Avatar meme day ... 25? The movie. Dear God, the movie.
DAY 25. How much did you like the movie? Or how much do you want to see it?
Why yes, I have skipped a few days here. I watched the movie a week ago, and I wanted to express my thoughts before Mark Watches gets to it. And since right now I'm not good for anything more complicated than playing around in the Gimp this evening, that's ... exactly what I did.
Now, a few times the House o'Squid made vague plans in the direction of watching The Last Airbender, all of which fell through on account of how I live with people who have both taste and self-preservation instincts. (There was also some debate about whether watching it was an endorsement of its racist casting, and whether the world even needed to give it more airtime. We never actually reached a conclusion, but generally I'm inclined to think that one should be able to consume a work without automatically endorsing its fail, and also I have a secret crush on Dev Patel which meant that the file was just sitting on my hard drive, taunting me.)
In the end, I bribed![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
weaverandom with chocolate and she watched it with me. (I couldn't watch it alone!) And it was as bad as everyone said, and then worse again.
So first of all, the casting. In casting white actors for Asian and Inuit roles, you'd think that at least some lip service would be paid to the idea of getting ~the right person for the job~. Right? RIGHT?
Well, no. What we got were three pasty white actors who spent most of the movie standing around with blank expressions and their mouths hanging open. Apparently the kid who played Aang had a solid month of acting lessons after he was chosen from an open casting. MAYBE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LONGER. Nicola Peltz, who played Katara, has about as much personality as a wet leaf, and Jackson Rathbone as Sokka ... well, here's his Acting Face:
Meanwhile, Katharine Houghton, Katharine Hepburn's neice, played Gran-Gran. Let's compare:
Yyyyyyyyyyyyeah.
Here is a troupe of Inuit extras:
They don't have any dialogue, but they show more life and enthusiasm than any of the main characters. Especially this kid:
He's hanging from Uncanny Valley!Appa, btw.
I don't actually remember Appa or Momo being named in the movie, but that's okay, because they're barely in it. The plot sort of meanders along without much force, while characters tell each other things they already know, and do things that don't really seem to make much sense, but it's in the script so that's okay.
Also, Aang has a random cross on his back:
Why? It wasn't in the cartoon. It doesn't join up the parts of his tattoos. It's just there. Possibly to remind us how very whitewashed this all is. So whitewashed that they didn't even bother checking how Asian clothing is worn, so the women's costumes are all done up on the wrong side, as if they were dead. Maybe that's a metaphor.
You know what's not so white? The Fire Nation.
They have also cornered the world's entire supply of hair products. Which might be why Sokka hates them so much.
You may wonder why an Indian-American director would cast a movie where the only people of colour are the villains, but Dev Patel was actually the second choice for Zuko. The first choice was Jesse McCartney. Really.
But luckily, he dropped out and Patel was cast. He too spends a lot of the movie standing around with his mouth open, but at least he looks broody at the same time. Or, well, awake. Mostly. Well, he tries, and he's generally quite good, and with a better script might have been very, very good. Even his American accent sounded okay to my ears -- not quite strong enough, but since most British actors make it too strong, that was okay.
Also quite good: Shaun Toub as Iroh. The script makes him a bit of a pod person, but there's a lot going on behind his eyes, and I think I could have lived with the dreadlocks if the rest of the movie had been remotely watchable. In one of the few scenes where he has a personality, he drinks tea and watches Zuko train:
There's also a good scene following the Blue Spirit sequence:
Iroh: "Commander Zhao's men have been looking for you. I told them you went on vacation. With a girl."
Zuko: "HOW WILL ANYONE TAKE MY ANGST SERIOUSLY NOW?????"
Iroh: *epic troll face*
Lieutenant Jee: *cries into pillow*
There's also a scene where Zuko ~stares angstily~ at a portrait of his family before going to spar with his crew. It would actually be quite touching, only...
Yeah. It's nice that they used the design from the cartoon (although Ursa seems to have been aged up a lot), but the uninformed moviegoer would probably be wondering why Zuko was carrying around a picture of some random Chinese family like a great big creepy sadsack.
