The Last Airbender - M. Night's latest
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It's the same crap 3D process they tested on Iron Man II.
I'm not sure who is responsible for this (JL cough) but it sucks, it might get a little bump overseas tho. What a way to trash a movie (with NO writers strike).
Great way to piss off your Audience Paramount before it even comes out!
The only Buddhist that worked there was against it.
I'm not sure who is responsible for this (JL cough) but it sucks, it might get a little bump overseas tho. What a way to trash a movie (with NO writers strike).
Great way to piss off your Audience Paramount before it even comes out!
The only Buddhist that worked there was against it.
Chris Light
Veteran
please add this review, as i believe it's relevant, as well as hilarious.
I had to bend some air after seeing that craprogar-KnockedOut(D
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I don't really see how selecting actors based upon ethnicity fixes poor plotting, bad pacing, superficial character development and lack of any kind of drama that could make an audience care.
You can perpetrate a flop with equal facility whether your casting is racially true to the original character depictions, or not.
Jawa Ex Machina
Veteran
All I've heard about Airbender is how much people hate it, but very few seem to actually put into words why.
If these are the problems, why do people still like that A-Team movie?
I don't know. I haven't seen The A-Team.
My intended point was that there's little need to go straight to complaints over ethnicity when the movie wouldn't have been improved in any significant way by an Asian cast. Fine, you would have had Asian actors embarrassing themselves, rather than non-Asians. Not really an improvement.
My intended point was that there's little need to go straight to complaints over ethnicity when the movie wouldn't have been improved in any significant way by an Asian cast. Fine, you would have had Asian actors embarrassing themselves, rather than non-Asians. Not really an improvement.
Jim Brennan
VHS Member Old Skool
Yeah, gonna have to throw in with that.
I had to bend some air after seeing that crap
Liked the water effects though.
I would not like to be the one standing behind you
rogar-KnockedOut(D
Batutta
Major Contributor
Man, overnight the reviews went from terrible to scathing. Never seen such bad reviews for such a high profile release. M. Night seems to bring out the nasty side of critics like nobody I've seen. I think it's because his films take themselves way too seriously, with a ceremonious, humorless tone that magnifies their flaws. He's trying to convince you every moment has this meaningful, portentous weight, so when it doesn't, it falls flat on its face...And to answer a previous question, this is why a movie like the A-Team entertains some people, because at least it has humor in it.
Batutta
Major Contributor
I think it speaks to the power of branding. He's been able to brand his name as a director in Hollywood, and his films overall have made money. His cume as a director is 837 million. Numbers speak louder than reviews in Hollywood.
Batutta
Major Contributor
Hey, somebody made money off those products, and I'm sure that's all they cared about.
Nathyn
Low Budget Ninja
True but you understand that the Asian community was putting a lot of hate out for this film a long time before it even hit the theater. As a proud geek let me explain how things work. Getting the "costume" right is one third to half of the battle. Getting a basic story where characters are doing pretty much the same thing they're doing in the comic/cartoon is the rest. (Sin City should teach us a lesson on how to make a comicbook or cartoon movie).
But getting the race right is kind of important when it happens to be a majority of the cast including the main hero. People like my friends go see this film and come back and say it's "hot" or "not". This is how comic and films of this type work. Geeks are a tight knit community. If my female friend who would rather watch reruns of the the cartoon versus see this film, because the character's races weren't right (she's black by the way) that's ten bucks lost before plot even becomes a consideration.
People who read screenplays have a rule, they figure the writer probably doesn't know how to write a script if they don't know how to format one. Most of the times they're right (so they claim). Basically if a filmmaker can't bother to cast the right race for a film, what makes you think they care about it enough to write it properly. It goes both ways, Halle Berry in Cat-Woman is another example. Yes, we've seen a black Catwoman before in the 60s, but for Halle, they wouldn't even write a proper script for this film and went so far as to change the character's name to keep her from being the "Catwoman" of the comic. (Remember Warner Bros owns DC Comics, and therefore this character). They even took her out of Gotham City.
These movies are made to make money off the name. Hence the "NO I WON'T CALL IT "KUNG FU KID" attitude of Sony. And you shouldn't, that's not the name of the franchise. But with Karate Kid, they kept with the basic concept. With these comic and cartoon films you can't simply make it how you feel and you can't make "a new version" because fans want to see what they saw in the comic/cartoon, not your two cent.
Airbender has a lot of fans, a lot of them kids and adult anime fans. If you show no consideration to the fan base, and give the fans a big FU and why shouldn't the fans do the same to you. Now look where it got them. BURN AIRBENDER BURN I say. Hollywood racism and general laziness is biting them in the ass. I'm so pleased. Someone will get fired for this flop and I hope it's the right person. Also this isn't the first film to come out where white folks have been cast as ethnic main characters. Fox in "Wanted" was black in the comic and in "Legend of Chun Li" they chose a mixed girl (the chick from Smallville I believe) that looked more white than Asian, to play character who everyone knows is straight Chinese.
And these casting decisions are racist and without excuse. I'm not a person to go around calling everything racist, but I call people on it when it's true. And spare me the boo hoo for Hollywood their only trying to make money speech. Those of you who are white people you should be insulted that Hollywood doesn't feel you're intelligent enough to go see films with ethnic leads. But then again many films with ethnic leads do succeed, so what gives? Hmm? I could get into it, but I won't. I'll simply ask you to think about whose really being "programmed?" The TV/VCR or you. When a whole cast whose majority of the heroes are Asian but are made white but all the bad guys remain dark skinned Ethnics. I know, I've done it again but I'll continue to do it. Hollywood is playing us. By the way, Angelina Jolie is playing Cleopatra. I believe this is the third time she's played a black female. (I know it's the second).
