M. Night Shyamalan, you and I haven’t gotten along since Signs. With The Happening, I finally took you off my buddy list and I told you not try to IM me anymore. We were finished.
Or so I thought.
USA Today released the first two pictures from his upcoming adaptation of the animated show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, marking the first entry in the planned trilogy. (Not to be confused with James Cameron’s Avatar, due out December 18th.)
In the pictures we see Aang (Noah Ringer) and his nemesis Prince Zuko (Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire).
Avatar: The Last Airbender is set in an alternate world in which the “nations” are divided along the lines of elements: the Water Nation, the Earth Nation, the Fire Nation, and the Air Nation. The titular Avatar was supreme master of the four elements and was predestined to protect the rest of his world against the evil Fire Nation. Abruptly disappearing from view, the Avatar resurfaced in the form of 12-year-old Aang, the last of the Airbender tribe. Discovered frozen in ice near the South Pole by two young members of the Water tribe, Katara and Sokka, the irresponsible Aang had to summon up enough strength — and self-esteem — to do battle against the villainous Firebenders.
Shyamalan’s Avatar: The Last Airbender opens everywhere on July 2, 2010.
“Muhnight” Shyamalan (in the words of Janitor from Scrubs) has made a big mistake casting whie actors for a show that is Asian-themed, populated by Asian characters, and premised on Asian cultural traditions.
The running controversy will hurt the movie commercially. But more importantly, his choices and the studio’s will affect children who will take away powerful impressions from seeing one set of actors instead of another on hundreds of screens worldwide.
PBS just ran a documentary, “Chinese Hollywood”, on the long history of yellowface in movies, from silent films to the 70s – oops, the 00s. A timely reminder of the irrefutable cultural history and racist baggage of today’s industry.
“Muhnight” is either chillingly indifferent or blatently ignorant of this baggage. Even if we’re charitable and assume he’s an ahistorical ignoramus, this is difficult to excuse, given his prominence as an Asian American director. He isn’t working on the Moon. He’s seen Citizen Kane and Lady from Shanghai – and he’s seen the Charlie Chan movies, too. He *should* know his history.
Even if he’s afraid to challenge his studio after a series of commercial flops, doesn’t he have some measure of responsibility to make a modest, personal Alamo of this issue?
To paraphrase Jeff Smith, “Stupid, stupid sell-out ar-teest.”
Ang is SUPER white. Like it is repeated OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER again in both the animated series and now the live action movie. This takes place on a DIFFERENT world!! Where the entire world has different ethnic backgrounds and races. The common asian theme applies to all in this world whether your Asian, White, Black, etc. But Ang is White. Look at how he’s drawn. Super European features from glow in the dark pale white skin, to his arguably BLUE EYES (shown in many close ups- http://images.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Aang-Air-bending-avatar-the-last-airbender-461375_1024_768.jpg).
In this world ALL cultures have an Asian influence; art, martial arts, music, architecture, etc. I just keep hearing people getting upset at the casting of Ang and yet the released picture of Noah Ringer as Ang is a DEAD RINGER for what the animated version drew.
People need to be careful when they start throwing the race card around. Where-as racial problems do still exist, it is too easy to use the arguement that this person is a racist or that person is a racist because people see things differently. By saying Ang is Asian simply because he is a monk and resembles a Shaolin Monk is wrong. He has always been drawn as a “white kid.” You can see the considerable difference in features from how they draw Prince Zuko, whick has always been drawn with Asian features. Saying Ang is Asian and calling everyone racist is racist in it’s own right for you have no tolerance in seeing Noah Ringer as Ang. But look at the picture… looks like Ang to a lot of us.
Woohoo! Thank you for that! Yes, I agree, Aang appears white in the animated version. Zuko has asian features and Sokka and Katara have darker skin but very light eyes, so I’m not sure which race their live-action actors will be. Agreed that this is another planet with different races. This entire show is about how wrong it is that the fire nation is attacking the other peaceful nations on this world and it is the Avatar’s job to bring them together. It is a story about peace and honor and these petty arguments shouldn’t be happening. It sounds like Shyamalan’s version will stay true to the theme of the show and it looks awesome too!
Man, you guys are retards. oh, excuse me…Ok, “Aang is white”? He has “super european features?” You’ve never seen anyone NOT WHITE with Blue Eyes?
Well, then most likely you’ve never traveled outside of the States and you’ve never put your internet access to good use…like to learn about people of other cultures… you just use it to spew your ignorance.
Aang, is Asian. And what about Uncle Iroh? Is he WHITE too? You guys will do ANYTHING to own everyone’s culture but your own. I bet you practice yoga and drink green tea and are meaningless Asiaphiles like the ones who will see this movie. There are a lot of us out here OF EVERY RACE who know that the characters are ASIAN and we have no problem with that! Why did the actors HAVE to be white? Would anyone have cared if they were Asian? No.