avatar:the last airbender is pretty cool for nickleodeon pseudo-anime

http://www.avclub.com/articles/aasif-mandvi,42627/

The Last Airbender (2010)—“Commander Zhao”

Aasif Mandvi: Night called me on the phone while I was at the airport getting ready to get on a plane to go shoot a piece for The Daily Show. He just started chatting about this character, and I had no idea where the conversation was going. I just thought, “Oh, M. Night Shyamalan is bored and wants to talk to me about The Last Airbender.” [Laughs.] It was really just like that. He called me and was like, “Tell me, what do you think about…” as though he were just discussing it with me. And toward the end, I was getting ready to board the plane, then I was on the plane and they were telling me to shut off my phone, and I was like, “So, what do you want to do? We’re having this great conversation, and I love having this conversation with you, but what’s the purpose of this?” And he was like, “Oh, yeah, do you want to do the role?” And I was like, “Yeah! But I gotta go! We’re going to take off!” So it was kind of a bizarre way to get a job. But I find that I get all of my jobs in kind of bizarre ways.

This is my first sort of real… I mean, I did Spider-Man 2, but I had a very small part in it. This is the first time I’ve been really involved in an action film, and it was fun. Movies are always a lot of sitting around and doing nothing, that kind of “Hurry up and wait” situation, and yes, there were days when we sat around, but it was a really fun experience. The cast got along really well. We all became very familial, because we were all in Philadelphia, and when you’re in Philadelphia, there’s not a lot to do. So we all hung out, went to eat together at night. We stayed at the same hotel. It was kind of like a summer camp.

The A.V. Club: What’s your take on the casting controversy? About not having Asian actors in the main roles?

AM: Not to get into it too much, but I think Night’s tried to create a world that’s overall more culturally diverse, and draws from more backgrounds and ethnicities and traditions than the Last Airbender TV show did. It’s an interesting story, because unlike Lord Of The Rings or something like that, where it’s set in an imaginary world with hobbits and gnomes, this is set in a world populated by humans. And so in order to represent humanity, you need to represent all of its various cultures. Even though a lot of the martial arts obviously are based in Eastern tradition, I think over the course of the trilogy, you’ll see that Night’s vision includes the entire spectrum of cultures.

I love Aasif Mandvi.

In other words, cultural diversity is OK, as long as white people are the stars, right? God, what would we Americans do if we had to deal with more lead actors of color... riots everywhere!

It's kind of hilarious seeing a bunch of white people react indignantly to a non-white person's decision to hire some white people

I'm not white.

Tuomas is.

Even if he is, it doesn't make the casting any less ridiculous. Have you seen this show? I mean, if they're not going to cast Asian actors for THIS movie... come the fuck on, Hollywood.

the Onion's recent string of interviews with character actors (John Hawkes, Danny Trejo, Aasif Mandvi) has been pretty excellent

Where have I been that I didn't know Aasif Mandvi was in this??

(don't answer that)

I've never really been indignant, just a little sad.

this entire issue is ridiculous and stupid. the end.

― ampersand (remy bean), Tuesday, June 29, 2010

QFT. Taking gift horse to dentist imo.

If white people can't complain about race issues, that would delete 72% of ILX discussions.

And just because Shyamalan is non-white doesn't mean the casting of white people to play Asian/Inuit characters can't be questioned, plus it seems unlikely for a movie of this size that the casting choices were his and his alone.

If white people can't complain about race issues, that would delete 72% of ILX discussions.

― Tuomas, Wednesday, June 30, 2010 7:09 PM (5 minutes ago)

this is what we in the business call "a good start"

In the business of ILX deleting?

i was thinking more the business of worthwhile discussion but yours works too

Ebert gives it a half star

Exactly. Basically, this is what looks like happened: this show does pretty well on Nickelodeon, attracts a wide fanbase largely because of its adoption of Asian culture, not despite it, where the studio thinks they can make money on a live-action adaptation - enough to sink $150M into it. But when it comes to casting, it's for likely embarassing, "politically incorrect" reasons than they can't find Asian-American kids for the leads. There's a message that Asians can't lead movies, which of course leads to a cycle where they won't get cast for them (also see the whitewashing of 21). Then after the outrage came out, it was announced that Asian actors would be cast for the villains and secondary roles.

I understand that some of you won't care at all about this (it's just a kids movie rite? and media representation issues rank pretty low in this horrible world), but I find this shit to be deeply embarassing. All right, I'll stop now.

which asian-american actor could conceivably lead a big-budget movie, though?

Considering that all the three lead actors are unknowns, I don't see why they couldn't have picked unknown Asian/Inuit actors instead of unknown white ones. It's not like this movie is sold on star power.

I am patiently waiting on our own Shyamalan expert-in-spite-of-his-wishes s1ocki to give us the lowdown.

yknow the problem w/that whole tactic is that arguing in favor of non-colorblind casting taken to its eventual conclusion = 99% of big budget film adaptations end up being cast out of solely white peeps xpost

The Onion AV Club gives it a rare F. http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-last-airbender,42682/

ha see, the main reason I'm not caring particularly much about casting controversies with regards to this movie is that I'm really not at all convinced that no amount of casting Asian/Asian-American actors would have fixed its biggest problem, namely being directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who seems to have forgotten how to make movies

I haven't seen it, but I'm guessing the unknown leads end up being generic, charisma-free drones in this movie,
so I can understand why after-the-fact, one could feel like since the bar was not set that high, why not
take a risk, but judging from the few roles afforded to asian-americans, who among them have brought
something to the game to show that they might be capable of something more?

