The Last Airbender

Oh my god, that teaser trailer looks awesome. Now I might not be so worried.

The CGI looks excellent, but I'm still a bit bugged by the fact that they chose an all-white cast to play the Gaang.

^ This.

Nrr, Oscredwin, that would be pretty fantastic, if they got the cast and crew from the show back together and gave them a movie budget. The cartoon...on the big screen...^^

The teaser was...

Not very informative?

Teasers rarely are.

Love the Real Is Brown color scheme.

Ditto, English, if by "love" you mean "cringe in wariness at." I just hope the whole movie doesn't look like that, because the lush colors were part of what drew me to the series in the first place. How will they pull off Color-Coded for Your Convenience if everyone wears the same colors?

I might go see it, just because the idea of Aasif Mandvi being anyone but Aasif Mandvi is fucking hysterical.

As is the idea of Dev Patel being badass.

But I do not see this Real Is Brown colour scheme of which you speak. I open on a guy wearing a strong red robe surrounded by candles with an orange glow, the stone is the deep grey blue of granite, the script is done in this steal blue and on the whole the thing looks like all the colours of a guy wearing red in the candle filled ruins of a temple. Then it goes outside with gardens the colour of gardens, a blue ocean and some ships that are black and red. The blue lettering makes me think the advertising is going to work on the "Water" theme.

In fact I note the clarity of that red cloak, the avoidance of a dusty grimeyness to make it look worn down, the lushness of the garden around the temple, the saffron tint to the candlewax and the sleek jet black of the ships and the bold red lines. Kinda reminds me of a corvette.

edited 23rd Jun '09 2:05:57 PM by SomeSortOfTroper

...I just wanted Jason Isaacs to come back as Zhao. T_T

That's the only character I wouldn't mind being played by a white guy.

Hey guys, a new casting choice has been announced!

I didn't see it coming, but I totally support it.

edited 24th Jun '09 3:20:43 AM by Haven

Well by directly hiring God they probably saved on the special effects for the flying scenes. OK, OK, I know he's not really God, he's just a Magical Negro.

In the teaser however, Aang does to my eyes, really look like Aang though.

I've never even watched this show, and I'm annoyed by the fact that it's titled M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. Instead of just The Last Airbender.

Or maybe they're warning the old fans that this version has Shyamalan all over it. (And I say this as a guy who likes most of M. Night's oeuvre.)

edited 24th Jun '09 3:28:51 PM by MetaFour

I think it's a warning.

Really you do have to warn people with this guy.

It's to show people where they spent the money.

Well, not to show, but with a cast of young actors, he's the closest they get to "star power"... except for the fire comet.

The only thing that worries me about the casting is how am I going to identify all the Fantasy Counterpart Cultures now. I mean, obviously the Fire Lord line and the entire Fire Nation are going to be Indians, so they can't be Japan anymore. Unless they are both but that gives us Indian Samurais and brings pretty crazy elements into the table which I'm not sure if they are stupid, awesome or both. Also, Indian Azula is kinda freaky to picture (partly because every time I try to picture Azula now, all I can imagine is that). I'm still kinda eager to go see how can they pull that, though.

edited 24th Jun '09 8:51:47 PM by TheAdversary

Too bad Toph was one of my favorite characters and she won't be in the film.

She'll be in the sequel. If there is a sequel. they can't possibly even try to condense all three seasons into a single movie. You can barely fit Season 1's ending and two or three episodes in the same timeframe, and let's not even get started on the series finale.

Toph's actually going to be part of the twist ending, where she turns out not to be blind!

And just to mess with people, he'll hire an actress who actually is blind! So /co/ keeps saying, anyway

The trailer is really not getting my hopes up.

It seems, well, hackneyed and cliche. To a degree that the show itself, despite being targeted at preteens, never did.

I do think the actor looks the part of Aang though.

Aang is still a white kid, and that still irritates me.

Apart from that, the trailer was meh. I don't expect I'll bother with this movie. I haven't even finished the first series, so I don't want a lousy film to ruin it for me.

Aang being white doesn't bother me at all. The intended ethnicity of the Air Nomads was never that obvious. Just because they do martial arts and dress similar to Asian cultures doesn't mean that they have to be ethnically Asian in a fantasy world.

What bothers the hell out of me is a white Sokka and Katara. The water tribesmen all have very dark skin, much darker than anyone else in the show. Their ethnicity was 100% obvious, and was completely ignored in favor of white-washing.

I never imagined Aang as white, which is why white Aang irritates me. I realise that was open to interpretation.

White Katara and Sokka makes me outright angry, because there was absolutely no room for interpretation there.

Incidentally, the ad server has turned the ad at the bottom of the page into a picture of the gaang and I'm looking at Aang and I'm thinking "That is just a white boy isn't it" especially when you compare him to some of the obviously ethnicised characters and especially when you compare him to this◊. I wonder did they, use photoshop inkdrop tool and paint the kid in the skin colour used for the show? Compare◊.

The teaser is just a teaser. Nothing happens in teasers. You stare at some pretty picture and listen to some guy monologue. Maybe you get a little pan out and reveal.

I'm getting the column builder ad again.

The movie's not even going to come out until next year. Fun as it may be, it's way too early to pass judgment.