Avatar: The Last Airbender

14 is still barely in middle school depending on when ya start..

It just doesn't matter.

Edited by randomness4 on Oct 8th 2018 at 9:28:59 AM

They will probably skew a little bit older for casting purposes, but may also age up Aang and the group in general since we are looking at a live action tv show running years instead of an animated show covering one year total. It's asking a lot for a group of 12-14 year old kids to carry a dramatic action show like this. Most of their ages were not very well specified anyway except in outside material, as such even in the movie you could argue with some of the actors like Patel and Rathbone that the characters were aged up accordingly. The exact ages are not as important as the idea that they are really young yet given a great responsibility.

Edited by KJMackley on Oct 9th 2018 at 2:26:30 AM

Personally I'd just age everyone up four years and change the time frame from one year to three. That avoids a lot of potential issues.

@ Pichu-kun

I don't know. I think it would be revolutionary to have preteen actors (especially non-white ones) who are actually great at what they do. Plus, even if their emotional execution is a bit off, provided that you aren't a critic expecting perfection, it would actually be more of a realistic reaction from 12 - 16 year olds.

Ooh yeah. Being a 100% Kataanger at heart, I would love to see it executed more-or-less verbatim with child actors who are 12/13 and 14/15 in live-action. Besides, in ancient times, it was normal for 14-year-old girls to marry.

In all honesty though, I'm pretty game for a live-action adaptation. As long as it does its own thing and does it well, while staying true to the essence of the original, I don't mind it reinventing the mythos.

The things that worry me the most are the execution of the bending arts, along with the environmental factor. Will the sets be real, or studio-made? Will battle damage look authentic with CGI?

I actually don't mind the reduction of Appa's arc in favour of more time spent with the kids themselves. I found Toph the least likable and least developed of the main cast, so more screentime showcasing her vulnerabilities and flaws as much as her strengths is welcomed by me in the adaptation.

Earth is an element I'm not too worried about when it comes to CGI; it's water that worries me because animating water is a literal pain in the neck.

You say that and then we remember the Pebble Dance.

Someone theorized that the earth benders were raising the wall, and the guy who did the flying kick was the one levitating the pebble, but that just sounds like the bargaining stage of the 5 Stages of Grief.

I'm still hoping this isn't a direct reboot of the original series, but maybe the early days of Republic City. That would solve the headache of child actors while also giving an excuse to minimize the giant expensive bending battles.

That would be interesting to see. :)

As I've commented regarding the theory, that's not so much bargaining as passing the blame. Instead of a failure of fight choreography or the effects department, its a shifting the blame to the cinematographer for failing to block the shot in such a way to properly convey what's supposed to be happening.

So, would you like to see what the hypothetical next Earthbending Avatar would be?

If the next Avatar shows up in something, I'd like them to have a different role than just the hero again, like an aloof mentor or the villain.

I mean, when the Avatar is around, following any one else's story seems kind of...weird. By the very nature of the position, the Avatar is incredibly likely to be heavily involved with whatever the most interesting thing going on is.

Making them an "aloof mentor" leaving the heavy lifting to someone else doesn't really work, and I don't see the writers as interesting in "what if the Avatar was the bad guy" as some fans are.

Edited by LSBK on Oct 9th 2018 at 6:32:47 AM

It was normal for wives to be the property of their husbands too. Ancient marriages were effectively business transactions between fathers and grooms. Not exactly something that Avatar wants to emulate.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 9th 2018 at 6:06:48 AM

Yet again, this misconception. No, it was not normal. 14-year-old girls almost never got married unless they were being betrothed as part of a formal arrangement in the nobility. Even then, there was usually no consummation until the girl was old enough/healthy enough to bear children. Lady Margaret Beaufort was an exception, not the rule. And commoners generally didn’t get married until they were about 19 or 20, at the earliest.

Edited by wisewillow on Oct 9th 2018 at 8:39:11 AM

Also customarily, adulthood in Avatar is at sixteen. Hence Yue's engagement being formalized and when Avatars would be informed of their identity.

Edited by lycropath on Oct 9th 2018 at 5:44:07 AM

I don't like the idea of aging everyone up. One of the themes of Avatar is childhood during war time. We'd lose that theme if everyone is young adult or late teenager.

I wouldn't mind seeing the Avatar have to deal with Harmonic Convergence as whatever internal struggle they have to deal with will determine whether his inner light (Raava) or inner darkness (Vaatu) becomes dominant.

Also what does that have to do with the relationship between a 12 and 14 year old?

Pointing out even if it was true 14 year olds got married, that is not the case in Avatar-land.

But Katara and Aang can do whatever they want, they earned their happy ending.

It just...shouldn't have been brought up at all, like for serious.

The original comment wasn't even relevant to "stuff"...

Edited by randomness4 on Oct 9th 2018 at 9:03:30 AM

Someone commenting that in real life people getting married as young as fourteen was a thing and then pointing out that in Avatarland that isn't the case does seem like its on topic to the subject at hand but that might just be me. But this conversation your starting is just petty semantics that don't care for.

On another topic, on one hand I can see the flaws of casting young actors for this with the aging and what not. On the other hand, it is a good point that a lot of the themes in Avatar was that the cast where children, Aang was not emotionally mature enough to handle the responsibilities that come with being an Avatar at such a young age and then running away, Katara being forced to grow up beyond her years to fill the role of mother in her family, Sokka being left behind by the men of the tribe because he wasn't old enough to go to war. A lot of their character does seem to be based in their youth.

Edited by lycropath on Oct 9th 2018 at 10:43:29 AM

We've got 20 somethings pretending to be in high school, I'm sure casting will be fine.

It's not semantics. The original discussion was about aging up Aang in a live action sense so that it wouldn't be 2 year age gap between him and Katara...then the getting married at 14 thing was just brought up out of nowhere.

I'm not sure how I would feel with Avatar being a cast of thirty year old teenagers to be honest.