If The Last Airbender was remade

This will probably never happen and that's probably a good thing,but,...

What would the best "realistic" outcome be?

What would the best cast be? Best director? Would it go as far as the end or stop midway through season 1? How long should it be?

I'd say the best cast would be? Well I dunno about most of it since Pat Morita is no longer alive and therefore can't be Iroh,but Dev Patel would make a brilliant Sokka and Jackson Rathbone would be a great Zuko,seeing as his usual monotone reputation fits Zuko well at first,but if He Can Really Act is true then who better? Aasif Mandvi could be Hakoda. Nicola Peltz could be Azula,and that Summer Bishil could be Katara. Seychelle Gabriel would still be the best for Yue. I know Shyamalan cast most of these names,but truthfully with lines like those,it's hard to judge them on their own merits

Ang Lee would probably be a good director,he managed to direct a decent superhero flick and earlier a Jane Austen adaptation,so he could probably adapt this one fairly well. Though with a little research Alfonso Cuaron could also pull it off.

Probably would be best to make it as long as The Lord Of The Rings and have it as a trilogy intended,maybe put Book 2 or 3 in separate parts

Dev Patel would make an awful Sokka.

Honestly, almost EVERY person in that movie from Aang to Sokka to Katara to Zuko to Azula was casted horribly.

edited 28th Feb '12 7:29:46 PM by Saturn

Asians. From the producer down to the honey wagon driver. I know it is a Western made cartoon, but if you are going to go live action you need to treat it with the respect that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon got. And for hell's sake, do the stuff they did in that original trailer and which by all reports never got included in the actual film. That was cool.

And by Gawd John Woo Himself must get the gig.

edited 28th Feb '12 7:38:41 PM by TamH70

They should have had Jackie Chan as Iroh. I know he's probably not old enough, but he has just the right personality.

What crippled the movie was the 100 minute running time, it should have been a 150-180 minute Lord Of The Rings style epic. I can handle poor dialogue and acting so long as the movie gives me time to appreciate anything that that is good. There was a lot to enjoy in the Blue Spirit sequence and the Seige of the North, but there was so much plot it killed any possible investment in the characters. On a similar note, it really doesn't matter how interesting your story is if your dialogue is horrendous.

The Last Airbender had a lot going for it (big budget, big names supporting it, massive advertising campaign) and it didn't have any changes from the source material that I thought would cripple the story, it just collapsed in putting it all together.

Any remake would basically have the same set-up but put someone in charge who can handle the big sequences and isn't trying to merge their psychological thriller background into a fantasy epic.

What? They were not horrible casting choices? Dev Patel totally looks like he could be Sokka,and I've heard he's done comedic parts before,and his role as Zuko shows that on some level,with the correct direction he could do the parts where Sokka has to be serious.

And Jackson Rathbone as Zuko,c'mon the pics of him as Sokka look a heckuva lot like Zuko.

Actually both actors originally auditioned for those parts,and under anyone other than Shyamalan would've had those parts. Heck even in the film itself,it seemed those ere the parts they tried for

The actors casted were actually brilliant,but they were put in the wrong roles. Oh and Shaun Tob could've been Bato,or yes a more serious Hakoda.

Ken Watanbe could be Iroh

It can't be all Asians,that would show no respect to the Water Tribe.

edited 29th Feb '12 7:42:20 AM by terlwyth

Erm...the Water Tribe in the show weren't caucasian and Russian. They were pretty clearly based on Inuit culture.

And thus Asian. Ba doom tish!

Inuits are North American,Nunavutians to be precise

edited 29th Feb '12 8:39:35 PM by terlwyth

Yes, but they also aren't white and they aren't Russian.

What terlwyth is saying is that making everyone Asian wouldn't be correct, as the culture Waterbenders are mostly (but not entirely) based off of is not actually an Asian culture.

So Yeah, he claimed it would show little respect to the Water Tribe to generalize in doing so, and in that he is arguably correct.

edited 29th Feb '12 9:29:19 PM by KnownUnknown

Inuits are of the same racial origins as most of modern Asia. Which is hardly surprising as they walked to the areas they live in now from there. So, Inuits are asians. Doesn't matter what their passport says, it is what their genes say that matters.

