avatar:the last airbender is pretty cool for nickleodeon pseudo-anime

I want a SKY BISON.

attention! best anime series ever is on nickelodeon RIGHT NOW: "Avatar: The Last Air Bender"

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/c/cf/250px-Avatar_-_The_Last_Airbender_103_The_Southern_Air_Temple_-_AvatarState.jpg

Mae Whitman was on Grey's Anatomy the other day, she said "bitch"! I want to sample it and edit it into an Avatar... episode.

The thing is with Shyamalan: I actually think he's a very good director, as far as the performances he gets from his (non-Mel-Gibson) actors, the way he frames images & uses color. As long as he sticks fairly thoroughly to the source material (which is mega-uber-kickass), the project might not suck monolithic shit.

Even more than Shyamalan, my biggest concern is how well this will translate from an animated to live action format. I am not looking forward to a CGI Appa.

So the show is over! The ending was huge and pretty satisfying; some of the boring-er parts of season 3 seem less unimportant in retrospect, too. Too bad about Shyamalan.

Did any of you guys ever watch it?

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hmm...

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oh forget it. I'm sure you can find it. Anyway, pretty vague trailer, so hard to tell if Shyamalan is gonna ruin it or not.

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/the-last-airbender/trailer

SPOILERS!

I just finished watching the series, and HOLY SHIT was this awesome! The best animated series I've seen years! Okay, maybe the finale didn't manage of the avoid some of the cliches you get with this kind of a fantasy story, and I felt the pairing of Aang and Katara at the end was a bit too obvious and undeveloped, especially considering how the writerss otherwise tried to avoid making Katara a female stereotype. I thought Aang and Toph would've been a better pair, both agewise and as personalities. But those are minor complaints, all in all I think the series was REALLY GOOD, it managed to keep the story and characters interesting and complex throughout the series, and many of the plot twists were genuinely surprising, a rare thing for a kids-oriented fantasy fiction. I loved how there wasn't a clear-cut good vs. evil morality; though Ozai was presented as pretty much an arch bad guy, there were always good guys among the Fire Nation and bad guys among the other tribes. I think this worked very well in avoiding one of the biggest plot holes these types of stories tend to have: just because you defeat the Evil King, why would that automatically mean that his Evil Nation/Army will fall with him? In Avatar the ending made much more sense, because the people of the Fire Nation weren't presented as inherently evil, and with Zuko as their new leader they might change for better. I think the redemption story of Zuko worked really well, and the fact that the series devoted so much screen time to him contributed to that. His change of heart didn't feel like just a typical "bad guy turns good" twist, as throughout the whole series we'd seen him slowly but surely reach that turning point.

I'm surprised M. Night Shalamayan is just calling it The Last Airbender. Given the size of his ego, and even legal complications aside, it wouldn't surprise me for him to call it "Avatar" just to trick moviegoers into seeing his movie by mistake, because obviously HIS is the superior Avatar!

So the movie's about out...

trailer looks great, but aside from that i'm completely at a loss tbh

Forget about the movie, just watch the series! For a kid/preteen-oriented faux-anime series it's really good, with surprisingly complex characters and plots that mostly avoid simple black/white morality. Plus it's quite epic, even though there are several stand-alone episodes, it's really a one big story divided into three seasons.

So, the guy I'm dating has told me he's into this show. Apparently this isn't the red flag it looked like if reaction itt is anything to go back?

up to attending conferences on it or formally studying it at a institute of education- at that stage RUN

naw, he just said he was watching it at his place and that it's a good show

in the safe zone imo

I don't think it's a red flag, no. AtLA is definitely a case of a show being better than it sounds. I was pretty sceptical about it at first, but after having read so many positive comments I decided to check it out, and was sold almost immediately.

We have been in full-fledged Avatar mode for like the last month. To the point where my wife and Iwill have to talk ourselves out of watching the late night repeats while our son is sleeping. "uh honey, we're grown-ups..."

Movie related gripes:

1. No Katara action figure.

2. Actually having asianactors, but only as the bad guys.

Avatar was one of the best cartoons of the 00s. After about two episodes I was completely hooked. The only lull was in the first half of the third season, which feels too filler-ish, but things pick up again quickly for the epic finale.

Low expectations for this movie adaption, but there's been almost no reviews or anything yet so maybe it'll be a pleasant surprise.

earth nation are not bad guys, zuko and iroh are not bad guys

I was thinking Zuko and Iroh, which yes they aren't bad guys, but since the film is the first in a planned trilogy I'm not sure whether we will know that they aren't bad guys for a while.

Iroh is just the best, imo.

