The Last Airbender (2010)

What. The. Truck? :open_mouth:

Loonatics Unleashed Intro

Gotta give ‘em points for trying, though. And really, are animated styles geographically-specific? There are some good Western animes like Samurai Jack and conversely, there are good Japanese Western-style cartoons like Samurai Pizza Cats, so it depends on the talents of the creators involved and how much they appreciate and understand the others’ culture.

Well I’ve been feeling like ever since actual anime shows were introduced here and got real popular (especially around the time of the whole Pokemon craze) cartoonists for American shows started using the anime influence more and more as a crutch for ideas or designing characters. That’s why I think we got those anime looking shows like Teen Titans and Xiaolin Showdown, and I’m sure others that I can’t think of offhand. I was surprised once when I saw Invader ZIM DVDs released under Anime Works, and I thought “What? Invader ZIM’s not an anime!”.

Oh my goodness, I remember that cartoon! I am a HUGE Looney Tunes fan. Chuck Jones is an animation God, Bugs Bunny is the king of cartoons, and I hold them dear to my heart! But that show was disapointing

I agree with you, it was a worthy try. But that show was just too extreme for it’s own good. Give me the classics any day. Dafy duck hitting Hitler on the head with a mallet= WIN

.

Also:

Ah, but the anime style works for the show :slight_smile:. At least, for me it does. Same goes for Teen Titans. I don’t think the shows’ creators should be prevented from using that style just because it originated in another country. I’m sure American and Japanese animation have long influenced each other, though maybe in subtler ways. Lasseter is a huge Miyazaki fan, and though the Pixar films don’t have an anime visual style, there may be some influence in the story dept.

I agree that the anime style shouldn’t be used just because it’s “hip, edgy, relevant”, etc. And I don’t particularly care for Loonatics either, though mainly because of the writing. I also agree that Avatar: The Last Airbender isn’t technically “anime”, it’s an American cartoon in anime style.

Or Yin Yang Yo. Or Skunk Fu. Or Jake Long. Or The Adventures of Juniper Lee. Or Jackie Chan Adventures.

Yeah, I have to agree with you there’s an anime/kung-fu-oriented cartoon overload nowadays. It does get a little annoying when they pander to Oriental culture by including the usual martial-arts schtick, which is only 50% (my arbitary percentage) of what actual anime is. I would like to see some Western steampunk, or mecha-robots, or Pokemon-style quests, not another martial arts show.

I think I may have digressed a bit; some of the shows I mentioned sort of overlap between anime and ‘Flash cartoon’ styles, but you get my drift. I would really like to see something original that isn’t cynical or teen-orientated from America, and at the moment I can only think of ‘Phineas and Ferb’, ‘Chowder’, ‘Spliced’ and maybe ‘Flapjack’, and even then these aren’t matured as Eastern ‘cartoons’ (But they are still good in my books). Older series like ‘Kim Possible’, ‘Danny Phantom’ and ‘Imaginary Friends’ have ended. Other shows like ‘Camp Lazlo’, ‘Total Drama’, and ‘Bill and Mandy’ are just filled with snark and stupidity.

And that includes Hollywood. No more sequels/remakes, please. And especially adaptations by washed-out directors who don’t do the original source respect, or greenhorn actors for that matter.

I’m very annoyed by the racial and linguistic boo-boos made by this film. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the cast, as I’ve previously mentioned, have been intentionally whitewashed.

I think the whole ‘cultural insensitivity’ is an open secret now. There’s a website called Racebending (I believe a separate thread has been set up, which has been removed because it got a little too noisy) which has a bunch of activists advocating boycotting the movie on the basis of ‘colorism’. There’s also a neat blog article on the history of facepainting which I found pretty enlightening.

Personally, I do realize that institutionalized racism exists in Hollywood, and that we as the consumers have the power to change this to a certain extent (supporting multiracial shows like Grey’s Anatomy or Lost, or positive-affirming shows like ‘Mao’s Last Dancer’ or ‘Karate Kid’ instead of polarising Good vs Evil flicks like ‘Dragonball’ or ‘Prince of Persia’). I couldn’t care less about the whole rah-rah activist thing (although I do condone it, and I will most certainly be boycotting Airbender as one of the reasons).

