Spoilers Avatar: The Last Airbender - Netflix Live Action Version

[JD]

IGN has posted there breakdown of the trailer with the executive producer and showrunner Albert Kim, and director, VFX supervisor, and EP Jabbar Raisani. You can either watch a 22 minute video or read it as an article. I read the article, since I can probably get through it quicker and it's easier to start and stop that way.
Interesting info:

• The narrator of the trailer is monk Gyatso, who's played by Lim Kay Siu.
• The scene with all the firebenders attacking a building is the attack on the Southern Air Temple, which we never saw in the animated show. It sounds like this scene will be one of the big new additions they're making.
• That scene will also include a Monk Gyatso vs Fire Lord Sozin fight.
• The ostrich horses were created by having stunt drivers under the actors.
• We will see a longer version of the Zuko/Ozai fight that left Zuko with his scar and led to him being banished.
• It's going to be an even bigger deal when Aang goes into the Avatar State, so it won't be happening as often here as it did in the animated series.

 

[Christopher]

The one thing that surprised me, is that they didn't Gender/Race changed the original characters. Is this trend finnaly dying off? Or just Netflix?

The reason for changing characters' gender or race in adaptations is to improve the diversity of something that was too dominated by white and/or male characters in the original, which was the norm in most older fiction due to the biases of the era. Since A:TLA started out with a cast of entirely non-white characters with plenty of strong female characters, there was no such imbalance that needed to be corrected.

At least, not where the characters are concerned. Note that while most of the characters in the animated show were voiced by white actors, here they're all played by actors of color, so there has been an increase in diversity in the way that matters most, i.e. in job opportunities for performers. Same with the production crew, which was largely white in the animated show but far more diverse here.


EDIT: Come to think of it, there have been a few ethnicity changes in the cast, particularly in the Water Tribe, since they were based on Inuit and Arctic peoples in the original show, while here they're played by a wider range of indigenous American actors, such as Irene Bedard, A Martinez, and Amber Midthunder. Also, the Fire Nation in the show was based on Japan, but most of the Fire Nation characters here are played by actors of non-Japanese ancestry (with the exceptions of Hiro Kanagawa as Sozin and Momona Tamada as Ty Lee).

 

[Thestral]

Man, I really... really didn't want to get my hopes up too high but that trailer looked so good, like it really is going to capture what I loved about the animated series at least to some extent. I don't see anything from Books 2-3 so I assume the idea is to adapt Book 1?

EDIT: Come to think of it, there have been a few ethnicity changes in the cast, particularly in the Water Tribe, since they were based on Inuit and Arctic peoples in the original show, while here they're played by a wider range of indigenous American actors, such as Irene Bedard, A Martinez, and Amber Midthunder. Also, the Fire Nation in the show was based on Japan, but most of the Fire Nation characters here are played by actors of non-Japanese ancestry (with the exceptions of Hiro Kanagawa as Sozin and Momona Tamada as Ty Lee).

I think that's a lot more to do with Hollywood casting saying "Japanee, Chinese, Korean? All close enough and interchangeable for casting purposes." I don't expect Fire Lord Ozai is going to be dressing like he's from Joseon or that Iroh will open a makgeolli shop instead of tea just because they're played by Korean actors, or that the Fire Nation in general will have a lot of Korean trappings because of that, nor would I want them to be - keep the Fire Nation modeled on Imperial Japan.

It's the same logic as how in Hollywood casting, Brits are interchangeable with French are interchangeable with German. And how a show like The Wticher which should have been cast with a bunch of Poles and Germans just turned everybody British because... all white people are the same apparently, like all Asian people are the same.

 

[Christopher]

I think that's a lot more to do with Hollywood casting saying "Japanee, Chinese, Korean? All close enough and interchangeable for casting purposes." I don't expect Fire Lord Ozai is going to be dressing like he's from Joseon or that Iroh will open a makgeolli shop instead of tea just because they're played by Korean actors, or that the Fire Nation in general will have a lot of Korean trappings because of that, nor would I want them to be - keep the Fire Nation modeled on Imperial Japan.

I think it's also partly because the talent pool of Asian and Indigenous actors in North America is still fairly limited in size, so we keep seeing the same people over and over, like Daniel Dae Kim, Hiro Kanagawa, Tamlyn Tomita, Irene Bedard, etc. It's not quite as bad as it was in the '70s or '80s, say, where practically every Asian authority figure on TV was either Mako or James Hong (I exaggerate, but not by much), but it's still a finite pool. I thought of that when Albert Kim talked in the interview about how cool it was to bring all these great Asian actors together.