There was also some business involving the Gaang, but they're hard to remember on account of being so boring. The most notable thing about them is how powerless Katara is. This begins in the very first scene where, instead of her attempt at waterbending triggering a sibling argument that turns into a feminist rant that in turn leads to Aang's awakening, movie!Katara spends several minutes backing away and apologising as a cranky Sokka advances towards her.
The body language says it all.
I was going to make a contrasting graphic of the original scene, but then I remembered that I have a gif that says it all:
Through the whole movie, Katara is just ... there. Her big "inspirational" speech from "Imprisoned" is given to Aang (and in this version, actually works), and she basically fails at any kind of combat. The only time she wins a fight is at the very end, when she takes Zuko from behind, while he's distracted fighting Aang. At the same point in the series, Katara was a fully-fledged warrior. While the last thing this stupid movie needed was another subplot, it's a shame the Kyoshi Warriors were cut, since Suki would have been the only Asian and and the only female character who can breathe, walk and think all at the same time.
Well, there is Yue. And her penis hair.
Seychelle Gabrielle tries, and she certainly has more charisma than, oh, anyone else in the entire Water Tribe, but she's basically acting for three. And you could use Yue's death scene as a how-to guide for distinguishing between fridging and the more benign kind of character death. Yue in the series recognises that she has the power to restore the moon spirit, and chooses to make that sacrifice. Then her body is transformed into the Moon Spirit. In the movie, Iroh tells her she has the power, which changes the whole scene. She walks into the pond and dies, her hair turning black, and then Iroh carries her out and Sokka kind of nuzzles her body in a kind of PG-13 version of the fetishisation thatthingswithwings talks about here.
Also there's some business involving a dragon spirit, which takes the place of Avatar Roku. Now, I've watched an episode of Merlin, so I know bad dragon CGI, but this was bad dragon CGI. (And also, though it was hard to tell with the horrible, horrible CGI, and did I mention the effects were bad? Yes, hard to tell, but I think it might have been a western dragon, rather than the Asian kind. Not sure though.) The dragon was voiced by John Noble, which at least gave me pleasant flashbacks to the set tour on the season 2 Fringe DVDs ("Aw, g'day!").
All this, and not even the action sequences were any good. Lots of long, single-take shots where you could see stunt performers waiting their turn in the background. A couple of shots where you could clearly see that Aang's stunt double was an Asian woman. (Oh yeah, insult to injury, according to IMDB, every single one of the stunt performers was Asian.)
In fairness, the Blue Spirit sequence was actually legitimately good. It was also almost shot-for-shot from the series at first, and didn't have much dialogue.
On the other hand, there's also a hilariously bad sequence towards the end, after Zuko has captured Aang. That whole "hide behind someone and move when he turns around" routine doesn't actually work outside of cartoons. It precedes a really long, badly choreographed fight, where the awfulness is only compounded by the knowledge that both actors involved have black belts. It's so awkward, it ends with Zuko's face in Aang's crotch.
The most impressive thing about the action sequences -- and, actually, most of the movie -- was how much smaller and less cinematic it was compared to the cartoon. For example, the flashbacks to Zuko's duel with his father:
As you can see, there is also a sad lack of shirtless!Ozai throughout this film. (Cliff Curtis plays Ozai with a random British accent, and looks like he's reading from an autocue in one scene. Good times. Remember when he played the hot dad in Whale Rider? Let's all think about that for a minute. ...Where was I?)
Also, though you can barely glimpse it, and I wasn't able to get it in a screencap, Azula is wearing her hairpiece in this flashback. It's the closest they come to the original costuming for the Fire Nation.
So, yes, it was all rather horrible. I haven't even gotten into the dialogue, which includes lines like "What if we found you teachers? Teachers to teach you?" and the infamous "We need to show the Fire Nation that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs."
(Really.)
In fact, that line actually killed the file, and the DVD player threw up a "file corrupted - playback terminated" message. Which was, to be honest, a bit of a relief. I watched the last fifteen minutes later on, and the only highlight was the very last scene, with Summer Bishil as Azula.
(And that was slightly weird because she looks so young, even though the actress is two years older than Dev Patel.)
So yes, The Last Airbender was an awful movie. It's racist, sexist, unspeakably boring, badly written, badly directed, and the worst thing about it is that M. Night Shyamalan has said that he made it for his daughter, who looks like Katara. I've seen some misguided efforts before, but this takes the cake.
