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The Last Airbender: The main four have been cast

Chris3123

Chris3123

Vice Admiral
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The roles of Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Prince Zuko have been cast. Two of the four are unknowns, including Aang.

Aang - "Karate star" Noah Ringer, an unknown, was handpicked by M. Night Shyamalan during an open casting call in Texas to play the title character. I wasn't able to find any pics of him, sorry.

Katara - Nicola Peltz, a relative unknown with only 3 roles in her filmography, will play the young Waterbender. IMDB page with 3 photos

Sokka - 24 year-old Jackson Rathbone, from Twilight, will play Katara's brother.

Zuko - Some of you might not like this. 21 year-old heartthrob singer Jesse McCartney will be playing the Fire Nation Prince. His IMDB page has a decent set of pics.

Link


So, for the three we have pics of, do you think they look like the characters? Do you think they'll be able to perform the roles well? Discuss. :)
 
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I nearly loosed my bowels at seeing the title of this thread. I can't believe they're already casting. Filming will be in the now-independent republic of Greenland.
 
....they held an open-casting call in *Texas*, and are casting Caucasians for roles which in the animated series are Asian peoples?

It goes like this:

*Air Nomads: Tibetan Monks
*Earth Kingdom: Mostly Chinese, some Korean/Japanese
*Fire Nation: Mostly Japanese, some Korean/Chinese elements
*Water Tribes: the only real "oddball" of the group, they're an entire nation of Inuit/Eskimo peoples, but they have brown skin and hair, and piercing blue eyes.

...I seriously thought the best live-action Water Tribe people would be Indians (Ghandi Indians) or something.

I mean its a magical land where there's like, platypus-bears and such, so it's not TOO insulting that "conceivably they could be caucasians" but....

.....dear lord, you held a casting call in Texas.

This doesn't bode well for other anime adaptation things, like Evangelion or Cowboy Bebop or whatever.
 
Ohh, no, no, no, no, no.

Just...

No.

I don't care how much they embrace the Asian focus of the series in the costumes and sets and music and culture and whatnot -- an all-white lead cast just ruins it. Okay, admittedly most of the lead actors on the original series weren't Asian, but with voice roles it doesn't matter so much. This is an enormous dilution of the world Konietzko and Di Martino created -- a world that was refreshingly different from the Eurocentric fantasy worlds we usually see. Now I fear that either the movie is going to Anglicize the Avatar world even more to make it more accessible to the general audience, or else it's going to try to pass these incredibly white actors off as Asian and come off like a Charlie Chan movie or something.

I've expected this film to be a disaster ever since I heard that Shyamalan, a filmmaker who hasn't made a good movie in years and whose style is diametrically opposite that of Avatar in every conceivable way, was chosen to direct. But I figured that as an Indian himself, he at least wouldn't fall into the Hollywood pattern of defaulting to white leads. This is just so totally wrong on every level.

They should've just asked the show's producers to make an animated feature. If they had to do it in live action, they should've given it to Rob Minkoff, the director who made The Forbidden Kingdom. That film has all the qualities a live-action A:TLA should have -- a good story, rich characters, authentic Asian culture and casting, spectacular martial-arts action and visual effects, the works.

But this... I try not to judge projects in advance, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this just feels like a betrayal. I hate this.
 
Christopher said:
But this... I try not to judge projects in advance, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but this just feels like a betrayal. I hate this.
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To play the Devil's advocate, all you are basing this on is Shyamalan being involved, and the fact that the actors don't look Asian/Indian. And as for the latter, Aang didn't exactly look Asian himself. We don't yet have any indication as to the feel or style of this movie. We may be lucky, Shyamalan might surround himself with folks who could help make this thing decent.

Again, just playing Devil's advocate. Though I myself am only really bothered by one of the cast, Jesse McCartney as Zuko. Zuko was the most etchic looking of the 4, so I would hope they'd get somebody with at least some Asian features. In fact, I would have loved it if they got Danté Basco to reprise his role. Yeah, he may look a bit too old now, but I think they could make it work. Besides, he'd be a heck of a lot better choice than Jesse McCartney. :scream:
 
wow just... ehh I'm definitely biased to being against the movie just from M. Night's involvement and his recent movies, but I really dislike the casting choices. Not nearly enough ethnicity to represent the show.

I also really don't get the age differences. Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, etc... were all pretty much right around the same age give or take a year or two.

Looks like Sokka and Zuko are going to be in their 20s now. Don't really care for that too much.

But hey I'm glad the series is over it had a conclusion to the storyline and everything and it was done before this thing ever came out.
 
I can hear GoodWillRiker going into meltdown from here.

And he'd be right- this is fucking ludicrous.
 
Chris3123 said:
To play the Devil's advocate, all you are basing this on is Shyamalan being involved, and the fact that the actors don't look Asian/Indian.
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True, but I think that's enough. On the first point, as I said, everything about Shyamalan's style as a director is diametrically opposite to Avatar's style -- agonizingly slow and languid when it should be energetic and intense, visually muted and sedate when it should be lavish and bright, creepy and uncomfortable when it should have a sense of grand adventure, etc. Plus, every movie he's made after Unbreakable has gotten progressively worse and more self-indulgent. I don't have any faith in him as a director, period, for this or any other project.

