame for this goes on the studio not the director. But, aside from the missing stuff everything is as it was in the show (ignoring the odd pronunciation of some of the characters names). Even momo is in the movie and he looks perfect. They call him a lemur-bat instead of a lemur but, if you’re complaining about that you’re just trying to find things to hate.
If you’ve never seen the show: It will seem incoherent. Watch the show and then see the movie.
and they were all the main characters. funny shit, right?
I’d say “stop trolling, Kelter Skelter”, but that would mean that I’d actually have to pay attention to you.
No, I am not “fucking kidding” for the reason subt-L said.
For the record, whitewashing is annoying, but otherwise I could have dealt with it if the movie was otherwise good since whitewashing is unfortunately really common. 21 anyone?
However, what REALLY gets me about the whitewashing of this movie is that Shaymalan went out of his way to make the Fire Nation Indian when they have the lightest skin of all four nations. What the fuck? He completely inverted the skin tone in a masturbatory way.
Hell, if he had done opposite, then at least Katara and Sokka would look closer to what they like in the show. Same with Yue. It would have still been masturbatory, but then it would at least have less Unfortunate Implications about “white is right” and ethnic, arguably terrorist-looking (to some) people being the bad guys like always.
So, yeah, I’m being serious even though it’s hardly my biggest concern with the movie.
i’m actually not super offended by it. regardless of anything, i think the best actors should get the job, and if they can act to the point that i forget they are whatever race they are, then that’s awesome.
but these kids couldn’t act. at all. they obviously went “white is right”, and i’m not sure if that was a shyamalan decision or a paramount exec decision. They basically looked out of place. they felt out of place. they even spoke out of place, with their "ah-ng"s and their "sow-kuh"s. and their "ah-vuh-tar"s. its like you couldn’t have made them being white stand out any more than possible.
according to the making of on nickelodeon, noah ringer, the kid who plays aang (ah-ng), sent an internet video sent to m. night shyamalan of him dressed like the avatar, doing flips and shit. shyamalan watched it and thought it was cool but not good enough to hire, so he set it aside. he said that noah wasn’t going to get the part, but he thought it’d be cool to hang onto. they went through the entire casting process, and apparently, EVERYONE SUCKED, so they called up this kid and told him he got the part. so the main part of a multimillion dollar film was cast off of a medium bit rate internet video that was the last possible resort.
i’m sure jackson rathborne was cast because he’s a teenage heartthrob, and if you’re going white for the brother, you gotta go white for the sister. and i’m sure that means you gotta go white for everyone, right? nope. no one else was white except for the grandmother, which is natural, and the worlds greatest waterbender, for no reason whatsoever. basically, anyone of any positive importance was cast white… which just came off as out of place and more offensive than the original casting.
yeah, the white people freeing the poor oppressed asians from the dangerous, oppresive indians over and over… i’m sure there’s no underlying issues there.
Everybody on Facebook is talking shit about this movie.
fixed 
The movie was OK at best. Just so much wasted potential. Fire nation was hella weak especially Zuko, i expected some fancy kung fu shit from them but no. All we got was them throwing fireballs. Please at least hire some people with martial arts background. Firebending just doesnt look very impressive in this movie. The demonstrators of the elements at the intro was more badass than the rest of the movie. Water and Earth bending was cool, at least they got that right…If they ever make a sequel, hope they hire a different director.
Movie in general just felt very rushed.
btw, Aang’s name is not pronounced “Ong” goddammit. Get it right. Time to watch the show again.
Yo lets get this going
I’ll defend this movie. Not trolling, I thought it was pretty cool.
that is because it is a steaming pile of shit
M. Night Shyamalan can go royally fuck himself, especially after that I saw the creators of the show were executive producers.
Yeah… wtf was up with that. I was a bit salty on that. Looking it up he went out of the way to make sure that the main characters were white… His casting call requested only Caucasians for the main roles.
Wrong. I’m stating facts, and nothing more.
The Damned wins this current line of conversation.