-Nate
Cleopatra was a Ptolemaic ruler, meaning that she was descended from Greeks. These Greek rulers adopted the Egyptian practice of brother-sister royal marriage, meaning that they did not even intermarry to any significant degree with the Egyptians, whether you want to believe that the majority of the ancient Upper and Lower Kingdom Egyptians themselves were black Africans or not (with the exception of some Nubian pharaohs, their rulers weren't - which is why in their tomb paintings and other art they are not depicted as black Africans).
If you object to a studio playing fast-and-loose with casting, I should think you would object to the same being done with actual history...
If you object to a studio playing fast-and-loose with casting, I should think you would object to the same being done with actual history...
xmephestox
Carbonite Member
well the film is already getting flailed by critics. It apparently literally does everything wrong. From the fo 3d that just doesn't work, lot of shallow DOF shots, and it just makes the 3d look that much worse. Action is weak, nothing but endless poses and no real fighting and lots of CGI to cover it up, abysmal acting with the racist casting, and oh yeah, the one key thing. It can't tell a story, boring pointless long drawn out dialogue. Lot of critics tore it APART. Really a shame too, big fan of the tv series, for a kids show it was REALLY good. I'm chinese, and i was willing to look past the casting issues if they could at least tell a good story and let me enjoy what I enjoyed in the series on the big screen. They obviously couldn't get anything right. Saving my 10+ dollars for Inception...
Batutta
Major Contributor
I'm kind of with Max on this one. If the movie is good I don't think the general audience will care. Hardcore geeks maybe, but hardcore geeks can't give you a massive box office gross. The studios are playing it safe with their dollars and that's not the same as being racist. Being racist is saying, "I won't let a black/asian/hispanic play the lead in my film because I don't like those people and I think whites are superior." The studios are saying, "Why chance making less money on my film because of the racist a-holes out there." I'm not defending this but I don't think their decision comes out of any overt racist intent. And while there are several "ethnic" leads that can carry a film to a respectable gross, really there is only one right now who can reliably make a film a worldwide blockbuster -- Will Smith.
You know, from a neutral perspective, insisting that a given character MUST retain the same ethnic identity no matter what is precisely as 'racist' as deciding that said character's ethnicity MUST be changed.
There's no doubt that where certain roles are concerned, switching around the ethnicities of the characters could be pretty weird in terms of the story (Mexican actors as Japanese torpedo-bomber pilots in Tora Tora Tora, or Chinese actors portraying the Zulu warriors in Zulu, or Swedes playing the Japanese characters in Shogun etc) but in the end it's on the film makers, who will be rewarded or punished at the box office.
The whole issue is difficult for me because I despise 'race' as a stupid, silly, obsolete concept that ignores everything we know about biology and genetics, which are disciplines rooted in the real world. There's one 'race,' and it's called the human race. All the obsessing over mere phenotypes is just childish.
There's no doubt that where certain roles are concerned, switching around the ethnicities of the characters could be pretty weird in terms of the story (Mexican actors as Japanese torpedo-bomber pilots in Tora Tora Tora, or Chinese actors portraying the Zulu warriors in Zulu, or Swedes playing the Japanese characters in Shogun etc) but in the end it's on the film makers, who will be rewarded or punished at the box office.
The whole issue is difficult for me because I despise 'race' as a stupid, silly, obsolete concept that ignores everything we know about biology and genetics, which are disciplines rooted in the real world. There's one 'race,' and it's called the human race. All the obsessing over mere phenotypes is just childish.
Nathyn
Low Budget Ninja
I understand she was not a "dark skinned" black woman, I have done some research but at the same time there's many light skinned black females who can play this role. And no one specifically sure. Here's an article that breaks things down very well I think: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_4_57/ai_82479151/ and the question is "What is black." There was a time in America where if you had a certain amount of black blood in you you were considered black. If Cleopatra was full Greek then so be it but there is much question about that. Again what you have to understand is black people come in so many shades, some very close to white people. Please read the article.
-Nate
Nathyn, unless you believe that Greeks are 'black' people - for which I would sure like to see your evidence - Cleopatra was Greek, period.
I'm sorry, I'm not going to waste time on this "shade" business. It's tired old racist drivel created by people who actually thought that having an ancestor of one ethnicity or another was for some reason significant, and it's embarrassing that in the 21st century people on any side of the matter still find it meaningful. I don't play that game.
If Lucy Liu could pull off a moving tour-de-force performance as Cleopatra, I'd watch it and applaud. If I believed that Angelina Jolie could do the same, well, I'd watch it and applaud that too.
I'm sorry, I'm not going to waste time on this "shade" business. It's tired old racist drivel created by people who actually thought that having an ancestor of one ethnicity or another was for some reason significant, and it's embarrassing that in the 21st century people on any side of the matter still find it meaningful. I don't play that game.
If Lucy Liu could pull off a moving tour-de-force performance as Cleopatra, I'd watch it and applaud. If I believed that Angelina Jolie could do the same, well, I'd watch it and applaud that too.
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