On the second point, the Asian quality of the characters, world, culture, and everything else in Avatar was key to what made it so fresh, distinctive, and fascinating. If the filmmakers are so unconcerned with authenticity that they'd hold casting in Texas and pick lead actors who aren't just white but extremely white, I have little faith in their commitment to being authentic on any other point. It's also going to be a huge blow to the Asian-American fans of Avatar who no doubt greatly appreciated a show featuring positive role models who looked like them for a change. A lot of people in the Asian community are going to see this lily-white casting as an insult and a betrayal.
 
Christopher said:
Chris3123 said:
To play the Devil's advocate, all you are basing this on is Shyamalan being involved, and the fact that the actors don't look Asian/Indian.
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True, but I think that's enough. On the first point, as I said, everything about Shyamalan's style as a director is diametrically opposite to Avatar's style -- agonizingly slow and languid when it should be energetic and intense, visually muted and sedate when it should be lavish and bright, creepy and uncomfortable when it should have a sense of grand adventure, etc. Plus, every movie he's made after Unbreakable has gotten progressively worse and more self-indulgent. I don't have any faith in him as a director, period, for this or any other project.
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I mostly agree with you. I'm an optimist, though, so I'm willing to give it a shot.

On the second point, the Asian quality of the characters, world, culture, and everything else in Avatar was key to what made it so fresh, distinctive, and fascinating. If the filmmakers are so unconcerned with authenticity that they'd hold casting in Texas and pick lead actors who aren't just white but extremely white, I have little faith in their commitment to being authentic on any other point.
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Another good point.


It's also going to be a huge blow to the Asian-American fans of Avatar who no doubt greatly appreciated a show featuring positive role models who looked like them for a change. A lot of people in the Asian community are going to see this lily-white casting as an insult and a betrayal.
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And a lot of non-Asian people in the Avatar community as well, apparently. ;)
 
Not sure about Nikola Peltz but I'll reserve judgement. No idea what Noah Ringer looks like, so can't comment. And I reckon Jackson Rathbone and Jesse McCartney both look pretty much the splitting doubles of their cartoon counterparts, if a little bit paler. ;)
 
I do have to wonder - does anyone know if Noah Ringer is actually white or if he is actually an Asian-American (white/Asian)? I mean I have a Hebrew - German name but I'm Asian.
 
^^We can but hope. Still, it wouldn't be enough. I mean, think about it. If Katara, Sokka, and Zuko are white, that means that Iroh, Azula, Ozai, Ursa, Azulon, Avatar Roku, Hakoda, Gran Gran, and everyone else directly related to the leads will have to be white too. It's pre-emptively guaranteeing an overwhelmingly Caucasian cast. Aang has no relatives, so there's no such "ripple effect" where his casting is concerned.
 
I don't know what to think, I'm leaning toward "This sucks" but to play Devil's Advocate a different way...

If you cast everyone from the Fire Nation as Japanese, you're looking at a pretty strong racial bias. The other nations are fairly "nice" although they all show some cultural weakness, but the depiction of Japanese would be pretty harsh.

It's accurate for recent historical purposes, but it wouldn't be PC. Also in the TV series, there was time to develop the backstory and show that the Fire Nation people weren't totally evil, just the political faction and the Firelord. But could that come across enough in a movie, when in limited time there's so much else to focus on?

I'm not say a great writer and great director couldn't pull it off, but depending on what they have to work with, making the cast more generic takes a load off their shoulders.

It's not uncommon in Fantasy to do things like make an aboriginal tribe have Caucasion features and a Gothic medieval society have Asian, or some such. Doing this with Avatar isn't true to the source material, but get past the cosmetic appearance and the story would still be there.

Again, I'm not liking it, but considering how likely they are to find dozens of Inuit actors including two who could play the lead, at some point you have to realize that couldn't stay true to the source.
 
It's accurate for recent historical purposes, but it wouldn't be PC. Also in the TV series, there was time to develop the backstory and show that the Fire Nation people weren't totally evil, just the political faction and the Firelord. But could that come across enough in a movie, when in limited time there's so much else to focus on?
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that's kind of the point I wanted to focus on: while the Fire Nation is "mostly Japanese" (as the Earth Kingdom is "mostly Chinese", but each is kind of a blend), and there would be concern that they're "the bad guys", the TV show makes it a point that the War is really fought by their tyrannical leaders and the common villagers and stuff are kind of hurt by the demands of the war to etc. and a major storyarc is Zuko becoming an anti-hero who realizes that his father and family for generations have been distorting the Fire Nation.

Nonetheless I understand your concern that a movie trilogy might simply not have the time to convey this.
 
LaxScrutiny said:
Again, I'm not liking it, but considering how likely they are to find dozens of Inuit actors including two who could play the lead, at some point you have to realize that couldn't stay true to the source.
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All the more reason why it's a mistake to do this in live action in the first place. But at least they could've approximated. Sokka and Katara didn't have to be played by actual Inuit, but at least they could've found actors who had brown skin and the sort of generic "exotic" look that could come close. I mean, if Naveen Andrews, who's Indian, can play an Iraqi on Lost, then why not? (Not to mention that American films and shows never really keep their Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino, and other Asian nationalities straight in casting.)
 
Sounds like a bunch of lame excuses to me. Picking white kids (and not even really kids) is just a marketing move, pure and simple.
 
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