Even if Iroh and Zuko don't turn out to be evil (though if each movie follows the plot of one season, this doesn't become fully clear until the second and third movies), it's a pretty dodgy practice to have Asian actors play all the members of the most villainous nation, and pretty much all the other important characters, except for the main heroes. Are they supposed to be genetic freaks in an otherwise all-Asian world or what? It's kinda hard not to interpret this as Hollywood saying that Asian actors are good enough for supporting roles, but they can't be the main protagonists of a bid budget movie. Especially since the white actors hired to play the hero roles are not established stars or anything.

On the other hand, the heroes were played by white actors in the cartoon too, but at least they looked Asian.

The characters, I mean, not the actors.

(though if each movie follows the plot of one season, this doesn't become fully clear until the second and third movies)

This is what I'm saying.

This is all kind of spoilerific too, for those like the Rev who haven't yet seen the cartoons.

The trailers make the movie look awful. The cartoon is humorous and has loads of Miyazaki-influenced whimsy, whilst the movie looks so po-faced and angsty. Shamwow ruins everything he touches.

Yeah, the humor is actually my biggest concern.

One thing I also fear will be changed in the movies is the fact that the heroes don't kill anyone in the cartoon. Of course this was at least partially because it was a kid-oriented show, but it was still refreshing to see fantasy epic where the main hero is a pacifist, for whom not killing your enemies is actually a big issue.

superman!

xp: Aang's pacifism was clearly a huge part of his character. I'd hate to see that compromised too.

Actually, IIRC Aang is both a pacifist and a vegetarian. Not very common for heroes in fantasy fiction.

(x-post)

Yeah, Superman (and other superheroes) are the big exception, though that comes from the "no killing" tradition in the original comic books. If Batman was a film-only character, I'm sure he'd be killing bad guys left and right.

true

Ah, here Shyamalan addresses the race thing:

http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2010/06/29/is-the-last-airbender-racist/

Of note in re bad/good guys:

In fact, Shyamalan claims it's his critics who are racist for assuming that the dark-skinned Patel is, in fact, the villain. (Over the course of the cartoon series, Zuko evolves into a more heroic character; Shyamalan is hoping to make two sequels which would explore his character arc.)

also, earth nation = asian. they are good characters.

this entire issue is ridiculous and stupid. the end.

Okay, I kinda see Shyamalan's point of trying to be inclusive, but the fact still is that there are three main characters we follow from the beginning to the end of the story, and just by coincidence the two tribes they come from happen to be white (or "mixed race", as he says the Air Nomads are, though the kid playing Aang is still white - and there aren't any other prominent Air Nomads in the story, what with Aang being the last of them). If Shyamalan wanted to include white people in the story, couldn't he have, for example, made the Fire Nation white? That would've added to the story some interesting parallels with European colonialism, and it might've given more depth to Zuko's and Iroh's redemption too.

Also, while the other nations in the story are based on different parts of East Asia, they're still vague enough that changing their ethnicity might not be super problematic. But the Water Tribe are very obviously supposed to be Inuits, so turning them into "white Eskimos" still feels more like whitewashing than being inclusive to me.

I would be missing out on some of my life's highest-quality friendships if insane fandom of anime and pseudo-anime was a dealbreaker.

"the last airbiscuit"
About 411 results (0.56 seconds)

too damn much to ask for asian lead actors in an obviously asian-themed movie, i guess. just too much.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/aasif-mandvi,42627/

The Last Airbender (2010)—“Commander Zhao”

Aasif Mandvi: Night called me on the phone while I was at the airport getting ready to get on a plane to go shoot a piece for The Daily Show. He just started chatting about this character, and I had no idea where the conversation was going. I just thought, “Oh, M. Night Shyamalan is bored and wants to talk to me about The Last Airbender.” [Laughs.] It was really just like that. He called me and was like, “Tell me, what do you think about…” as though he were just discussing it with me. And toward the end, I was getting ready to board the plane, then I was on the plane and they were telling me to shut off my phone, and I was like, “So, what do you want to do? We’re having this great conversation, and I love having this conversation with you, but what’s the purpose of this?” And he was like, “Oh, yeah, do you want to do the role?” And I was like, “Yeah! But I gotta go! We’re going to take off!” So it was kind of a bizarre way to get a job. But I find that I get all of my jobs in kind of bizarre ways.

This is my first sort of real… I mean, I did Spider-Man 2, but I had a very small part in it. This is the first time I’ve been really involved in an action film, and it was fun. Movies are always a lot of sitting around and doing nothing, that kind of “Hurry up and wait” situation, and yes, there were days when we sat around, but it was a really fun experience. The cast got along really well. We all became very familial, because we were all in Philadelphia, and when you’re in Philadelphia, there’s not a lot to do. So we all hung out, went to eat together at night. We stayed at the same hotel. It was kind of like a summer camp.

