The Last Airbender

[marydell]

Signal boost - if you're considering seeing The Last Airbender this weekend, please first head over to racebending.com and read about the film.  The film's creators have taken a wildly popular anime full of Asian and other POC heroes, with sets and clothing designs that have their origins in a variety of non-European cultures, and turned it into an all-white-heroes, POC-villains exotic fantasy extravaganza.   I won't see it for all the tea in {some country that used to be China but has been replaced for artistic reasons with a non-Asian country}, and I hope you'll consider withholding your dollars from it as well.  The original show is up on Netflix if you want to give the real thing a try. 

Comments

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

When the whole flap started I went and looked at the stills from the original show and that sort of thing. I saw the trailer for the first time this past week when I went to see the Karate Kid remake, and I was made very unhappy by the poor casting in a way that I didn't expect to be. It's just clearly not going to be the same thing, at all, and that bothers me. I suppose it's ironic considering that I saw the trailer before a movie that is also not the same thing as what it's remaking, but I felt like the Karate Kid remake was very consciously trying to tell the same story in a way that worked in modern times, and The Last Airbender is just...whitewashing.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That last is le mot juste.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to see it. And I am taking some small, spiteful pleasure in people reporting that the fight scenes were done terribly and the acting is wooden. Let it sink like a stone and not be spoken of again, except as a cautionary tale.

[pixelfish.livejournal.com]

I commented on Twitter and to my family.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Not only that, but Roger Ebert (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100630/REVIEWS/100639999) says it's awful. (Man, I love his reviews of bad movies. Evisceration time!)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

"I close with the hope that the title proves prophetic."

Roger Ebert did a damned fine job eviscerating that movie.

[redrose3125.livejournal.com]

I won't go see it, but I did just put the original series on the Netflix queue.

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

I won't be going to see it and I'm trying valiantly to get Puppy to not go either.