Dr. B wins this thread too, because, c’mon, you don’t need two hours of amateurish exposition to know.
Thanks for being civil, Tomahawk. Sorry if I seemed like I was implying you were stupid or something. My being actually pissed for once made my post come off harsher than I had intended.
Obviously, I don’t agree that the film is good, but I can’t stop you from enjoying it. People simply have different tastes. Hell, my best friends enjoyed 28 Weeks Later even though I hate the shit out of that movie AND saw it for free.
So, sorry about that.
…Of course, now I’m just getting pissed again having read that interview and learning how he’s incompetently shuffling things around if he’s not straight-up getting rid of them.
Wow, most of the answers Shyamalan–I’ve been spelling his name wrong the entire time–gave are completely inane. The only one that I kind of agree with is that the last couple of episodes of each season are so packed with goodness that it’s difficult to pack all of that information into movie format.
And yet that didn’t stop him from trying to cram ten hours into less than two.
Sigh. This guy…
Anyway, headache I got from that aside, the second comment on there probably addresses what’s really wrong with the movie succinctly without offending anyone:
Hating this guy the more I find out about him.
You forget that Zukko is meant to be weak in the first book.
As the animated series went into book 2 and 3, their bending became more powerful, until the last episode, where it just look like straight up FIREBEAMS.
Unbelievable stuff.
Above all, the uncle was really well brought out =]
lol, and yes, the names do sound horrible, Sow-kah, and Ah-ng lol
But the martial arts wasn’t that bad, I enjoyed the movie.
It’s obvious that the director had an audience in mind.
That audience wasn’t the people who didn’t watch the show… lol
http://ichigokitty.deviantart.com/art/Princess-Power-159676481?q=&qo= 
…Not so good when the person you’re using as an example for who should play Katara (who isn’t white) also cosplays a damn convincing Rosalina (who is very much white). Unless of course you’re not going for the generic “Sokka and Katara shouldn’t be white” argument, but I have the feeling you probably are.
Still plan on seeing this, but not because I think it’s gonna be good, more because I said I would regardless of how it turned out.
As an aspiring screenwriter I often find myself enacting what-if scenarios where I had to remake/reenvision/adapt something. And Avatar is no different.*
Here’s what I would have done(not a full list):
Sokka would have been a slightly older and already-capable hunter and tactician. Why? In a movie, we don’t have 10+ hours to fill with conflict, and Sokka’s fight to become a warrior and tactician needs to be cut. Sokka’s conflict for a movie is simple to explain and presents multiple storytelling opportunities: his feelings of abandonment (by his father and the other warriors) and his potent combat ability coming up short in a fight against benders. Borrow this from the TV series: his initial distrust of Aang.*
Zuko needs his fights with Zhao, which M. Night inexplicably and illogically denied him TWICE. He also needs to be firmly established as what he was in the show, what most people forget: he’s one of the show’s two protagonists (with Aang). He needs obstacles, skill-based resolution, and his own antagonists.*
Aang has to feel the weight of his abandonment, his need to atone, and (slightly different from the show) he needs to make it his mission to try to reform Zuko. “We could be friends” needs to be a major theme, and Aang needs to be what Katara was in the show; exceptionally wary of Zuko, who betrays one’s own expectations of reformation.*
Yue needs to be one of two things: either part of the group from the beginning (so we actually care about her death), or someone the group rescues halfway through. I prefer the former. If neither can work, ax her and the entire moon subplot entirely, and instead have Zhao compromise the Northern Water Tribe some other way. In fact, after typing that, fuck Yue. Here’s how Zhao compromises them: new technology. Icebreaker ships and the like.*
In fact, ax the whole Spirit World thing altogether. The balance of the four nations is responsibility enough. The Spirit World works for TV. In a movie, there’s not enough time and far different considerations.*
Seriously, I should have written this movie, and Neil Blonkampf (sp?) should have directed it. I guarantee it would have been thoughtful at worst, and amazing at best. Yes self-homo.*
Dr. B would play Ozai. That’s right; the Fire Nation WINS.*