The A.V. Club: What’s your take on the casting controversy? About not having Asian actors in the main roles?

AM: Not to get into it too much, but I think Night’s tried to create a world that’s overall more culturally diverse, and draws from more backgrounds and ethnicities and traditions than the Last Airbender TV show did. It’s an interesting story, because unlike Lord Of The Rings or something like that, where it’s set in an imaginary world with hobbits and gnomes, this is set in a world populated by humans. And so in order to represent humanity, you need to represent all of its various cultures. Even though a lot of the martial arts obviously are based in Eastern tradition, I think over the course of the trilogy, you’ll see that Night’s vision includes the entire spectrum of cultures.

I love Aasif Mandvi.

In other words, cultural diversity is OK, as long as white people are the stars, right? God, what would we Americans do if we had to deal with more lead actors of color... riots everywhere!

It's kind of hilarious seeing a bunch of white people react indignantly to a non-white person's decision to hire some white people

I'm not white.

Tuomas is.

Even if he is, it doesn't make the casting any less ridiculous. Have you seen this show? I mean, if they're not going to cast Asian actors for THIS movie... come the fuck on, Hollywood.

the Onion's recent string of interviews with character actors (John Hawkes, Danny Trejo, Aasif Mandvi) has been pretty excellent

Where have I been that I didn't know Aasif Mandvi was in this??

(don't answer that)

I've never really been indignant, just a little sad.

this entire issue is ridiculous and stupid. the end.

― ampersand (remy bean), Tuesday, June 29, 2010

QFT. Taking gift horse to dentist imo.

If white people can't complain about race issues, that would delete 72% of ILX discussions.

And just because Shyamalan is non-white doesn't mean the casting of white people to play Asian/Inuit characters can't be questioned, plus it seems unlikely for a movie of this size that the casting choices were his and his alone.

If white people can't complain about race issues, that would delete 72% of ILX discussions.

― Tuomas, Wednesday, June 30, 2010 7:09 PM (5 minutes ago)

this is what we in the business call "a good start"

In the business of ILX deleting?

i was thinking more the business of worthwhile discussion but yours works too

Ebert gives it a half star

Exactly. Basically, this is what looks like happened: this show does pretty well on Nickelodeon, attracts a wide fanbase largely because of its adoption of Asian culture, not despite it, where the studio thinks they can make money on a live-action adaptation - enough to sink $150M into it. But when it comes to casting, it's for likely embarassing, "politically incorrect" reasons than they can't find Asian-American kids for the leads. There's a message that Asians can't lead movies, which of course leads to a cycle where they won't get cast for them (also see the whitewashing of 21). Then after the outrage came out, it was announced that Asian actors would be cast for the villains and secondary roles.

I understand that some of you won't care at all about this (it's just a kids movie rite? and media representation issues rank pretty low in this horrible world), but I find this shit to be deeply embarassing. All right, I'll stop now.

which asian-american actor could conceivably lead a big-budget movie, though?

Considering that all the three lead actors are unknowns, I don't see why they couldn't have picked unknown Asian/Inuit actors instead of unknown white ones. It's not like this movie is sold on star power.

I am patiently waiting on our own Shyamalan expert-in-spite-of-his-wishes s1ocki to give us the lowdown.

yknow the problem w/that whole tactic is that arguing in favor of non-colorblind casting taken to its eventual conclusion = 99% of big budget film adaptations end up being cast out of solely white peeps xpost

The Onion AV Club gives it a rare F. http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-last-airbender,42682/

ha see, the main reason I'm not caring particularly much about casting controversies with regards to this movie is that I'm really not at all convinced that no amount of casting Asian/Asian-American actors would have fixed its biggest problem, namely being directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who seems to have forgotten how to make movies

I haven't seen it, but I'm guessing the unknown leads end up being generic, charisma-free drones in this movie,
so I can understand why after-the-fact, one could feel like since the bar was not set that high, why not
take a risk, but judging from the few roles afforded to asian-americans, who among them have brought
something to the game to show that they might be capable of something more?

If I needed to cast a big-budget US movie with asian faces in the main slots, I'd be looking overseas for talent, frankly.
but for direct-to-video stuff like street fighter: legend of chun li, yeah, there's pretty much no excuse.

yeah frankly if i was an inuit actor id be thanking my lucky stars that my big break didnt lead to this piece of shit dragging my career down titanic style when it tanks in the first weekend xpost

quick, how do we get shyamalan to cast reese witherspoon in his next colossal masterpiece

he'd do a pretty awesome sequel to Election, i'd bet -- his movies recently have all been pretty good if you thought of them as wry comedies.