If I needed to cast a big-budget US movie with asian faces in the main slots, I'd be looking overseas for talent, frankly.
but for direct-to-video stuff like street fighter: legend of chun li, yeah, there's pretty much no excuse.

yeah frankly if i was an inuit actor id be thanking my lucky stars that my big break didnt lead to this piece of shit dragging my career down titanic style when it tanks in the first weekend xpost

quick, how do we get shyamalan to cast reese witherspoon in his next colossal masterpiece

he'd do a pretty awesome sequel to Election, i'd bet -- his movies recently have all been pretty good if you thought of them as wry comedies.

I'm really not at all convinced that no amount of casting Asian/Asian-American actors would have fixed its biggest problem, namely being directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who seems to have forgotten how to make movies

ITA -- even if it had had Asian leads, Shyamalan doesn't really seem to understand the story and is only picking up on the portentous and angsty parts of it. Or at least that's the way it seems from the trailers and other clips, I'm not going to bother watching it to confirm my suspicions.

maybe the twist at the end is THE LEAD ACTORS WERE ASIAN-AMERICAN ALL ALONG

Argh

hahaha

Ebert half star & AV Club F not portending well imo

are they locked into a trilogy here? or can they golden compass it?

over the course of the trilogy

so not gonna happen

man, so bummed by those reviews. loved the show and was hoping for something at least half as smart, involving & imaginative.

Lol Tony Scott:

An astute industry analyst of my acquaintance, who is 9 and an admirer of the Nickelodeon animated series on which the movie is based, offered a two-word diagnosis of its commercial prospects on the way out of the theater: “They’re screwed.”

the "it's ok that they didnt cast asian leads in this movie because m night shyamalan sucks" argument somehow wouldn't make me feel any better if i was an asian or asian-american actor looking to get work

These show potential as Steampunk, but are never caressed for their intricacies.

I love when something like 'steampunk' or 'goth' gets capitalized like this, man. I wonder if it is part of the Sun-Times' style manual.

should be more like wild wild west imo

his movies recently have all been pretty good if you thought of them as wry comedies.

. . . which is exactly how sci-fi blog io9 reviews it! http://io9.com/5576076/m-night-shyamalan-finally-made-a-comedy

The third member of our main trio is Sokka, who's played by one of the vampires from Twilight. At one point, he falls in love with a silver-haired girl with insane costume jewelry, who looks like a refugee from the "wink of an eye" people, out of the original Star Trek. We know that he's got the hots for her, because Katara tells us in a quickie voice-over.

Oh yeah - that's another one of the ways in which this movie pokes fun at the very idea of epic fantasy: the endless confusing voice-over, in which tons of important story developments happen off-camera while we're looking at a picture of a tree or a CG mountain. Because why do we privilege the story of the hero's progress over the tree?, Shaymalan asks. Why does the original Star Wars insist on showing us Luke Skywalker training with a lightsaber, instead of telling us that Luke Skywalker trained with a lightsaber while showing us a tracking shot of some rocks? Why pretend that one thing is more important than the other thing? Why pretend that any of it has any meaning? As a wise man once wrote, "A menu is as good as a myth."

Also, if the original Star Wars had given us a tracking shot of rocks, with a voiceover explaining that Luke was learning to use a lightsaber someplace else, it would have freed up more screen time for Luke to stand around shouting, "JAWAS! THERE IS SAND UNDER YOUR FEET!"

Because why do we privilege the story of the hero's progress over the tree?, asks Shaymalan

is inane criticism. people whose conception of dramaturgy and storytelling owe primary debts to Joseph Campbell and Erich Neumann and monomythic structures need to stop trying to sound smart.

'the "it's ok that they didnt cast asian leads in this movie because m night shyamalan sucks" argument somehow wouldn't make me feel any better if i was an asian or asian-american actor looking to get work'

i would mourn the passing of Law & Order as a never-ending stream of belligerent street vendor/reluctant witness rent-paycheck roles more than this movie, I'd wager.
was there equivalent outrage over the casting of goku in that dragonball movie?

riots iirc

I want to point out that that wasn't really my argument.

My argument was "the casting controversy is not this movie's biggest problem".

Oh dear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNl3j3Snkbs

And holding steady at 6%!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/last_airbender/?name_order=asc

as Dan said above, the biggest problem with this movie is who the director is, when has M Night made a good movie?

when i saw sixth sense in the theater i had the answer figured out halfway thru which i think any fan of horror/sci fi.fantasy (what now gets referred to as genre film which i dont get as a definition but is another conversation) had also done. Inbreakable was more interesting til it collapsed and everything since has been more and more mindless. How he gets these budgets to continue making movies astounds me - did i read 280 million for this film somewhere? of course budgets for transformers etc also horrify me

that said, the gawker round up of the reviews is pretty great
just allowing the critics to speak themselves with a minimum of additives

http://gawker.com/5577043/so-how-bad-is-m-night-shyamalans-new-movie-really-bad?skyline=true&s=i

unbreakable was pretty good, i preferred it to the 6th sense (but i knew the twist going in with that one)