Anyone against the casting of "The Last Airbender"?

Check this out!
http://www.racebending.com/v2/

I think it's absolute bullcrap that they are casting white skinned people as heroes and dark skinned people as villains.

While I am neutral to Aang's casting choice , the other leads and major characters are either light skinned when they are not ,or dark skinned when they are supposed to be Asian.


Dev Patel should be playing Sokka whilst Katara and Zuko should be
Inuit/Asian/Indian or Japanese. I like Aang just due to how he pulled off his part in the teaser ,but he should be Tibetan or Asian also.

Here's who should be cast:

Dev Patel-- Sokka
Freida Pinto--Katara
Brandon Chang---Zuko
???? or same actor??---Aang
James Hong---Iroh

I think we kind of went through this already when the trailer/preliminary cast pictures came out.

I think the best way to describe the situation is that although the "atmosphere" of the world of Avatar is "orient/inuit/japanese/chinese/etc-inspired" the show is more or less equivalent to Mukokuseki. I recall someone showing off a few pictures from some overviews of "extras" from the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribe "military" encampment and the Air Nomads; these nations aren't "wholely, universely, one realistic ethnicity". Here are two good arguments concerning said pictures: A and the followup by Ninjajack, B

Honestly, what good is a "petition," "boycott," or "riot" now if the movie is already being filmed and the casting is DONE. I highly doubt they'll start firing cast members left and right, half-way through production, with a good amount of budget spent, due to "internet protests." I can honestly understand it is a little off from what a good number of people expected, and that the "racial discrimination" in Hollywood is a potent issue, but such is the way of the "live-action adaption;" things, especially for animation derived works, doesn't always translate to reality exactly how it was in the original.

At any rate, "raging against the creators/Shyamalan" when we only we have a few pictures, scraps of information, and rumors (that should always be taken with huge amounts of salt) and still haven't a finished product to validly target it against, kind of takes the wind out of the sails of these sort of things. As it has been said countless times before, reserve your anger and complaints until there is actually something substantial to release said rage at, such as the actual fully released movie.

For all we know, despite a few descrepencies, it might actually be...good.

Umm, no.
As long as they can act the part, I could care less what the color of their skin is.

Zuko may start off as an antagonist, but he's hardly a villain. Same goes for Iroh. Besides, if the first movie is successful, and the rest of the series (particularly Book Three) is adapted, then this will eventually cease to be an issue anyway.

Well, I don't know what pool of actors they had to choose from but I kind of find it difficult to believe that it was only the white kids who could nail it in the auditions and screen tests.

I think something like Avatar would have been a genuine opportunity to make bolder casting choices. Though to be fair the kid playing Aang looks pretty accurate from that picture.

What I don't get is the costuming on Zuko. Where is his scar and why does he have a full head of hair instead of being bald with the hair tied on the top? Just in terms of visual I think that's an important element because as he moves away from the ideals of the Fire Tribe he grows his hair out. A nitpick probably, but it's a visual element that sort of shows follows along his progress if that makes sense.

mattcomics said:

What I don't get is the costuming on Zuko. Where is his scar and why does he have a full head of hair instead of being bald with the hair tied on the top? Just in terms of visual I think that's an important element because as he moves away from the ideals of the Fire Tribe he grows his hair out. A nitpick probably, but it's a visual element that sort of shows follows along his progress if that makes sense.

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I've been thinking the same thing, i'm afraid the movies are gonna gloss over a lot of these little touches that helped make the show as great as it was.

I'm completely on the fence with this one. It looks like they're putting genuine effort into creating a believable world for these movies (based on props and costuming), but who knows how these actors are gonna pan out. For the longest time I was so afraid it was going to look like Sky High or something.

mattcomics said:

Where is his scar

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It's there actually. It just doesn't stick out as much as it did in the cartoon.

Aoiblue said:

Umm, no.
As long as they can act the part, I could care less what the color of their skin is.

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I like the actors personally ,and if they can fit their roles ,then that's fine. What's not fine is the discriminatory racist practices used by Hollywood to prevent minorities to be casted into the roles of Asian and or Inuit/Native American peoples.

Racism is rarely gone along with various other forms of bigotry, it just became less of a priority after MLK Jr. died. It has to be eliminated from the professional workplace like film studios and it has to be eliminated from our minds ,because we all are 99.9% the same genetically , with slight variations due to our environment. I fully understand that if they ,the production , were to take off or switch the actors based on their color of their skin , that'd be wrong , too since that would be reverse discrimination.

But, you have to understand that Hollywood is notorious for the past 50 years or so casting white actors (predominately male) as the leads while having the minorities as the villains or criminals. Sure there is Will Smith and a few other minority actors that made it big, but the matter is that they are making a potentially negative atmosphere which minorities are shoved aside. In the 60's there was a famous test with which small girls were given each a drak skinned and then the white skinned doll. The dark skinned girls were afraid and ashamed of the dark skinned dolls but liked the white skinned dolls, and I bet if you did the same test today that although there would be a small increase in pride in who they are , many of the minority children would pick the light skinned doll and that's just a shame.

I think racial discrimination on the grounds of the professional workplace is very unethical and should be given a second glance.

It matters a lot about their ethnic origins considering that this happens alot in Hollywood. Remember Dragonball Evolution? All of the major actors were white.

How would white Americans react if their favorite heroes were changed by a Asian dominated Hollywood or a Latino Dominated Hollywood? They would be as outraged, although a Latino or Asian Spiderman would be badass.

In the blog I posted the link of ,they are taking out the Chinese writing system for random gibberish.


(I'm a white male ,just to tell you all)

Bigdog said:

Remember Dragonball Evolution? All of the major actors were white.

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Um...no. There was a distinct lack of Japanese actors, but the main cast was not all white. Not even close actually.

Why didn't people complain when a bunch of white and non-Asian kids voiced "asian" characters (wtf it's a fictional world!) in the cartoon? :/ I think people can be so blind to certain things at times and some of the movements against this movie really are so ridiculous. Though, that's not to say I wouldn't mind Asians or whatever other race they're supposed to draw from being cast, it would be nice to see actors of different minorities in big budget movies.