I'm really not at all convinced that no amount of casting Asian/Asian-American actors would have fixed its biggest problem, namely being directed by M. Night Shyamalan, who seems to have forgotten how to make movies

ITA -- even if it had had Asian leads, Shyamalan doesn't really seem to understand the story and is only picking up on the portentous and angsty parts of it. Or at least that's the way it seems from the trailers and other clips, I'm not going to bother watching it to confirm my suspicions.

maybe the twist at the end is THE LEAD ACTORS WERE ASIAN-AMERICAN ALL ALONG

Argh

hahaha

Ebert half star & AV Club F not portending well imo

are they locked into a trilogy here? or can they golden compass it?

over the course of the trilogy

so not gonna happen

man, so bummed by those reviews. loved the show and was hoping for something at least half as smart, involving & imaginative.

Lol Tony Scott:

An astute industry analyst of my acquaintance, who is 9 and an admirer of the Nickelodeon animated series on which the movie is based, offered a two-word diagnosis of its commercial prospects on the way out of the theater: “They’re screwed.”

the "it's ok that they didnt cast asian leads in this movie because m night shyamalan sucks" argument somehow wouldn't make me feel any better if i was an asian or asian-american actor looking to get work

These show potential as Steampunk, but are never caressed for their intricacies.

I love when something like 'steampunk' or 'goth' gets capitalized like this, man. I wonder if it is part of the Sun-Times' style manual.

should be more like wild wild west imo

his movies recently have all been pretty good if you thought of them as wry comedies.

. . . which is exactly how sci-fi blog io9 reviews it! http://io9.com/5576076/m-night-shyamalan-finally-made-a-comedy

The third member of our main trio is Sokka, who's played by one of the vampires from Twilight. At one point, he falls in love with a silver-haired girl with insane costume jewelry, who looks like a refugee from the "wink of an eye" people, out of the original Star Trek. We know that he's got the hots for her, because Katara tells us in a quickie voice-over.

Oh yeah - that's another one of the ways in which this movie pokes fun at the very idea of epic fantasy: the endless confusing voice-over, in which tons of important story developments happen off-camera while we're looking at a picture of a tree or a CG mountain. Because why do we privilege the story of the hero's progress over the tree?, Shaymalan asks. Why does the original Star Wars insist on showing us Luke Skywalker training with a lightsaber, instead of telling us that Luke Skywalker trained with a lightsaber while showing us a tracking shot of some rocks? Why pretend that one thing is more important than the other thing? Why pretend that any of it has any meaning? As a wise man once wrote, "A menu is as good as a myth."

Also, if the original Star Wars had given us a tracking shot of rocks, with a voiceover explaining that Luke was learning to use a lightsaber someplace else, it would have freed up more screen time for Luke to stand around shouting, "JAWAS! THERE IS SAND UNDER YOUR FEET!"

Because why do we privilege the story of the hero's progress over the tree?, asks Shaymalan

is inane criticism. people whose conception of dramaturgy and storytelling owe primary debts to Joseph Campbell and Erich Neumann and monomythic structures need to stop trying to sound smart.

'the "it's ok that they didnt cast asian leads in this movie because m night shyamalan sucks" argument somehow wouldn't make me feel any better if i was an asian or asian-american actor looking to get work'

i would mourn the passing of Law & Order as a never-ending stream of belligerent street vendor/reluctant witness rent-paycheck roles more than this movie, I'd wager.
was there equivalent outrage over the casting of goku in that dragonball movie?

riots iirc

I want to point out that that wasn't really my argument.

My argument was "the casting controversy is not this movie's biggest problem".

Oh dear

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNl3j3Snkbs

And holding steady at 6%!

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/last_airbender/?name_order=asc

as Dan said above, the biggest problem with this movie is who the director is, when has M Night made a good movie?

when i saw sixth sense in the theater i had the answer figured out halfway thru which i think any fan of horror/sci fi.fantasy (what now gets referred to as genre film which i dont get as a definition but is another conversation) had also done. Inbreakable was more interesting til it collapsed and everything since has been more and more mindless. How he gets these budgets to continue making movies astounds me - did i read 280 million for this film somewhere? of course budgets for transformers etc also horrify me

that said, the gawker round up of the reviews is pretty great
just allowing the critics to speak themselves with a minimum of additives

http://gawker.com/5577043/so-how-bad-is-m-night-shyamalans-new-movie-really-bad?skyline=true&s=i

unbreakable was pretty good, i preferred it to the 6th sense (but i knew the twist going in with that one)

I'm like the only person on earth who liked "Signs"

fuck this idiot. clearly has some kind of trouble understand human beings, stories, images, and what is pleasurable in any of them. a stunted and self-involved sociopath on par with george lucas. sixth sense was a fluke.

that is how i feel.

tell us how you really feel

cosign w/goole

(fwiw I can't even remember what the "twist" is in Signs. everything I've seen by this guy sucked balls)

twist is water

also jesus or something I dont remember

jesus could walk on water in the bible so that may be it

"Swing away...swing away..."

