Whoa! I always thought that Earthsea was based on Japanese culture. My misapprehension might be due to my having read only one short story and only one novel. Didn’t the wizard in his old age live in a house that was kinda Japanese style? Sliding doors, tatami mat for martial arts practice, etc? Or am I misremembering a novel as being LeGuin’s?
About comments above that fans not wanting changes to their comic characters because it’s racism. Maybe there are racists among comic book fans. But I don’t think racism is the motivation behind most fans’ objections. I’m reminded of the outcry over Jessica Alba’s being cast in the Fantastic Four and most of the objections centered on her being brunette but the fans were okay when she dyed her hair blond. It was not about casting a Caucasian as Sue Storm. It was about casting someone who looked like Sue Storm.
There was mention of fans not complaining when a black actor was cast in I Am Legend and Wild Wild West. That made me pause to wonder why. Maybe it’s because most moviegoers haven’t seen the previous movies? Or maybe it’s different with comic book characters since fans buy them every month and see the character at least once a month for several years.
I’m reminded of the time when Spider-Man fans threatened to boycott the Spider comics because it was revealed that the Peter Parker they’ve been following and reading about for months was not the real Peter Parker but a clone. If the fans were so angry when Peter Parker was replaced by someone who looked exactly like him (a clone), imagine the howls of protest if Peter Parker was replaced with someone who did not look like him. 
The people of Earthsea are mostly brown. It’s not really specified just how dark they are, although there is clearly some variation. The exception are one group of islands which actually are inhabited by some paler “white” people who even have blonds but they are very much a minority and don’t show up at all in the first book. The Earthsea people don’t live in an Earth society, and they different islands did have different customs and cultures to some extent. You could read them and think the majority of people in the story are black, or Polynesian, or some other group.
But yeah, casting nearly everyone in the mini-series as white was quite jarring and off-putting to fans of the series. It was like seeing a story set in Beijing that had nothing but white people and not an Asian in sight.
Well, I’m not going to expend any more energy really than just to say it’s been stated repeatedly that in the movie, the bad guys are Asian (Indian), and the good guys are mainly white. Perhaps not a blatantly racist substitution, but disgusting to me none-the-less. I’m not even going to touch your other points anymore, as you haven’t seen the movie, or much of the show, sooooo I guess we agree to disagree.
There is no question that, stylistically, the various nations of the last airbender are based on different cultures - China for the earth kingdom, Japan for the fire nation, Tibet for the air nation, the Innuit for the water tribe. It does not thereby follow that the persons inhabiting those nations are of different human races; indeed, the plot sort of depends on them being physically indistinguishable racially, since merely by putting on different clothes and the like, people from one nation can look much like people from another.
Indeed, not having seen the movie, I understand that in the live action movie the Fire nation is supposed to be racially distinct (based on Indian/Arabic); this seems to create a bit of a problem, along the lines I’ve suggested - in the unlikely case that the subsequent movies get made, Aang’s gang have to infiltrate the Fire nation - and if they are generally Indian, that’s going to be difficult.
I’d have no problems with the entire airbender world being “generically asian” or 'generically white" or even “generically black”, or having race not matter at all; the worst interpretation is that all of the people from one ‘nation’ are of one distinct race, different from another nation - because it creates plot difficulties.
Though from what I hear, this is the least of the movie’s problems … is it really as bad as the critics claim?
In the TV show at least, the Fire Nation were not the ‘bad guys’ really. Their leader was a ‘bad guy’, and because of that, the whole nation had gone off on the wrong path - but in reality, the Fire Nation was a necessary part of the whole; and Fire Nation prince Zuko is arguably the hero of the piece (not to mention his uncle) who has to overcome great barriers to do what is right; the world-saving Avatar is "air nomad’ now, but just as often had been "Fire Nation’ in the past.
The notion that the Fire Nation was racially evil, like the Orcs of Middle-Earth, and so depicting them with dark skin = a racial insult is wrong, wrong, wrong.
At least, assuming that the live movie bears even the slightest resemblence to the TV series.
Hmmm, yes I can agree with this. Sadly I don’t think the movie-going public can see such fine nuances. I still think it’s damaging for the enemy nation to be comprised entirely of people from the Indian subcontinent, especially when this change makes no real sense. Some have suggested that perhaps M. Night has a self-hatred complex, heh.
As for the Gaang’s ability to sneak around in Fire Nation territory with regards to physical characteristics, that is a whole 'nother bag of worms, and I’m all out of fan to wank for this thread at least.
Danny DiVito as Thor. Lol.
I don’t have any direct issue with Peter Parker being black except for two reasons:
1> I honestly don’t think Hollywood could do it right. They’d either make him (as I said in the other thread) nerdier than Erkle since he’s a photographer, or they’d try to turn him into a gang member or a kid from the hood.
2> We all know Hollywood is out of ideas, recycling everything and anything, and one of their biggest deals over the last 10 years or so has been to remake movies with the “edgy” change of casting a black actor in a previously white role. I do not want to see them do this, especially combined with #1, just to make it “edgy” and “hip” and all that bullshit.
That being said, I am equally unhappy with the casting of white actors in minority roles. I never got the idea of David Carradine as Kwai Chang Caine and being constantly referred to as “Chinaman” even though he is clearly WHITE. Mickey Rooney as an Asian was just pure offense. John Wayne as Ghengis Khan was laughable.
What always makes me laugh, is that the movie version of Ghengis Khan is usually cast as the hero.
I’ll admit, I’ve always wanted to see The Conqueror, for pure entertainment value … 
I voted Airbender casting OK, black PP NOT OK but that may or may not accurately represent my view.
As far as Airbender, I don’t see the need to cast Asians per se, as the characters don’t look explicitly Asian, and they are from a fictional universe in which Asia doesn’t even exist. I think Aang looks sufficiently like Aang. Now the other main cast, I agree don’t really look quite right. They should have switched the water bender actor with the fire bender actor, and then they would have looked more like their animated counterparts.
A black Peter Parker would just kind of be distracting at this point, since he’s such an iconic character, and wouldn’t really add anything. A black Spiderman might work, if you made it a different character. But just making everything the same except Peter is now black would feel odd, like a blonde Superman, or a Batman with a mustache.
I would be offended by a Mr. Fantastic with a mullet who dressed exclusively in jorts and Metallica tee-shirts with the arms cut off.
I would also be offended if Proffesor X had a crazy southern drawl and never stopped talking about crawdads.
Hmmm…to me, it would depend on the role and the actor.
Denzel worked for me as Don Pedro in Branaugh’s “Much Ado About Nothing” (but I have to admit I really like Branaugh’s Shakespeare); Will Smith didn’t really work for me in “Wild Wild West” because it was Will Smith/Agent J in “Wild Wild West” not James West. David Carridine never worked for me as a Kung Fu monk.