It's the same logic as how in Hollywood casting, Brits are interchangeable with French are interchangeable with German. And how a show like The Wticher which should have been cast with a bunch of Poles and Germans just turned everybody British because... all white people are the same apparently, like all Asian people are the same.

I don't think the goal should be some kind of absolute purity of only casting actors who match the characters' ethnicities. I mean, the whole point of acting is to pretend to be someone you're not, and it's obviously not a standard that can apply if actors are playing aliens or people from a fantasy world like Avatar. The goal is to be inclusive, to allow actors and filmmakers of all ethnicities a fair chance to get jobs, and to allow diverse audience members to see their communities represented in the films and shows they watch. It's not about gatekeeping and isolating everyone into their own walled ethnic camps; just the opposite, it's about opening doors for everyone to be included. Since the culture has historically been biased in favor of white people, and still is to a large extent, it's important to counter that imbalance by preserving and promoting opportunities for people of color; but you don't want to lose sight of the reason for it and end up turning it into just another form of exclusion.

So it's obviously a problem to cast, say, John Wayne in yellowface as Genghis Khan, or to change the A:TLA characters to mostly white people like the Shyamalan movie did. And I did think it was a bit iffy, say, for Agents of SHIELD to cast the half-Tibetan Dichen Lachman to play the mother of the half-Chinese Chloe Bennet, or for LOST to cast the Anglo-Indian Naveen Andrews to play an Iraqi character, since there's a visible ethnic difference there. But I don't see a problem with casting Daniel Dae Kim as Fire Lord Ozai or Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia, since they don't look wrong for the parts, and since they don't have to speak the languages fluently.

 

[Thestral]

Oh I'm certain talent pool and name recognition (why would you not cast Daniel Dae Kim if you could, even not counting his involvement with the animated series) are the biggest part of it. I'm just disputing that it shows any more "ethnicity changes in the cast" since DDK is no more Japanese than Mark Hamill or Dallas Liu than Dante Basco.

My point in bringing up the Witcher in particular was that show demonstrated a perfect happiness to embrace diversity on the one hand (Triss and Yen) but - at least in the one season I watched - well, for a series based on Polish novels where the evil empire is pretty obviously based on the Holy Roman Empire, I don't think I heard a single Polish accent. Because why should that distinction matter, apparently? (To be fair, the wildly popular videogame that surely made the series be adapted had the same problem in English.)



Anyway, I'm excited for the series! If they do another trailer I wouldn't mind if it included a little bit more of things like Suki teasing Sokka (since she's in it, there had better be some teasing), Aang as the trickster and of course.... "MY CABBAGES!"

I saw a shot of Jet in there too, if they give him as much attention and general character arc as the cartoon did, that's gonna be realllly dark and really good.

 

[Tuskin38]

There was a shot of Teo and Aang flying over Omashu. That never happened in the original series. That I can remember anyways

Pretty sure most of their interactions in Book 1 were at the northern air temple

 

[DigificWriter]

This may only be a 'me' thing, but the child actors don't physically match the ages that their characters are supposed to be (and I don't think they aged them up), which hurt the 'immersion factor' of the trailer.

 

[Christopher]

Oh I'm certain talent pool and name recognition (why would you not cast Daniel Dae Kim if you could, even not counting his involvement with the animated series) are the biggest part of it. I'm just disputing that it shows any more "ethnicity changes in the cast" since DDK is no more Japanese than Mark Hamill or Dallas Liu than Dante Basco.

Well, that's basically my point; I was trying to get across that not all Asian or Indigenous ethnicities are alike. But it was an incidental point to the main thread of discussion.

Although as I mentioned recently in another thread (I think that was here), it's often struck me as odd how most Japanese characters in North American productions are played by actors of Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Filipino etc. ancestry instead of Japanese. The Legendary MonsterVerse is a rare exception in having all its major Japanese characters played by actual Japanese or Japanese-diaspora actors.