I think this quote by i09 sums up the controversy best (and I personally like the way it focuses on the terrible acting by everyone involved):

Laugh out loud? 8D

What I find heartening is this dude who has appeared on both websites:

Both sites have also similarly praised Jordan Nagai’s character Russell in Up. Which is why I am really proud of Pixar, for being an inclusive and balanced studio not just in its employees, but also its characters. :slight_smile:

Whilst I normally dislike Western cartoons that use an anime style, I have to agree with animagusurreal. Most American cartoons that try to be like anime are often pretty half-hearted and are only using the style to profit off of the current popularity of manga and anime. They normally throw in the occasional reference to sushi or some kind of martial art and then revert back to being just like any other American cartoon without the aid of a style that suits the series.

However, there are exceptions and Avatar is one of them. The style works so well in Avatar because the majority of the show is rooted in Asian culture. Each Bending (element controlling) style is based off of a different martial art. Aspects of the Avatar are based off of the Tulku Lama. Other concepts from Asian countries, such as chi and chakras are incorperated. The music for the show is made witrh instruments not normally used for American music.

I think that the style just works because it fits in with the show as a whole. It also doesn’t feel like a cheap marketing strategy because the creators do seem to genuinely like Japanese animation (like Studio Ghibli’s films and FLCL).

I highly recommend the show because it goes above and beyond the normal expectations of a Nickelodeon cartoon. The characters are well-developed, the background artwork is often beautiful and the series has a proper plot (unlike many other actiony adevnture cartoons).

I’m a bit concerned by the terrible reviews this film has been getting. It hasn’t been released in my country yet. The trailers made it look pretty good, although I thought that the lack of dialogue in them was suspicious. Maybe it was to hide the acting?

In terms of the casting, I don’t think they did it very well (based on movie stills I’ve seen). Apart from the fact that there were racist issues with the casting call posters etc. I think that some of the actors cast make no sense in their roles. For some reason Katara and Sokka are played by white actors, living in an Inuit-inspired village amongst Inuits. I mostly agree with the people accusing the film of being racist- there does seem to have been a deliberate focus on getting white actors over people who are actually the same race as the characters are suggested to be.

I haven’t really worded this very well :blush: I do think that the film could have been cast better, and I do think that studios should cast characters appropriately, as it isn’t fair when perfectly good actors and actresses are overlooked because they aren’t of a partucular ethnicity, even though they are the same race as the character.

Very good post.
Watch The Last Airbender (2010) at
flamerwarz.com/2010/12/the-last- … y-fantasy/

Doesn’t that website give you viruses?

easyly one of the WORST films of 2010, no doubt of it

Well, that’s all opionion, but for me, i completely 100% agree with that statement.

Well, I doubt anyone would argue the quality of the movie. Sure, it probably has fans somewhere on Earth, but surely even they could see where the movie fails at being good. Good doesn’t equal enjoyable, and enjoyable doesn’t equal good.

At one time the series was my favorite. Then just like what happened w/ HP the stupid movie people shortened everything and messed with the plot!!! :imp:

Yeah, I was very confused after the first 20-30 minutes. I mean, I was familiar with the series, but I was totally in for a loop when I saw it.

Yes. The show was never my favorite, but I liked it a lot better than the movie.

I’m not sure if I posted about this, but I had the “pleasure” of watching this work of cinematic garbage a few weeks ago. As a huge fan of the show, I was personally insulted by it to say the least. The effects were okay, but the rest was just painful.

Also this:
youtube.com/watch?v=UfDk3I6di5E

8D That was cool. And perfectly fitting.

Sorry to hear that they ruined it for you. A lot of my friends also said they were incredibly disappointed with the movie as well. That they could never watch the V series the same way again.

I personally wasn’t a fanatic anyway. I can still watch the show. My view of the show is unchanged. I just can’t say nice things about Hollywood or Shamalayan now. 8D