The Last Airbender - Grading & Discussion

Easily? You ever tried fighting a house fire or a forest fire? Sure, if you succeed in snuffing out a flame while it's still small, that's easy enough, but once it gets going, "easy" goes out the window.

And personally I've always felt the show's approach, where Firebenders can manifest fire spontaneously but every other kind of bender needs an external source (at least until Katara figured out sweatbending), seemed contrived and inconsistent. Sure, they managed to justify it somewhat by equating fire with chi energy, but that feels like a mystical handwave to me. The film's approach strikes me as more consistent, even if it does introduce new limitations. There are points for and against both approaches, and I don't feel that either one is intrinsically "wrong."

 

Katara didn't become a great waterbender in the show until she was taught by her waterbending master at the Northern Water Tribe. She had to steal a waterbending scroll in the show because she didn't have the skills to teach Ang.

Toph is a child prodigy. Due to that her bending skills are equally great to those labeled a master. If they made the Earthbenders mighty in the film, Toph wouldn't be amazing in comparison.

Ang is still the Avatar even if he is their friend.
Even in the show Shozen bowed to Ruko as a sign of respect. Ang is the Dali Lama on that world, it's part of their culture.

 

The problem with firebenders needing a fire source is that they're a tiny nation that has conquered the entire world, so their powers should be super charged. Have you seen how tiny their nation is on the map? The Earth Kingdom is like ten times bigger. It's Japan versus USSR.

 

Didn't Japan kick Russia's ass in a war?

 

Through superior firepower and tactics, yeah. I think it was the 1904-5 war? All I remember is Japan sneak-attacked the Russian Pacific Fleet in a single battle. Then the Russian Western Fleet sailed all the way around the world... only to get promptly sneak-attacked and destroyed by Japan!

Japan has certainly never invaded and occupied the entirety of Mother Russia, though

 

They did a pretty effective job on China in the '30s and '40s, though.

(And to think -- at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, America was so proud of Japan for successfully imitating the West and becoming an industrialized, imperialist power. Heck, what could possibly go wrong?)

 

This made me laugh:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/12/the-last-airbender

 

Is "bender" a British slang for something?

 

It's slang for homosexual.

 

Then that is pretty funny

 

Haven't seen it and I don't want to, but all I know is the advert for it pisses me off.

"SEE SOME SHIT HAPPEN IN 3D, MORE SHIT IN 3D, EVEN MORE SHIT IN 3D, AND SOME MORE SHIT IN 3D"

 

That's all? I thought it was supposed to be something objectionable.

 

I always wondered why the show's title was different in the U.K.

 

Aparently British people have never understood that words have different meanings in different context? I mean, you'd think they would know that, it is their damn language.

 

Well, that's hardly fair. Americans are no different. Haven't you ever heard anyone snickering at "We'll have a gay old time" in the Flintstones theme song? Or at references to a "private dick" in old-time detective movies?

 

Why, what do they call it in England?

When I was a little boy I always used to go to places with my fanny pack stuffed full of goodies. Never knew how offensive that was until a few weeks ago

 

Yeah, maybe being an adult I've just never snickered at those things and in the past, before being an adult, I knew words have different meanings and play context a lot into finding things funny. There's an old comic people post a lot of a paper saying the Joker "makes a lot of boners (re: errors)" and I don't find it funny because I play a lot of context into it. (Namely, it didn't mean that back then.)

So, yeah, I don't get it. Context is everything. I mean the "bender" thing, I guess is funny in a "the word also means "gay" way but in the context of the movie it's obviously not what they're talking about and it seems even sillier that they changed the name of the series in England because of it.

 

Avatar: The Legend of Aang

 

I'm wondering how British audiences react to Bender in Futurama. (Of course, he was named for a slang term, besides the literal meaning, but it's "bender" in the sense of "a drinking binge.")

 

Must have put an added dimension to Bender being afraid people would think he and Fry are robo-sexual!