Wiz Wonderz?: Avatar the Last Racebender?
One of my hommies from twitter hit me up and told me to go to Racebending.com. The website points out how the lead cast for M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming film The Last Airbender are all white with the exception of Zuko, the villain, who will be played by an Asian actor…
Check out the article:
The Nickelodeon show “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” on which this film is based, featured Asian characters in a fantasy setting inspired and informed by a variety of Asian cultures. The characters fight with East Asian martial arts, have Asian features, dress in clothing from Asian cultures, and write with Chinese characters. The cast and setting were a refreshing departure from predominantly white American media, and were a large part of the show’s appeal as well as an inspiration to many Asian American children.
Characters from the animated series. Katara and Sokka from the peacful and oppressed Water Tribe; Zuko from the tyrannical and genocidal Fire Nation.
Most recent casting for the movie. Nicola Peltz as Katara, Jackson Rathbone as Sokka, Dev Patel as Zuko (originally cast as Jesse McCartney, a blond, blue-eyed popstar).
I’m not sure this will have a huge effect on the outcome at the box office…But its still messed up how Hollywood tries to change key elements of a story line….To be honest I really can’t see any of the cast doing martial arts in any form or fashion…I’m willing to bet that the ethnic difference will take away from the feel of the plot…It’ll probably end up being nothing like the show just like the rest of the TV show based movies…
June 28th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
If you believe that casting asian kids in leading roles in childrens martial arts action movies is somehow breaking race barrier casting, I’m guessing you weren’t alive in the 80’s. Having the entire movie cast with Chinese and Inuit children would actually just create fodder for Hollywood racism activists who would say that it was just an example of the only kinds of roles that asians are permitted to have in American movies. More than resembling a cartoon character accurately, more than cultural connection, a pre-teen that is going to get 2 hours of screen time has to be able to act and carry the physicality expected of the role. It was an open international casting call. If there was a kid who looked like Aang available who could do the work within the budget, odds are he additioned and didn’t make the cut. If you think asian children were excluded from considderation in a movie based on Eastern Mythology because producers believed they would ruin the reception of the movie you’re unfathomably confused about movie A&R. These children were cast in spite of their race because of their particular skills. While Peltz and Rathbone are ethnically dissimilar from the characters they play, look at their publicity shots, they look more like cartoon characters than actual humans. As far as darkies allways being cast as villains; villains are allways cast, dressed, and given speech and mannerisms that contrast the protagonist. Very few Blacksploitation movies had black villains. Its a Hollywood theatrical tradition that is adopted around the world in movies. While it may become a catlyst for racism because of a pervasiveness of anglo heroes in Hollywood, it isn’t born out of any kind of racism.