The Last Airbender: Pre-Screening

[whosdamike]

This afternoon, Paramount screened the final cut of The Last Airbender in 3D for MANAA, the JACL, and a few members of Racebending.com. This movie was the final cut of the 3D version.

There will be an official reaction on the site, describing the various issues of diversity and representation (and our discussions with Paramount representatives

Comments

[lolita_applebum]

This pleases me. Especially after three ONTD posts on TLA.

[lightbird777]

OMG, the comments from some of the people on ONTD are rage-inducing.

Keep in mind that even though ONTD is a celebrity gossip blog for everyone on LJ, it's very much on the radar on the media. So, even though a lot of members are people like me who just want to keep up on movie news - there are also a lot of members who work in the business. Some of those people may work at Paramount and may have even worked on this movie. They're not going to say so.

[dynamine]

OMG, the comments from some of the people on ONTD are rage-inducing.

exactly this.

[lolita_applebum]

My comments seem to be overlooked in the discussion threads anyways.

[nthdraft]

holy. mother. of. cow.

that...

I don't have an icon for what I'm doing so it's kind of like this:

{8^,

[nthdraft]

oh and may I just say:

"I've made progress in my research of the library, which almost no one believed existed."

WAT.

oh gods please please let there be a Rifftrax in my future!

[mrcab]

I'd be really surprised if there were not a Rifftrax in your future. :-D

[puffysanjo]

Thank you for posting this, Mike! I'm actually working on an overview of the graphic novel based on the movie to point out the many "What the heck" moments. It's good to see that some of my suspicions were correct.

In the comic, Zhao does this to Tui. Yeah...

Hopefully, the people who will watch the movie will be severely, severely, SEVERELY disappointed. If only I knew some in real life, so I can laugh at their willingness to defend this... thing.

[lolita_applebum]

That is some True Blood shit right there.

[nthdraft]

oh snap! XD

so, how much less lulzy is it to say "makes me want to snap a fish in half" than "makes me want to punch a fish"?

... not all that much, really...

I wonder if that's where the budget went now, when they could have just reshot the one closeup so Zhao stabs the fish but MNS went "no! The version I have is perfect! We'll just CGI a knife into his hand..."

[musogato]

ugh auugh that makes me flinch so bad just looking at it augh.

uahgh.

[skemono]

I'm... astonished. I can only hope that professional critics share your opinions in their write-ups and it gets horribly panned.

I was sorta prepared to hear that Roku was left out, but I'm still boggled. I mean, what is the point of switching Aang's mentor from Roku to a dragon? (And since Roku's not in the movie, why is he still listed on IMDb?) Do they even mention the Avatar cycle, that he reincarnates? Or is it just left a stereotypical "prophecied hero"? I can understand leaving out most of those, if only to cut them for time, but why take out Roku only to replace him with a dragon?? Ghgjklk... *choking on own rage

[the_gersemi]

I mean, what is the point of switching Aang's mentor from Roku to a dragon?

A European dragon at that.
But the answer is real simple - because huge dragons are way cooler than old Asian dudes! D'uh!

[puffysanjo]

Not to defend it, but I think the dragon is actually more Asian. It's snake-like without wings. Here's a shot of it from the comic based on the movie. It also has a Fu Manchu mustache going on.

[the_gersemi]

True, it does look Asian there. In the trailer, it looked very European to me.

[keithmex17]

Example: they arrived at the Northern Water Tribe, as explained by a little subtitle showing the location. There's a cut, then the characters talk about how crazy it is that they've already been there for weeks. Sokka and Yue are engaged in a heated romance. But we didn't see anything leading up to that. They just arrived, then a cut, and bam... here we are.