Wow. 399 words out of 400. That was close.
I thought that it was hilarious that the movie couldn't decide whether the word "avatar" was pronounced with a long or short A.
Eh, I would like to argue about the Second point:
1) there are more people out there who belong to a culture which knows how to pronounce the names THAN there are Avatar fans, so the culturally accurate things will in the long run grate more nerves.
2) the problem is that the show (to the best of my knowledge, and being a 'no0b' in the business I may be wrong) uses actual Chinese writing and they use quite often actual names (be they Japanese, Chinese, other take your pick), so it's common courtesy to the culture you nicked them from to pronounce said names correctly.
(to the best of my knowledge, and being a 'no0b' in the business I may be wrong)
You're wrong. The show took some liberties with the pronunciation of the names in relation to how they were spelled in Chinese because English just doesn't have the same sounds, but they were fairly good approximations. The movie threw out the Chinese writing and altered the pronunciation based on the English spelling, blatantly ignoring cases where the Chinese writing would've showed them that the change was wrong (see 艾洛 àiluò becoming Ee-roh). The names were also, for the most part, made up a la most fantasy settings, so there WAS no correct way to pronounce them before the creators made them up.
Well, I watched the first season of the series and clearly heard several real Japanese names (pronounced horrendously), don't know about the other ones. I have to point out though that the pronunciation of Aang in the show grated my nerves, I kept thinking that maybe the name was Finno-Ugric or Norwegian in it's origin for them to say it the way they did.
Anyway, sorry for starting an argument. These are just mu two cents.
Actually I'd say Dev Patel and Shaun Tob made all their lines sound great,it's just that neither of them were the main focus in favor of Ung/Soaka/Katara and Zhao
I mostly prefer the show's pronunciation, but one that bugged me is when they pronounced "Mai" as "May" instead of "My"; I don't even see where the "a" sound would come from. To put things into perspective, even 4kids Entertainment pronounced her name correctly in the Yu Gi Oh dub.
You do realize that may have been the pronunciation they were going for, they just chose to spell her name that way.
For the pronunciation, there is no excuse. It was the same sentiment as with the blatantly white lead actors, the belief that american audiences are somehow repulsed by anything foreign, so that even fictional characters should look, act and spell their names like an American would. Sad, really.
As for the change in fire-bending, it was the second biggest slap in the face. The entire point behind the Fire Nation's philosophy in the series was that they are possessing the superior bending technique because, unlike the others, they create something out of thin air, and thus in their eyes it was only natural that they should spread their superior ways by war if necessary. It was clearly spelled out in the show in relation of Aang learning firebending; that while the biggest issue with the other elements is availability, for fire it's control, and it was even used as a metaphor to show that the Fire Nation was not bad, just out of control. It was a great narrative tool, and the movie completely butchered it, so no, it was not a "rational" choice, sorry.
airbenders have a big issue with availability?
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So much awesome, yet so much fail
First of all, I will say that there was alot that was done right for this movie. The special effects were good, (though the time-delay bending was weird), I thought the change in firebending was rational, and I thought that the way Shyamalan decided to cut the movie down (what scenes to keep and how) was fairly effective for an adaptation.
Unfortunately for the movie, while they did some things very well, they also did some things EXTREMELY BADLY.
Aside from those two major fails, there were plenty of minor ones as well, the kind that could have been forgivable normally, but just added to the suck quotient in this movie. Some of the character adaptations, the earthbenders being COMPLETELY UNAWARE that there was earth around them until Aang pointed it out, the Blue Spirit's wig (Okay, that one was almost major), and how the heck does Zhao have time to go chat with the Firelord waaaaaay over in the Fire Nation all the time, while he and Zuko are both chasing the Avatar? Zuko's not taking any detours and Zhao STILL beats him!
In conclusion, this movie could have been good, but missed the mark completely.