Casting for M. Night Shyamalan's live-action The Last Airbender

[teenygozer]

Not that this is all that much of a surprise to cynical moi, but my *god*, is it just me or are these kids all oh, so very, very white?I figured Aang, our Himalayan-inspired Air Nation hero, would be played by a white kid--we've already seen Caucasian leads in so many otherwise Asian-based films. But the actors playing Katara and Sokka, two Inuit

Comments

[teenygozer]

Your URL doesn't work, but that's okay, I know the movie. It's about an Asian MIT student who goes to Las Vegas and wins a lot of money using a mathematical card-counting system he created and shenanigans ensue, not the least of which is that the Asian MIT student turns magically into a white MIT student.

Culturally speaking:
Aang = Himalayan
Katara & her brother, Sokka = Inuit (heh, heh; see what I did there with the 'brother' thing?)
Uncle Iroh & Zuko = Chinese
Toph = Japanese
Appa = UFO (Unidentified Furry Object)

[teenygozer]

The Earthsea thing was a weird inversion in casting. All of the persons of color in the book were played by white actors, and the female ingenue, who was supposed to be one of the only white people in the story, was played by KK. Who is half-Chinese, I believe. I just didn't get what they were doing there. Did the Earthsea PTB ever try to justify themselves in interviews or did they clam up and not talk to the press?

Who needs Graham Greene or Ken Watanabe when we already have so much pissy flailing about by people who do not want the next doctor to be played by a black actor?