Why yes, I have skipped a few days here. I watched the movie a week ago, and I wanted to express my thoughts before Mark Watches gets to it. And since right now I'm not good for anything more complicated than playing around in the Gimp this evening, that's ... exactly what I did.
Now, a few times the House o'Squid made vague plans in the direction of watching The Last Airbender, all of which fell through on account of how I live with people who have both taste and self-preservation instincts. (There was also some debate about whether watching it was an endorsement of its racist casting, and whether the world even needed to give it more airtime. We never actually reached a conclusion, but generally I'm inclined to think that one should be able to consume a work without automatically endorsing its fail, and also I have a secret crush on Dev Patel which meant that the file was just sitting on my hard drive, taunting me.)
In the end, I bribed
weaverandom with chocolate and she watched it with me. (I couldn't watch it alone!) And it was as bad as everyone said, and then worse again.So first of all, the casting. In casting white actors for Asian and Inuit roles, you'd think that at least some lip service would be paid to the idea of getting ~the right person for the job~. Right? RIGHT?
Well, no. What we got were three pasty white actors who spent most of the movie standing around with blank expressions and their mouths hanging open. Apparently the kid who played Aang had a solid month of acting lessons after he was chosen from an open casting. MAYBE IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LONGER. Nicola Peltz, who played Katara, has about as much personality as a wet leaf, and Jackson Rathbone as Sokka ... well, here's his Acting Face:
Meanwhile, Katharine Houghton, Katharine Hepburn's neice, played Gran-Gran. Let's compare:
Yyyyyyyyyyyyeah.
Here is a troupe of Inuit extras:
They don't have any dialogue, but they show more life and enthusiasm than any of the main characters. Especially this kid:
He's hanging from Uncanny Valley!Appa, btw.
I don't actually remember Appa or Momo being named in the movie, but that's okay, because they're barely in it. The plot sort of meanders along without much force, while characters tell each other things they already know, and do things that don't really seem to make much sense, but it's in the script so that's okay.
Also, Aang has a random cross on his back:
Why? It wasn't in the cartoon. It doesn't join up the parts of his tattoos. It's just there. Possibly to remind us how very whitewashed this all is. So whitewashed that they didn't even bother checking how Asian clothing is worn, so the women's costumes are all done up on the wrong side, as if they were dead. Maybe that's a metaphor.
You know what's not so white? The Fire Nation.
They have also cornered the world's entire supply of hair products. Which might be why Sokka hates them so much.
You may wonder why an Indian-American director would cast a movie where the only people of colour are the villains, but Dev Patel was actually the second choice for Zuko. The first choice was Jesse McCartney. Really.
But luckily, he dropped out and Patel was cast. He too spends a lot of the movie standing around with his mouth open, but at least he looks broody at the same time. Or, well, awake. Mostly. Well, he tries, and he's generally quite good, and with a better script might have been very, very good. Even his American accent sounded okay to my ears -- not quite strong enough, but since most British actors make it too strong, that was okay.
Also quite good: Shaun Toub as Iroh. The script makes him a bit of a pod person, but there's a lot going on behind his eyes, and I think I could have lived with the dreadlocks if the rest of the movie had been remotely watchable. In one of the few scenes where he has a personality, he drinks tea and watches Zuko train:
There's also a good scene following the Blue Spirit sequence:
Iroh: "Commander Zhao's men have been looking for you. I told them you went on vacation. With a girl."
Zuko: "HOW WILL ANYONE TAKE MY ANGST SERIOUSLY NOW?????"
Iroh: *epic troll face*
Lieutenant Jee: *cries into pillow*
There's also a scene where Zuko ~stares angstily~ at a portrait of his family before going to spar with his crew. It would actually be quite touching, only...
Yeah. It's nice that they used the design from the cartoon (although Ursa seems to have been aged up a lot), but the uninformed moviegoer would probably be wondering why Zuko was carrying around a picture of some random Chinese family like a great big creepy sadsack.
There was also some business involving the Gaang, but they're hard to remember on account of being so boring. The most notable thing about them is how powerless Katara is. This begins in the very first scene where, instead of her attempt at waterbending triggering a sibling argument that turns into a feminist rant that in turn leads to Aang's awakening, movie!Katara spends several minutes backing away and apologising as a cranky Sokka advances towards her.