Well in that case, I can play an Inuit.

Hint: No, I cannot.

...that's like a combination of All Asians Are Alike and As Long as It Sounds Foreign.

I think the race issue was blown a little out of proportion mostly from the initial claim that Jesse McCartney was going to play Zuko, making the entire cast Caucasian. I did like the final decision of differentiating the nations (and even some towns) with different ethnicities, but like everything else it just wasn't handled properly. The fact the main heroes ended up white circumvented that idea. If we are talking about broad ethnicities the Water Tribe should have been Native American, I thought the Air Nomads being mixed race was a very interesting idea.

Regardless of whatever Unfortunate Implications people are hung up on, you should do your best to make the actors resemble the characters (especially main characters) in an adaptation. To not do that is going to alienate the fanbase ie the people who are going to give you money. Any exceptions should be for damn good reasons, like Michael Clarke Duncan as the Kingpin in Daredevil.

I'd count the Race Lift for Harvey Dent as an exception as well,still pisses me off that Christopher Walken as a one-off replaced him and then the universe ended there and got replaced

Exactly, ultimately the best way it could've been done was to get actors that look like the characters.

edited 1st Mar '12 6:26:56 PM by terlwyth

Wait, Christopher Walken didn't play Harvey Dent...unless I seriously missed something there.

Walken's character in Batman Returns was initially supposed to be Dent, to be injured at the end and become Two-Face for the sequel. As for Billy Dee, his role in Batman was so minimal it didn't really catch my attention. The Dark Knight was the only Batman movie where Dent and not just Two-Face was given the proper spotlight.

If "The Last Airbender" was remade...

I think it would be a more faithful, ANIMATED movie. That, or a multi-million dollar labour of love (something The Last Airbender clearly was not) with actors properly trained in marial arts, asian or not.

So, something like Lord of the Rings or the Harry Potter films? I'll admit, that'd pretty much be printing its own money.

I understand trying to cast thousands of Asians for one movie would be difficult. But when it comes to the leading cast, blatantly casting Caucasians was a stupid move.

The multicultural background and supporting cast didn't bother me, so seeing diversity between the Kingdoms is one of the adaptations that I would keep.

If it was remade... or at least a part two. Then the story should be followed, or at least adapted better than what was previously seen. I can understand changing things from their original medium to fit with movie time and make it a situation more plausible. However, just completely ignoring the origin to 'do your own thing because you don't like it' is just bad. I have a thought that M.Night would have eliminated Momo completely if he wasn't asked to put the little guy in there.

If they made another movie (under a completely different director with a completely different cast), I'd hope that they don't screw around with the pronunciations. Every time I heard Aang pronounced "Ong," I flinched.

It was a foolish attempt by Shamalama to add authenticity by making the names "culturally" correct. If anything, it proves that people hate making names "more Asian" if the "fake" pronounciation is "established by canon", which gives me slighter hope in humanity.

One of the biggest issues with the movie was the fact that it tried to cover too much story in too little time. Fact of the matter is that a whole season is just too much to do in one sitting. I'd suggest splitting each of the seasons in half, and doing a six-parter ala Harry Potter or Star Wars.

edited 3rd Mar '12 11:08:06 PM by Watchtower

Other solution would rewriting the plot completely but keep the same characters and themes the original series had. You'd think streamlining the plot would be easy, when the first season had so many stand-alone episodes anyway.

I actually thought the first season was reasonably condensed, the main problem was, again, the running time. It gave no opportunity for character investment or just enjoying what is being offered, and every single bit of dialogue was plot important.

Yeah, it could've worked. The plot of season one is actually not so difficult to condense thanks to the abundance of stand-alone episodes, but the fact that they made the movie only 94 minutes was ridiculous. That's the length of a kid's Disney film, not a distillation of a whole season's worth of plot.

That and the exposition. The terrible, terrible exposition.