Avatar: The Last Airbender Live Action Series

I can't picture Jackie being round, bearded, and grandfather-ly. At the same time his martial arts background and on-screen presence would absolutely fit the character.

Plus he's got his Big Good type-casting going for him.

The Fire Nation were based more off of Feudal and Imperial era Japan so I'd prefer actors of Japanese descent playing them.

The most Japanese thing about the Fire Nation was their topknots but the rest of their architecture, armor and clothing is pretty Chinese.

Whether they can afford Jackie is another matter. He’s semi-retired at this point, mostly doing movies for the local Chinese audience. A lot of “go-to” names for martial arts have retired from those kinds of roles in recent years, including Jet Li and Donnie Yen.

We know precious little about the series, creative, budget (the aforementioned One Piece made sure to brag about its budget immediately), etc.

The fire nation like all of the four nations don't correspond to any specific real world culture and are instead a Mix of them.

Ken Watanabe for Iroh would be almost too obvious.

Individual nations do skew towards one particular real life inspiration, but being fictionalized means the similarities between different Asian cultures becomes further blurred. The island based society with associated seafaring emphasis along with samurai armor-esque footsoldiers definitely makes the Fire Nation more like Japan.

And then you have redneck Waterbenders in the swamp.

My Question was, who would you like to see as Iroh? Whether dead or alive, probable or not is irrelevant. This was just about your dream pick. I don't know many asian Actors who could fit the role, that's why I said Jackie.

Edited by ZheToralf on Feb 10th 2020 at 9:54:18 PM

Or Earth Kingdom hippies.

x3 The armor is very Chinese over Japanese though.

The two are very similar, but the Fire Nation helmets tended to feature head crests, face masks and flared backs, which are a more distinctly Japanese design. Chinese armor favored less ornate, tighter to the head domed helmets

Literally in the artbook it says...

"Zuko in his most samurai-influenced design, just prior to season one. At the last minute we went with more of a Chinese style for the Fire Nation's clothes and architecture."

And pictured is a Zuko's earlier more Japanese style armor then his final Chinese styled one.

Edited by lycropath on Feb 10th 2020 at 3:22:34 AM

Like I said, I was talking mostly about the helmets of the footsoldiers. The unaired pilot had much stronger samurai influences, but the royal armor worn by Zuko and Azula definitely resembled Chinese generals. I imagine they probably streamlined the designs between the nations to prevent obvious "Japan vs China" or "China vs Tibet" implications.

Still, they better be careful given that they still have the Tibetan Monk genocide to deal with.

There is a lot of Shaolin influences in Air Nomads too, if we are being fair.

Chosing actors for the Water Tribe is tricky. People want inuit actors, but that's improbable. There aren't that many inuit actors between 14-20. They'll likely opt for "close enough" Fake Nationality actors.

I'm just curious how old the cast will be. Most people expect age lifted characters.

I'd say they'd make Aang to be 14 at most, but their youth between all of the chaos of a war they inherited is kind of the point of the show.

Plenty of action/adventure shows feature teenage protagonists. I'd say teenagers is the most important goal rather than the exact ages, as they are supposed to mature over the course of the story and there isn't a particularly huge maturity difference between 12-14 or 14-16. Of course they should avoid Dawson Casting for at least Aang, Katara and Toph. Zuko and Sokka are supposed to be a little older so if their actors are 20-ish that wouldn't be a problem.

Zuko and Sokka aren't that much older.

Reminder of how terrible the original live-action product is.

Its version of Yue was great, though. And it led to Asami, so the film wasn't a total waste.

Ah the pebble dance scene.

Why is this is all done in one shot?

Katara just suddenly walks up to that guy & pushes him.

5 fucking Earthbenders & all they could move was a fucking rock.

This film is still such a clusterfuck even Years from when it came out.

I guess that's why the fire nation won here. The other benders were wimps.

Also that camp is stupid. They never realised till he pointed it out that their surrounded by earth.

That's a classic Adaptation Induced Plothole. "We don't have the money to do this whole scene on an old-time oil platform, so we'll just have it be some random camp in the wilderness and ignore all the problems that causes."

They could have just dunno. Maybe not adapted this scence then.