Season 2 will probably be my favorite, but 3 was quite good. Overall, I think Avatar is now my favorite coming of age story and in my top 5 overall series, animated or not. It gets there through a wide range of strong characters, a beautiful well-realized world, and terrific comedy.
There are definite problems with the casting of the film, that said, season 2 does present one way to partially ameliorate it since there’s a new lead to cast.
Certainly, it's a terrible thing when white actors play Asian characters. After all, the entire voice cast of the Avatar animated series was Asian—oh, wait, no they weren't, were they? A few of them were, but the majority of them weren't. Yet I don't seem to recall very many people complaining about them!
Posted by: The Last Airbender ( 2010 ) | June 03, 2010 at 04:59 AM
The Last Airbender: It's a true point and worth addressing. So why the outrage now? Because film and television are visual mediums, the television series had an authentic Asian look, one that actually went with more Asian character design than anime often uses.
Now if the voice actors or actresses were being used in the film. I'd give them a pass, they did a good job and earned the rolls in live action form. They weren't. Moreover, having now seen the film, I believe it is safe to eliminate the possibility that the actors they ended up with were so superior to any alternatives that they simply had to be used. This isn't to say that I think the film would have been terrific if there were Asian heroic leads, but I don't think there's still any plausible argument for not doing so.
Posted by: Greg Sanders | July 02, 2010 at 11:27 PM