We actually went to watch Jonah Hex (not because it's a good movie, but because of its Batman tie-in); that movie's theatre-run matches its running time. So, what to do at 0930 at the movies? We saw The Last Airbender instead.I was... sceptical, to say the least. I mean, we all remember Shyamalan's last offering and just how un-good it was. So, when I heard he was being given the Avatar franchise (to which I had little to no exposure), I was both anxious and excited. I had also read that there was racial rewriting of the characters, making the film have more white characters than it was originally conveyed. Hmm. An Indian-American guy getting accused of whitewashing - interesting.
I liked the movie. I was expecting much less, but the story was well- set up, I'm looking forward to the second instalment and the child actors all held their own. Noah Ringer looked a hella lot like the character he portrays, (is he white? I don't know, he looked mixed to me... but does it really matter if he can act the part?); more importantly, the boy is a black-belt, so he sold it. The cast is rounded out with Nicola Peltz, Dev Patel, Aasif Mandvi and Shaun Toub. That seems like a lot of minority to me, but whatevs.
You know, I actually think this was one of the most diverse casts I've seen in a long time, with no horrible stereotyping either. I saw plenty of Inuit Peoples in the Southern Water City and lots of Eastern Asians in the Earth People and the Fire clan is very heavily Indian-influenced (though, not everyone is actually Indian). In fact, aside from the obvious "Caucasity" of Peltz and Rathbone, the other major characters are either a definite non-Caucasian or beige at best. People need to stop being so exacting and putting such a fine point of racial casting -perhaps when we stop looking at race and start just casting, I think we'll have made a great leap forward.
4 out of 5 stars.
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