Signs was pretty good up until the end. Definitely my favorite Shyamalan movie.

the end of signs was hilarious! most convoluted rube goldberg setup-to-payoff ever.

the quasi-christian message is -- this ending is so preposterous, that it could only have been the work of an inscrutable god (i.e. M. Night) -- so the last scene is Mel Gibson recommitting his faith to M. Night.

I didn't mind Signs, and I really liked Unbreakable. But to take a show like this with a particular structure and fanbase and leave most of it out and change the main characters's names!? wtf.

The best thing about Signs is how the aliens can be killed by water or whatever, but before they revealed that, there was a chase scene through a foggy field at night.

lol totally forgot this water thing. how would aliens that are vulnerable to water even make it through earth's atmosphere in the first place?

I'm with Deric on this: Signs was a good movie until the ridiculous quasi-religious ending; before that it was just a good depiction of what it might be like for regular family to live through an alien invasion. I think Shyamalan is (or at least was) actually pretty good at telling human stories: even in 6th Sense and Unbreakable it's the characters that's the most interesting part, not the supernatural bits. Unfortunately Shyamalan seems to have decided after the success 6th Sense that it's the Twilight Zone style twisty stories people want out of him (from what I've gathered his pre-6th Sense movies are realistic dramas), so he seems to have completely forgotten what he was once good at.

I still can't 100% believe that The Happening wasn't an Andy Kaufmanesque prank. Some of the situations and lines in that movie are just too hilarious and loopy to be sincere attempts at making a thriller.

Seriously, has the guy lost his mind? Developed a serious drug problem? What a bizarre, mystifying arc his career has followed.

quasi-religious Signs ending was pretty bad, but i think the moment it felt like it was really all over for the man was when he cast himself as the saviour of mankind artist in Lady in the Water.

I'm heading out to go check out this monstrosity right now!

Signs had a lot of decent moments, but they're easy to forget because of the ending. I love the hell out of Unbreakable. After that... I haven't seen.

This was way better than the reviews let on - in retrospect it feels like a bunch of people were just waiting for something to jump on. It wouldn't really appeal to you guys, but my wife and son liked it pretty well. It was more watchable than Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones.

Scattered thoughts:

It did start off really, really bad at the beginning, but things picked up.
There was very little humor, compared to the show. My wife's one complaint was that it was too serious.
There was one scene where the special effects looked especially crappy. Like, you could see where it was supposed to be 3D (if we had bought tickets to the 3D show, which we didn't).

Basically, most of y'all probably just want to watch the TV show. If you haven't seen it, you really really should. This movie would be a terrible introduction to the show. But if you have a young kid, go take em to an early-bird or a matinee. It'll be fun.

We are hosting a college friend who is a huge fan of the show and we are taking her to this later today. Eek.

I'm actually surprised now at Ebert's review, because he is usually more in tune with the intended audience of a movie. This is a little kids movie. It could have been a Star Wars or LOTR-style epic, but it's not. But that's what the TV show is. I'd get excited for a sequel though.

"Some of the situations and lines in that movie are just too hilarious and loopy to be sincere attempts at making a thriller."

There are lines/situations like this in pretty much every movie of his since sixth sense. I don't think it's insincere so much as his goals are as much outside of thriller-making as david lynch's.
if i were his agent, i'd make him do a low-budget zero-curveball movie like Elephant Man or the Straight Story to prove that he's got the chops, not make another Dune, which is apparently where airbender fits into the M.Night/Lynch trajectory.

Not buying the lynch comparison as a get out of jail free card.

well, lynch shouldn't get a pass either, but people more or less have settled on evaluating him outside of conventional criteria of good/bad, so all's i'm asking is my client get the same benefit.

and as dune was thoroughly savaged, it's still open season on airbender.

Dune is great

It could have been a Star Wars or LOTR-style epic, but it's not.

Nickelodeon just aired a special called "The Last Airbender Revealed" which must have been whipped up over the weekend as damage control. He addresses a few concerns:

1.) the lack of humor is attributed to "the movie just wanted to be more serious."
2.) he changed the pronounciation of the character's names to make them more accurately Asian, which, okay, I'll give him that.
3.) the kyoshi warriors were cut because apparently the scenes with them were too good and would have overshadowed the rest of the film.