My point in bringing up the Witcher in particular was that show demonstrated a perfect happiness to embrace diversity on the one hand (Triss and Yen)

Not to mention Fringilla, Istredd, Dara, and a few others. Honestly, I didn't even realize Anya Chalotra and Anna Shaffer had mixed ancestry, though in the former case I should've realized it from her surname.

but - at least in the one season I watched - well, for a series based on Polish novels where the evil empire is pretty obviously based on the Holy Roman Empire, I don't think I heard a single Polish accent. Because why should that distinction matter, apparently? (To be fair, the wildly popular videogame that surely made the series be adapted had the same problem in English.)

I don't see how that matters in an international adaptation. I mean, there's already a Polish-language TV series based on the novels, made in 2002 and called The Hexer in English. An adaptation in a new language isn't meant to replace the original, but to introduce its story to new audiences. So why shouldn't it be adapted to fit the culture of its audience? Akira Kurosawa turned Macbeth into Throne of Blood, Hamlet into The Bad Sleep Well, and King Lear into Ran. Dragonball is basically a loose Japanese adaptation of the Chinese novel Journey to the West. Cultures borrow from each other and adapt. That's not wrong.

Like I said, it's not about building impassable barriers and being jealously purist about nationality; that's just perpetuating division and intolerance. It's about encouraging inclusion and opportunity for diverse communities. Turning other cultures' stories into stories for and about white people is problematical because it perpetuates the culture of white supremacy, but when that's not an issue, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with letting cultures blend with or borrow from one another.

As for The Witcher, it's a fantasy world, explicitly not set on Earth. Indeed, the implication is that the humans on "the Continent" came to it from Earth when the dimensions collided. So why should they speak Polish?

 

[Thestral]

There was a shot of Teo and Aang flying over Omashu. That never happened in the original series. That I can remember anyways

Pretty sure most of their interactions in Book 1 were at the northern air temple

That might be one of the big changes made, moving Teo to the vicinity of Omashu instead of having them go to the Northern Air Temple, maybe even have them and Bumi fighting off a Fire Nation invasion? Or relocating Omashu further north.

There's 8 episodes and titles are released. I wonder how it'll break down... here's my general predictions.

1. "The Last Airbender." Fairly straight adaptation of the pilot and Southern Air Temple episodes, with expanded Zuko/Iroh content and presumably the depiction of the battle of the Southern Air Temple attacked by Fire Lord Sozin. At least in flashbacks see Azula and company too?
2. "Warriors." Kyoshi Warriors and introducting Suki clearly. I also wouldn't be surprised if this is where they introduce Zhao and showing Zuko's Agni Kai with Zhao (possibly flashback's to his Agni Kai with his father?) before attacking Kyoshi Island.
3. "Omashu." Pretty clear what this will be about, Bumi and all. If I'm correct that they move The Mechanist and Teo close to Omashu, we'll see them here as well. Maybe this is where Zuko hires June to track/follow Aang?
4. "Into the Dark." At some point, we're going to see Koh the Face Stealer, Wan Shi Tong, Avatar Kuruk, and Avatar Roku. Maybe this is where it starts, with Aang being tracked down and captured by June during the Winter Solstice? I imagine they'll want to show her being successful as well as not bother with the one-off archers that capture Aang. This could be focused more on Roku and Sozin, "Into the Dark" referring to the descent into the war. Or perhaps Aang is captured at the end when they go to the Avatar Island and the sages betray Aang to Zhao, who captures him here and June has tracked him but reports back to Zuko that Zhao has him? Zuko and Iroh meantime might be dealing with Iroh being captured?
5. "Spirited Away." 100% gonna be dealing with the Spirit World here. I wouldn't be surprised if this is where Koh, Wan Shi Tong, and Kuruk show up? I'll bet Aang is captured for the entire episode and dealing with Spirit World stuff, before being broken out by the Blue Spirit at the end of the epsiode.
6. "Masks." I'm betting this is where we meet Jet and the Freedom Fighters, contrasting the masks they - especially Jet - wear, while at the same time Zuko is deciding what to do about his time as the Blue Spirit and more conflict with Zhao.
7. "The North." Arriving at the Northern Water Tribe seems pretty obvious here, and learning about the situation there. I figure this and Episode 8 will be a fairly straight, if expanded, adaptation of the end of Season 1, with more Azula, Mei, and Tai Lee.
8. "Legends." See above.

I wonder how much of a role Azula, Mei, and Ty Lee will play, or if they'll mostly be Episode 1/8 and flashback figures?

One big change I'd like for them to bring in would be Suki joining the Gaang from the beginning, but I suppose that's not especially likely because it makes Sokka's romances more complex. Maybe she'll come with them as far as Omashu though?

