Holiday Post 1: The Last Airbender

As anyone who follows my Twitter should know, I've now finished my first university semester. Unfortunately, I also have a case of viral pharyngitis keeping me up at night. I'm a couple of days away from being completely nocturnal, so I thought some blogging was called for. Since Penny Arcade have brought it back into the limelight, I thought I would give my opinion on the hype and controversy around M. Night Shyamalan's Avatar adaptation, The Last Airbender.

For the last two years at my high school, Avatar was huge in my social group. I probably know more Zuko fangirls than Harry Potter fangirls (Edward Cullen fangirls are why I wear my tinfoil hat). I, of course, was late to the party, but caught up quickly.Great writing, great characterisation, great martial arts, etc. Oh, and obligatory C. S. Lewis: "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."

I must point out that I haven't actually seen any of Shyamalan's films, so I'll be going off observed mass opinion and Moviebob's analysis. All complaints towards his more recent movies are plot related, e.g. overused devices, ridiculous set pieces and gargantuan ego. If he has worked closely with DiMartino and Konietzko this shouldn't be a problem. The main problem could be in establishing over a dozen minor characters who help out later on.

Based on the teaser released: music is good, effects are good. That's pretty much all we know.

Now for the big, now-irrelevant point: casting, and race. The four nations roughly map to Tibet, Inuit tribes, peaceful eras of China, and a hybrid of the most warmongering periods of China and Japan. This is pretty concrete, and a lot of research went into making the show realistic in this regard.

The main issue is whether Aang, the protagonist, is white. Culturally, he's a Tibetan Buddhist monk. However, some episodes (The Deserter, Avatar and the Firelord, I'm looking at you) don't quite get that across. Aesthetically, it's more complicated. Short answer: his race is 'anime'. Long answer: His race is DiMartino and Konietzko copying Miyazaki copying thirty years of Japanese art copying Astro Boy copying Bambi. I know, there's probably mountains of errors in that sentence.

I don't actually dispute any of the casting decisions as they stand, but just think about if Caucasians had been playing the villains instead. You know, the small country with superior technology 'spreading its good fortune' through imperialist colonialism. Leave it at that if you want to be subtle or insert attacks on modern politics to your heart's content.

The main benefit in this gedankenexperiment would be casting: you could get original voice actors like Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy) and Mark Hamill (if you don't know, stop reading). Of course, my favourite character was always Iroh, originally voiced by the departed Mako, who you do not mess with. Being the only character in the show with an accent, you could really cast anyone. So I thought to myself: incredibly cool old guy, smart, funny, deadly fighter. First thought was Sean Connery, but he's retired. Second thought was Bruce Willis, and I stand by that as an indicator of a perfect world.

So we have Yinsen, Senior Fire Navy Correspondent, Agent from Die Hard 4, and guy from Skins because I haven't seen Slumdog Millionaire yet. No complaints, but you can't top Bruce Willis shooting fireballs and practicing Northern Shao Lin without bringing in ninjas, pirates, zombies, robots or mantis shrimps.