Rolling my damn eyes at that last one.

well, lynch shouldn't get a pass either, but people more or less have settled on evaluating him outside of conventional criteria of good/bad,
― Philip Nunez, Friday, July 2, 2010 6:36 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Sugge

no they haven't.

I'm like the only person on earth who liked "Signs"

I really liked it, especially that you don't really see the aliens close-up, and most especially at the beginning where they are just finding out about the invasion through TV footage and stuff. Though yeah why would aliens who can be killed by water would land on the 1 planet that is covered in it?

I liked Signs. It was a refreshingly minimalist, old-fashioned sort of alien invasion flick. The ending was beyond dopey though.

Mr. Shyamalan's fondness for shallow-focus techniques, with a figure in the foreground presented with sharp clarity against a blurred background, is completely out of place in the deep-focus world of modern 3-D.

I've spent a good deal reading up on 3D stereoscopic filmmaking theory and deep-focus is one of the biggest contributing factors leading to the '3d headache' phenomenon because it is not the natural way we perceive the world. When you look at the world daily, you usually focus on one object or area in the field of view at a time.

Signs was the last time Mel Gibson's xenophobia was applied appropriately.

how does he keep getting opportunities? the sixth sense came out over a decade ago.

many google hits for "Airbender and worst movie ever"

x-post

Uh...Signs was a huge blockbuster hit, and his other movies have mostly done respectable business. That's usually reason enough for people to keep working in Hollywood.

xpost: trust me - it's very hyperbolic.

didn't know signs was a blockbuster hit

yeah, did like $200 million in the USA

Just saying, he had a few hits after Sixth Sense which is why he's still around.

This was kind of boring. Most of the acting was terrible, but large chunks of the badness seemed rather clearly to be directorial decisions (Dev Patel's wholly inappropriate emotional outbursts up until the last 3rd of the movie, for example).

The kid who plays Aang is terrible. Like, oh my GAWD terrible. Waterbender girl wasn't much better.

Dude's decline is so steady

http://i46.tinypic.com/2m2c8z5.png

IMDB ratings

shouldve got a white director

the thing that bugs me the most about this guy is when he has to write stuff like comic book dialogue or newscaster announcements or official proclamations and it ends up sounding like something a 7-year-old would write.

does that make sesne / has anyone else noticed this

Yeah, I recall his movies having some really, really embarrassing dialogue but it's been so long since I've seen anything.

the thing that bugs me the most about this guy is when he has to write stuff like comic book dialogue or newscaster announcements or official proclamations and it ends up sounding like something a 7-year-old would write.

"There appears to be an event happening"

these are the first lines of "the happening":

Woman Reading on Bench with Hair Pin: I forgot where I am.
Woman Reading on Bench: You're at the place where the killers meet to decide what to do with the crippled girl.

first of all who the fuck responds to "I forgot where I am" with anything other than a non-committal noise meant to indicate "oh that's too bad, don't know what you want me to do about it though."

second of all how the fuck do you know where someone else is in a book they're reading unless you're doing, like, synchronized reading.

Meanwhile...

Paramount keeps revising newwcomer The Last Airbender's grosses upwards because of its better-than-expected performance at the domestic box office. M Night Shyamalan's 3D epic opened to $16M Thursday from 3,169 theaters, including the $3 million from its midnight shows, and added another $16.6M Friday. But Saturday's take went down to $14.5M. Helped by higher 3D ticket prices, the pic based on the Nickelodeon animated TV series should be on its way to $40.6M for the 3-day weekend, $53.2M for the 4-day holiday and a 5-day cume of $70.5M by end of Monday and definitely 2nd place.

upwardly gross

The inevitable sequel could be even worse, and would keep the losing streak alive.

the twist is HE CAN BEND BOX OFFICES

$$$

So is "The Happening" really really bad? Like Bad Movie bad? Cos Im kinda bored today and wouldnt mind seeing a really bad, silly movie...

horrendous in a profoundly silly way

Oh yes. xp

The Happening is absolutely must see.

its really sort of unbelievable

it's a happening

this movie wasn't nearly as bad as i expected. dropping the kyoshi warriors is going to fuck up some really important plot points in book 2, if it gets made though. slumdog millionaire was good as zuko. shyamalan's best movie by a bazillion miles. he changed the climactic ending and GASP i actually liked it.

still not as good as the worst episode of the tv show though (which was 'the beach' in season 3)

also kinda shocked that a few scenes from the series were recreated exactly in the film ("he was earthbending rocks at us...it really hurt").

