Avatar teaser trailer: still some weak blancmange

[kali921]

Can someone tell me what this warning wank is about? Because I seem to have missed it, and I'm betting that there's some serious obnoxiousness being perpetuated by all sides involved.

Avatar live action teaser trailer:

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One minute and forty seconds of...not that impressive stuff:

Click to view

We get That Guy doing the ponderous voice over, a

Comments

Er...what?

[kali921]

Er...what fight? In the Avatar trailer? There isn't a fight, there's just Aang practicing. As for Aang's martial arts, have you watched Avatar and read about the meticulous construction of the Avatar world? All of the bending styles - Airbending, Firebending, Earthbending, Waterbending - were based on specific styles of Chinese martial arts. It's not generic kung fu at all. Firebending is based on Nothern Shaolin (with bits of Praying Mantis and other things thrown in), Airbending on Ba Gua, etc.

Edit: Er, my phrasing above sounds unnecessarily tetchy - apologies! I just get a little amped when people think of the bending/fighting styles in Avatar as generically kung fu after all the work the creative crew of the show put into differentiating and worldbuilding.

Re: Er...what?

[outlawpoet]

Avatar was a fairly sophisticated cartoon, with lots of references and jokes and straight up historical homages to stuff from all over the world. It's not quite at the level of classic Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest cinema, where every object and every movement can be understood in it's complexity, but it's still very surprising, and rewards the viewer with some grounding in martial arts, Chinese history, and old movies

Re: Er...what?

[outlawpoet]

arg, typos of RAGE, when will LJ let me edit.

Re: Er...what?

[kali921]

You can edit comments if you have a paid account! That and icon space are the two things that keep me paying for LJ!

Re: Er...what?

[kali921]

Avatar was a fairly sophisticated cartoon, with lots of references and jokes and straight up historical homages to stuff from all over the world. It's not quite at the level of classic Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest cinema, where every object and every movement can be understood in it's complexity, but it's still very surprising, and rewards the viewer with some grounding in martial arts, Chinese history, and old movies.

In no particular order: the world of Avatar was extremely and effortlessly sophisticated, but it wasn't just Chinese - dude, no. There were elements of Inuit culture, First Nations cultures, ancient Mesoamerican cultures (I'm thinking of the Firebenders Prime episode where we meet the two fire dragons - the tribe that lived with them wasn't East Asian looking at all, if you recall), Japanese culture, etc. It was glorious. S1 was introductions and how-do-you-dos, S2 was a series of character pieces and vignettes and travelogues and morality plays, and S3 was a slow build up to the white hot inevitability of fate,

Re: Er...what?

[outlawpoet]

Age appropriate, even quite advanced for his age, but he's still a kid. It was done well. He's growing up before your eyes. But physically he's not a kid, he's a super hero. That was the differential I was referring to