The body language says it all.
I was going to make a contrasting graphic of the original scene, but then I remembered that I have a gif that says it all:
Through the whole movie, Katara is just ... there. Her big "inspirational" speech from "Imprisoned" is given to Aang (and in this version, actually works), and she basically fails at any kind of combat. The only time she wins a fight is at the very end, when she takes Zuko from behind, while he's distracted fighting Aang. At the same point in the series, Katara was a fully-fledged warrior. While the last thing this stupid movie needed was another subplot, it's a shame the Kyoshi Warriors were cut, since Suki would have been the only Asian and and the only female character who can breathe, walk and think all at the same time.
Well, there is Yue. And her penis hair.
Seychelle Gabrielle tries, and she certainly has more charisma than, oh, anyone else in the entire Water Tribe, but she's basically acting for three. And you could use Yue's death scene as a how-to guide for distinguishing between fridging and the more benign kind of character death. Yue in the series recognises that she has the power to restore the moon spirit, and chooses to make that sacrifice. Then her body is transformed into the Moon Spirit. In the movie, Iroh tells her she has the power, which changes the whole scene. She walks into the pond and dies, her hair turning black, and then Iroh carries her out and Sokka kind of nuzzles her body in a kind of PG-13 version of the fetishisation that
thingswithwings talks about here. Also there's some business involving a dragon spirit, which takes the place of Avatar Roku. Now, I've watched an episode of Merlin, so I know bad dragon CGI, but this was bad dragon CGI. (And also, though it was hard to tell with the horrible, horrible CGI, and did I mention the effects were bad? Yes, hard to tell, but I think it might have been a western dragon, rather than the Asian kind. Not sure though.) The dragon was voiced by John Noble, which at least gave me pleasant flashbacks to the set tour on the season 2 Fringe DVDs ("Aw, g'day!").
All this, and not even the action sequences were any good. Lots of long, single-take shots where you could see stunt performers waiting their turn in the background. A couple of shots where you could clearly see that Aang's stunt double was an Asian woman. (Oh yeah, insult to injury, according to IMDB, every single one of the stunt performers was Asian.)
In fairness, the Blue Spirit sequence was actually legitimately good. It was also almost shot-for-shot from the series at first, and didn't have much dialogue.
On the other hand, there's also a hilariously bad sequence towards the end, after Zuko has captured Aang. That whole "hide behind someone and move when he turns around" routine doesn't actually work outside of cartoons. It precedes a really long, badly choreographed fight, where the awfulness is only compounded by the knowledge that both actors involved have black belts. It's so awkward, it ends with Zuko's face in Aang's crotch.
The most impressive thing about the action sequences -- and, actually, most of the movie -- was how much smaller and less cinematic it was compared to the cartoon. For example, the flashbacks to Zuko's duel with his father:
As you can see, there is also a sad lack of shirtless!Ozai throughout this film. (Cliff Curtis plays Ozai with a random British accent, and looks like he's reading from an autocue in one scene. Good times. Remember when he played the hot dad in Whale Rider? Let's all think about that for a minute. ...Where was I?)
Also, though you can barely glimpse it, and I wasn't able to get it in a screencap, Azula is wearing her hairpiece in this flashback. It's the closest they come to the original costuming for the Fire Nation.
So, yes, it was all rather horrible. I haven't even gotten into the dialogue, which includes lines like "What if we found you teachers? Teachers to teach you?" and the infamous "We need to show the Fire Nation that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs."
(Really.)
In fact, that line actually killed the file, and the DVD player threw up a "file corrupted - playback terminated" message. Which was, to be honest, a bit of a relief. I watched the last fifteen minutes later on, and the only highlight was the very last scene, with Summer Bishil as Azula.
(And that was slightly weird because she looks so young, even though the actress is two years older than Dev Patel.)
So yes, The Last Airbender was an awful movie. It's racist, sexist, unspeakably boring, badly written, badly directed, and the worst thing about it is that M. Night Shyamalan has said that he made it for his daughter, who looks like Katara. I've seen some misguided efforts before, but this takes the cake.