Thoughts on The Last Airbender
I've finally found time to rant get down my thoughts on The Last Airbender (aka the fail!movie).
First off, the thing that made me want to rip my hair out in frustration during the movie because it annoyed me so much.
HIS NAME IS AANG. NOT ONG. WHAT THE FUCK, M. NIGHT. WHY DID YOU CHANGE HIS NAME?
Any excuse about making it sound "more Asian" is total crap, considering that you gave white kids with zero acting skills the parts. Which I'm not even going to go into, because so many people have said everything I could say already and much better than I ever would. But it pisses me off and I nearly didn't see the movie because of it but I went in the end just because I was curious about exactly how bad the whole thing would be.
Anyway. Every time the name "Ong" was said, I winced. The other changes were okay (well, besides Ee-roh, which also got on my nerves), but that one was just so annoying and stupid.
The acting from pretty much everyone was horrible. Dev Patel as Zuko and Shaun Toub as Iroh were fine, maybe not exactly like the cartoon characters but it's an adaption so obviously it's not going to be exactly the same so I didn't have much of a problem with them. But everyone else? Awful.
I especially hated Nicola Peltz as Katara. She had zero acting skills and seemed confused and weak throughout the whole thing.
Of course, this may be due to the M. Night totally changing Katara's character. I mean, what happened to the girl who by the end of the season was strong enough at waterbending to take on Zuko in a fight? Who refused to accept the sexism of girl waterbenders not being allowed to fight and fought Pakku to get him to change his mind? Who refused to just let the Fire Nation imprison the earthbenders and rallied them into fighting back? They gave the part to Aang, instead. Instead of a eventually-badass waterbender, we saw a wimpy, weak girl who seemed scared the entire time she had to fight Zuko.
I honestly don't understand the decision to keep in the part with Haru (who totally looked like a girl *giggle*) and the earthbenders in, despite it not having much plot relevance, but not the Kyoshi Warriors, who do have plot relevance later on. Without the Kyoshi Warriors, Azula would never be able to infiltrate Ba Sing Se, and Suki becomes important in the third book.
And making it so that firebenders needed a source to bend? Changing the reason Aang ran away by saying that the Avatar couldn't have a family? Those are things that shouldn't have been changed. Those should have been just taken straight from the show.
I mean, I really doubt the Fire Nation could have defeated the Air Nomads, or anyone else, if all anyone had to do to stop them was put out the fire they were using and they had to, like, take fire with them everywhere in order to fight.
And in the show, Roku very clearly had a family. I mean, damn, changing that changes the whole thing in the third book where Zuko finds out that he's Roku's great-grandson! That was pretty damn important! What is the point of changing that? (Speaking of Roku, why was he replaced by a talking dragon?)
The thing that gets me the most is that they took away all of the lighthearted fun and beauty of the cartoon series. The whole movie was dark, and unhappy, and there was none of the spirit that was in the cartoon.
I just feel like M. Night took something that was so amazing, and fun, and wonderful, and stripped it of all the things that made it the cartoon that so many people love. The cartoon had such rich characters and interesting plots and it managed to convey the seriousness of war without getting rid of the humor and fun. This movie had none of that, and it makes me so sad to think of what could have been and what we got instead.
...Wow. That was long. It feels really good to get my thoughts out like this. But it's 12 AM where I live so I'm gonna get to bed.
ps. There is one good thing that came out of this. I haven't had many A:TLA dreams, not for like two months. But I guess seeing the movie made my dreams come back, because I had a dream the night after I saw it and it was awesome. It was during the third book after Zuko had joined the Gaang. Somehow Jet was alive and he was with them and he made out with Zuko. That was... pretty much all that happened. But my Jetko-loving brain thought it was like the best dream ever and totally should have been canon. But then the part of me that also ships Zutara started bitching about how then Katara and Zuko couldn't be together. But, you know, I mostly ignored that in favor of the boykissing. So yeah.
First off, the thing that made me want to rip my hair out in frustration during the movie because it annoyed me so much.
HIS NAME IS AANG. NOT ONG. WHAT THE FUCK, M. NIGHT. WHY DID YOU CHANGE HIS NAME?
Any excuse about making it sound "more Asian" is total crap, considering that you gave white kids with zero acting skills the parts. Which I'm not even going to go into, because so many people have said everything I could say already and much better than I ever would. But it pisses me off and I nearly didn't see the movie because of it but I went in the end just because I was curious about exactly how bad the whole thing would be.
Anyway. Every time the name "Ong" was said, I winced. The other changes were okay (well, besides Ee-roh, which also got on my nerves), but that one was just so annoying and stupid.
The acting from pretty much everyone was horrible. Dev Patel as Zuko and Shaun Toub as Iroh were fine, maybe not exactly like the cartoon characters but it's an adaption so obviously it's not going to be exactly the same so I didn't have much of a problem with them. But everyone else? Awful.
I especially hated Nicola Peltz as Katara. She had zero acting skills and seemed confused and weak throughout the whole thing.
Of course, this may be due to the M. Night totally changing Katara's character. I mean, what happened to the girl who by the end of the season was strong enough at waterbending to take on Zuko in a fight? Who refused to accept the sexism of girl waterbenders not being allowed to fight and fought Pakku to get him to change his mind? Who refused to just let the Fire Nation imprison the earthbenders and rallied them into fighting back? They gave the part to Aang, instead. Instead of a eventually-badass waterbender, we saw a wimpy, weak girl who seemed scared the entire time she had to fight Zuko.
I honestly don't understand the decision to keep in the part with Haru (who totally looked like a girl *giggle*) and the earthbenders in, despite it not having much plot relevance, but not the Kyoshi Warriors, who do have plot relevance later on. Without the Kyoshi Warriors, Azula would never be able to infiltrate Ba Sing Se, and Suki becomes important in the third book.
And making it so that firebenders needed a source to bend? Changing the reason Aang ran away by saying that the Avatar couldn't have a family? Those are things that shouldn't have been changed. Those should have been just taken straight from the show.
I mean, I really doubt the Fire Nation could have defeated the Air Nomads, or anyone else, if all anyone had to do to stop them was put out the fire they were using and they had to, like, take fire with them everywhere in order to fight.
And in the show, Roku very clearly had a family. I mean, damn, changing that changes the whole thing in the third book where Zuko finds out that he's Roku's great-grandson! That was pretty damn important! What is the point of changing that? (Speaking of Roku, why was he replaced by a talking dragon?)
The thing that gets me the most is that they took away all of the lighthearted fun and beauty of the cartoon series. The whole movie was dark, and unhappy, and there was none of the spirit that was in the cartoon.
I just feel like M. Night took something that was so amazing, and fun, and wonderful, and stripped it of all the things that made it the cartoon that so many people love. The cartoon had such rich characters and interesting plots and it managed to convey the seriousness of war without getting rid of the humor and fun. This movie had none of that, and it makes me so sad to think of what could have been and what we got instead.
...Wow. That was long. It feels really good to get my thoughts out like this. But it's 12 AM where I live so I'm gonna get to bed.
ps. There is one good thing that came out of this. I haven't had many A:TLA dreams, not for like two months. But I guess seeing the movie made my dreams come back, because I had a dream the night after I saw it and it was awesome. It was during the third book after Zuko had joined the Gaang. Somehow Jet was alive and he was with them and he made out with Zuko. That was... pretty much all that happened. But my Jetko-loving brain thought it was like the best dream ever and totally should have been canon. But then the part of me that also ships Zutara started bitching about how then Katara and Zuko couldn't be together. But, you know, I mostly ignored that in favor of the boykissing. So yeah.