Omi: Oh boy, it’s the last airbender movie! I know it’s supposed to suck, but the show was awesome so this’ll be mildly entertaining at least.
2 minutes pass
Omi: Wow, they really got white people to play the Inuit characters? That seems like kind of a silly decision.
1 minute passes
Omi: Man, this dialog really isn’t that hot, and I kind of wish Aang’s actor would actually act a bit, but it’s a kid’s movie, it might still be entertaining.
several minutes pass
Omi: Wtf, everyone is white except for the bad guys who are all Indian? What on earth kind of statement is that?
7 minutes of gasped, over-emoted dialog substituted for action and things actually happening later
Omi: What. The. Fuck.
I got dragged to that by a couple friends, and 5 minutes in, my first thought was.
“Wow, for living in the arctic, they sure sound like American west coast teenagers…did they move there recently?” “Oh…they’re supposed to be NATIVE?” WTF?
Worst dialog ever. Terrible acting. Mediocre special effects and plot holes so wide you could drive a dump truck through them.
Got dragged to it by son for a birthday treat – hard to say no. (I tried but failed to get to ask for Despicable Me instead). 
Visuals were OK… but the dialog was reminiscent of Lucas at his most leaden. :eek:
I don’t get the “Inuit” issue really though. Katara and Sokka are members of the “Southern Water Tribe”, who live in the Antarctica analogue of a fantasy world… not the Arctic of the real world, so why would we expect them to be Inuit?
And while the animated characters are tanned, the voices are provided by US actors from LA and Boston.
There are a lot of things wrong with the Last Air Bender movie… but criticism about the apparent ethnicity of the Water tribe people seems small potatoes, IMHO.
You’re not a big “Earthsea” fan, either, I’m guessing? 
This could have been a good movie if they’d gotten better actors. What the heck? They spent several million dollars on FX and they couldn’t spend a little extra money on actors?
The movie was based off of a show called AVATAR, and they changed the name because there was already an Avatar movie, even though that didn’t stop two “Nine” movies from getting released the same year.
I know better to see any of Night’s movies ever. There’s a reason that all of the posters still refer to him as “the guy who made The 6th Sense”
My daughter’s a huge Avatar fan and watched just enough of this to get really angry. She rants about it at least twice a week. One of the things she dislikes is that they couldn’t even pronounce the names correctly.
Kind of reminds me of The Substitute and its sequels, in which Tom Berenger and Treat Williams beat the shit out of various minorities (who mostly happen to be criminals).
Well, until the fourth one, where Treat beats up white supremacists instead.
This is on DVD now or something? I thought it was gone from theaters almost immediately.
The best thing about this movie is it engendered this extremely childish review.
I suspect only Brits will find it funny, mind you. To comprehend it, you need to know that “Bender” is childish slang for “gay man”. “Viz” is a comic that specialises in puerile humor, in particular a character called “Finbarr Saunders and his double entendres”.
Well, one of those was called 9 and the other was called Nine. And while 9 was awesome, Nine was an incoherent, boring mess.
Hmmmmm.
I’m not at all really sure what you mean. No, not a huge Earthsea fan, although I’ve read the books… and seen some adaptions… Looking up info about the world I can see the notes that most of the peoples are darkish skinned – except for the Kargs – possibly “red-brown”… a colouring that would put me somewhat in mind of Polynesians (also given the island / boating culture).
I sure don’t mind a good natured “dig” (since that’s what it appears to be), but I’m still struggling to understand why fantasy Antarctic-ans should look Inuit – and while the animated characters of Kataraand Sokka aren’t pale skinned, they sure don’t look very Inuit, Inupiat, or Yup’ik either.
The animated show’s name is “Avatar: The Last Airbender”. It did seem a bit unnecessary to drop the “Avatar” for the film, but “The Last Airbender” wasn’t just made up for the movie either.
yep I was saved from this traincrash, my 11yo son told me that it would be a pile of crap according to his mates who had seen it. Shame because he loved Avatar the TV show.
If I were making the movie, I think my starting point would have been that the four nations should all look modestly distinctive, ethnically and in dress and so forth, but not so much that members of one can’t realistically disguise themselves as members of another. Beyond that, I’m not clear that it makes much difference which skin colors and so forth signify which nation.
My dig simply being that one of the Earthsea movies (the Scifi channel one) somewhat infamously used a mostly white cast, when the characters specifically weren’t—the author (and fans, as I recall) really weren’t pleased.
And, even for their fictional nature, the Water Tribe culture was based on that of the Inuit, and their physical appearance—even seen through the filter of an animation design, and with fantastic touches—was clearly closer to Inuit or Native American than European.
Are there a lot of blue-eyed Inuit out there?
When this comes out on DVD, is there a drinking game you recommend I try out while watching the movie?
So far all the reviews I’ve read/heard about refer to:
- mispronunciations of names
- really bad acting
- screwing with the entire universe setting
I haven’t seen it, haven’t seen the cartoon and no nothing about it other than the title, the trailer and that it got abysmal reviews, but I have to say that the word “airbender” to me sounds like a slang word for a fart. Like, “whoah, dude, that was a real airbender, open a window. Jesus Christ.”
But skin color is a motif in Ursula Le Guin; there’s reasons for adhering to the identities as she’s written them. What about the Last Airbender story needs the Water Tribe to “be” any particular Earthly ethnicity?
I’d say that changing the races isn’t so much a problem as making everyone white - except the bad guys.
The whole series made snarkle, since ‘bender’ is British slang for gay person, and my daughter was always asking me ‘what kind of bender would you be?’