Well, that's basically my point; I was trying to get across that not all Asian or Indigenous ethnicities are alike.

... obviously?

Letting the rest drop despite disagreement because it's not what this thread is about anyway.

 

[Christopher]

... obviously?

Evidently not. The poster I was responding to, Starbrow, seemed to think there had been no ethnicity swaps in this show's characters, implying they weren't aware of the distinctions I pointed out.

 

[JD]

This may only be a 'me' thing, but the child actors don't physically match the ages that their characters are supposed to be (and I don't think they aged them up), which hurt the 'immersion factor' of the trailer.

Not to surprised by this, the vast majority of adaptations age up the characters from the original source, even it's just changing young kids to slightly older kids. The Harry Potter movies are some of the few where they didn't age up the characters, although I think some of the actors were a year or two older than the characters were.

 

[Markonian]

I hope this show is successful so we can get a post-Korra animated show off the ground. By the time of the next Avatar the cycle, we’ll have reached the space age!

Imagine what Disney could with this property. They could release shows, movies, merch, perhaps build it up as their counterpart to Wizarding World.

 

[Christopher]

Not to surprised by this, the vast majority of adaptations age up the characters from the original source, even it's just changing young kids to slightly older kids.

Let's see... Gordon Cormier is 14, while Aang was 12 in the original; Kiawentiio is 17 to Katara's 14; Ian Ousley is 21 to Sokka's 15; Dallas Liu is 22 to Zuko's 16; Elizabeth Yu is 21 to Azula's 14. That seems fine to me; I always had a hard time believing Azula was only 14, since she seemed considerably older. Aging up her and Zuko a bit more relative to Katara and Sokka seems reasonable. As for Katara and Sokka, they had to grow up to adult responsibilities unusually fast due to the war, so there's no harm in making them actually a few years older in this version.

Imagine what Disney could with this property. They could release shows, movies, merch, perhaps build it up as their counterpart to Wizarding World.

The last thing I want is for Disney to end up having a monopoly on all entertainment. The more competitors they have, the happier I am. Resistance is not futile.

 

[Tuskin38]

Imagine what Disney could with this property.

Fuck no.

so we can get a post-Korra animated show off the ground

There are rumours we're getting one after the Animated movie that's coming out next year.

 

[JD]

Do we know what the animated movie is going to be about yet?

 

[Thestral]

The Gaang all grown up, apparently.

 

[DigificWriter]

Let's see... Gordon Cormier is 14, while Aang was 12 in the original; Kiawentiio is 17 to Katara's 14; Ian Ousley is 21 to Sokka's 15; Dallas Liu is 22 to Zuko's 16; Elizabeth Yu is 21 to Azula's 14. That seems fine to me; I always had a hard time believing Azula was only 14, since she seemed considerably older. Aging up her and Zuko a bit more relative to Katara and Sokka seems reasonable. As for Katara and Sokka, they had to grow up to adult responsibilities unusually fast due to the war, so there's no harm in making them actually a few years older in this version.

Like I said in my post, though, I don't think the people behind this show intended to age up the child characters, which makes the fact that the actors chosen don't look like they physically match their characters' ages an issue.

 

[Tuskin38]

Rewatching the trailer, I caught this in the shot of Zuko putting up a drawing of Aang on his wall, it's portrait of Avatar Yangchen (which almost looks like the art style of the animated series). Guess Zuko has been digging more into the past Avatars to help him hunt the current one.

 

[Christopher]

Rewatching the trailer, I caught this in the shot of Zuko putting up a drawing of Aang on his wall, it's portrait of Avatar Yangchen (which almost looks like the art style of the animated series). Guess Zuko has been digging more into the past Avatars.

That could be a way of giving exposition about the Avatar Cycle to the audience. That's one benefit of remaking a story -- in the original, they worked out the history of past Avatars gradually, so they couldn't go into too many specifics when they first delved into it, but here, they can consolidate it more.

Although Roku and Kyoshi are the only past Avatars who've been cast yet, as far as I know.

 

[Neroon]

I must admit that like so many I was skeptical of the news when this series was first announced. But then the cast list began to come out, and when they said Daniel Dae Kim would be Fire Lord Ozai and that Paul Sun-Hyung Lee would be Uncle Iroh ... that was when I really started to get on board. Then the trailers appeared ...