Well done there, M. Night:

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/49028608.html

Inevitable:

http://www.rifftrax.com/rifftrax/last-airbender

LOL @ the foot massage reveal

"Do not worry about the moon's power, General."

^^^I quit watching the the rifftrax of this after Aasif's character said this line. IMO it can't be topped so why keep going? Plus it was making me fall asleep at 6:30 p.m.

The final word on the subject (of the movie):

http://agonybooth.com/movies/The_Last_Airbender_2010.aspx

"I’ll warn everybody right now, this is going to be an angry one."

Trailer for the new series The Legend of Korra, which begins next year:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_VkHYtS6MY

Here's a better-looking version of the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Gz8pino8lw

I'm really excited about this! AtLA was one of the best TV series I've seen in recent years, it's amazing how much depth they managed to get into what was nominally a kids' show. At first the idea of the new series taking place in a fantasy version of early 20th century Shanghai felt a bit odd to me, but if they can pull it off, it could be really cool. AtLA already did the high fantasy, so why not try some urban fantasy for the sequel?

Anyway, about the trailer, what's that thing Korra is riding? I guess in the tradition of hybrid animals in Avatar it's a polar bear wolf or something?

Korra is riding a dog/polar bear hybrid. The series is set 70/80 years later and the look of the series will be mostly steampunk.

Some info on the series released so far: http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Airbender:_Legend_of_Korra

Descendants of the original series' characters will definitely feature; the Avatar world has changed a lot, but a lot of those changes were defined and built by the A:TLA characters and their influence will be far-reaching. It'll be interesting to see that based on what we've learned so far.

Just finished watching this! At times quite remarkable, and totally impressed with how much moral nuance it brought to its stories.

Question: Do I need to seek out the comic sequels before I get started on Korra? I generally stay clear of these kinds of other-media tie-ins.

The storytelling over the three seasons is also really cool: it starts as a pastoral adventure story where the characters run through largely pre-industrial villages and towns, then we get the Earth Kingdom megalopolises with sprawling political bureaucracies (though the totalitarian state of Ba Sing Se is somewhat anachronistic), and finally the Fire Nation, which is full of 19th-century steampunk technology and imperialist ambitions. Sort of like the embryonic development in "The Oxen of the Sun" in Ulysses, but with political states.

You can just jump right into Korra after Avatar.

though korra was v boring, also h8 the character design

all adults have "serious adult voice" like they're a voiceover in a PC point-click game giving yr character advice ("you MUST find the crystal shards, or else, I fear... all hope shall be lost!"). the "kids" sound (and mostly are i think) like 30+ ppl trying to sound cool but sounding more like poochy the dog or the "cool" guy in a made for tv disney movie. every villain just does the same throaty mark hammill received pronunciation almost british non-accent. despite the attention-grabbyness of the "steampunk" elements and all the cgi the animation looks really cheap and frame rate is jerky and ugly as fuck. the queer elements seem very self-congratulatory -- maybe we're in a similar phase in entertainment to e.g. the obligatory very special episode about AIDS in the late 80s wrt to gay shit and have to have this initial awkwardness which might not be recognized by the target audience as being awkward as such. just feel like the creators were trying to do something cool but just have terrible taste.

I didn't care much for Korra either. With Avatar, I was totally engrossed throughout (though the first half of S3 was slightly uneven), and when it was ending I thought "Gosh, I'm really gonna miss these characters!" But with Korra, I stopped watching during S2 and never even felt the slightest compulsion to get back on board. The romance in particular felt very forced and tacked-on.

Korra was really uneven for the first two seasons, but it actually got better: season 3 was a huge improvement over season 2, which was the worst of the series, and season 4 was pretty good. I think they actually listened to the criticism the first two seasons generated, because they dropped most of the teen relationship drama, the romance subplots in the last two seasons are more downplayed and organic and less obtrusive. And more importantly, the villains of the last two seasons are more human-sized and three-dimensional, which I thought was great after the generic doomsday big bad of season 2.

Also, I gotta disagree on the queer stuff being "very self-congratulatory"; if anything, it was too subtle, because many viewers apparently didn't even notice it. The had to make official blog posts that "yes, character X and character Y are indeed a queer couple!", because some people wanted to see them as "just good friends" or something. Apparently the subtleness was because Nickelodeon standards didn't allow them to be any more explicit about their queerness, which I think is kinda sad, but OTOH it actually stops it from getting into "a very special episode" territory, because it's never made into a big deal... Being queer isn't what defines these characters, it's just one part of what they are.

Anyway, I started a separate thread for Korra, maybe this discussion could be moved there, especially since it might spoil the series for those who've only seen AtLA.

The Legend of Korra (the sequel series to the Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Who knew?

A reimagined, live-action “Avatar: The Last Airbender” series is coming to Netflix!

(ᴄᴏɴᴄᴇᴘᴛ ᴀʀᴛ ʙʏ Jᴏʜɴ Sᴛᴀᴜʙ) pic.twitter.com/YsMoE4UguV

— See What's Next (@seewhatsnext) September 18, 2018

AND I can confirm that the original creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, will be back to take on the live action. THIS IS WHAT WE’VE BEEN TRAINING FOR ALL THESE YEARS. https://t.co/Pi5M1TDTZc

— NX (@NXOnNetflix) September 18, 2018

Was just about to post this!

My first reaction was, "Oh god why?" But having the creators involved softens the blow.

Even with the creators involved, surprised anyone wants to sink money into live-action Avatar, given the movie. Then again, BBC/HBO are re-doing His Dark Materials too, so maybe 2019 is the year of redeeming shit live-action movies

The Dragon Prince, involving a lot of the same folks as Avatar, is up on netflix now. It's good, nothing too original.

It's good, nothing too original.

Yeah, pretty much. Humor is a lot more forced and cringey.

I really disliked the few eps I watched of that and mostly because it's direly unfunny (and therefore a terrible comp to Avatar)

I'm rewatching this, and oh god I will never be ready for Iroh's part of "Tales Of Ba Sing Se."

Finally got the Blu-ray set for cheap the other day.

had a co-worker who watched the movie avatar and this series and thought they were related

Ugh and "Appa's Lost Days" is up next, back-to-back emotional devastation.

So much for that

https://io9.gizmodo.com/avatar-the-last-airbender-s-creators-just-left-the-liv-1844700980

Damn, that sucks. I rewatched the original series with my daughter a few months back. It's such an amazing show. I didn't need a live-action remake or update or whatever, but I thought it might be cool with the original creators involved.

Ugh and "Appa's Lost Days" is up next, back-to-back emotional devastation.

Feeling this. What a great show.

i've been watching this slowly with my kid, it's pretty good! good mix of action/humor/emotion. some of the character design (mostly for minor characters) is kind of ugly but that's only a minor criticism.

it is funny how much appa is just totoro + catbus

Return of Avatar, part 2 (3?): https://kotaku.com/avatar-the-last-airbender-nickelodeon-aang-katara-zuko-1849066817

i've been watching this slowly with my kid, it's pretty good! good mix of action/humor/emotion. some of the character design (mostly for minor characters) is kind of ugly but that's only a minor criticism.

― na (NA), Thursday, September 17, 2020 10:11 AM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

weird, i just finished rewatching the whole thing, this time with my younger kid. lol at me calling it "pretty good," it's an incredible show.

after my older kid and i finished watching avatar three years ago, we tried to move on to the legend of korra but couldn't get into it. i'm giving it another show with the younger kid now. do people generally like korra? it's a little rough to start it right after avatar and they're like "ok here's the deal, most of those characters you loved from avatar are dead now"

another shot

Korra was also a bit of an ideological whiplash too, going from Avatar's extended critique of imperialism right into a story where the heroes are cops fighting evil communists and anarchists.

which is the one with the lesbians? is it avatar or korra? the lesbians i know really like the one with the lesbians. for some reason.

korra. i did actually prefer korra, not just bc it was lesbian but bc it was generally more adult than avatar

going from Avatar's extended critique of imperialism right into a story where the heroes are cops fighting evil communists and anarchists.

― OneSecondBefore, Wednesday, August 21, 2024 9:38 AM (thirty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

can't say i picked up on this

It's been some years since I watched it, but I remember the first season opening with Korra living in one of the world's first industrial metropolises and encountering a homeless person for the first time, who is happy to be homeless. Then she befriends the chief of police and works with her to combat a movement called the "Equalists" who are handing out red pamphlets advocating for breaking up the class system where benders occupy all positions of power.

I didn't watch the whole series, so maybe it gets better after that, but I have heard that one of the villains of a later season is an anarchist, so... I dunno. I think the showrunners were just middle of the road liberals circa the early 2010's. Not a crime, but I found it annoying.

I hated the first 1.5 seasons of Korra but the starting with the episode about the first Avatar, the show elevates its sophistication and quality, and season 3 is straight up the best thing in the whole Avatar universe. I also think that the show makes a point of giving some of the antagonists credit for having correct motivations, especially the anarchists.

i never finished Korra. it would have had to be some staggering thing to not suffer in comparison to the completely perfect thing that is the first Avatar.