Reflection and Analysis

AtLA: A Live Action I Don't Know (3/12/2019)

I'm not looking forward to the new live action adaption of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

First, while it is true that MDD and BK created the series – they're the ones who pitched the idea – they are not the reason for the series success. The credit for that goes to Aaron Ehasz who created a lot of the strong female characters, squashed the idea of Toph being a male character to make Aang look good in his conquest for Katara among other things. Of course, they may have teamed back of with AE due to the fact his Dragon Prince is also on Netflix in which case this and everything I've said is null and void.

Second, Legend of Korra was a disaster but shows what happens when MDD and BK are allowed to do most of the writing. The only reason we're talking about it now is because of the end game pairing. While I like the pairing, this wasn't planned at all, but was forced just like the ending of Avatar was. This is the series that I predicted the MC would be a Mary Sue and ended up being right.

Third, MDD and BK have said some toxic things to their fans, but two of the people who worked under them – SDJ and LM – went on to create a toxic work environment for VLD (Voltron: Legendary Defender).

Forth, MDD and BK want fans to think they didn't like the changes MNS made to the show, but that wasn't until after the fan backlash. They actually approved of the changes and the cast.

Fifth, saying "with a culturally appropriate, non-whitewashed cast" over simplifies the whole Racebending issue.

- It plays into the idea some of the more rabid fanbase have that Avatar was only influenced by Asia but more specifically Korea, Japan and China.

- It ignores the fact those pushing for an all Asian cast wanted an Asian cast with light skin.

- It ignores the fact the only white actor on the series was the actor Sokka.

- It ignores the difficulty in casting Native American actors, but also the issue which arose in the Twilight movies regarding the fact the Native Americans cast for the roles in the movies didn't look like the Native Americans from the actual tribe they were supposed to be from.

- It ignores those of a mixed minority.

- It ignores that Native American and Asian people are closely related.

- It ignores the fact that a character who looks like Katara ethnically wouldn't be Native American, but would be African American, so how do you make it culturally appropriate.

Was she the best casting choice?

- Do you pick someone who looks like Katara? That would be an African American character playing an Asian/Native American character.

- Do you pick someone who matches Katara ethnically? We would still end up with a character with pale skin, but finding Native American actors and actresses whose skin isn't too dark who can speak English is difficult if not impossible.

- Or do you pick an actress who is between these two choices who is still not a white actress? This is what they did for the original live action movie. The actress is of mixed Jewish decent (apparently people forget they're not Caucasian ethnically when they have pale skin).

On top of this the whole Racebending movement is hypocritical. The focus was on Asians with pale skin color getting jobs, but also ignored Asians of mixed ethnicity if they don't look Asian enough. It also ignores the racism that is in the original cartoon show. Nobody is bothered by the fact the show assumes all native people have dark skin when the Inuit and others aren't dark skinned. Nobody is bothered by the fact the Fire Nation utilizes the cultures of both China and India heavily and yet every single character from the nation has pale skin despite the fact this is inaccurate.

We talk about not seeing ourselves represented fairly, but what was wanted was far from that, yet I worry they decided to play into the recent SJW propaganda.

Is there anything positive I can think of here?

It's a movie which will be released on Netflix, so maybe as I said AE will be involved. I'll admit the costumes and CG wasn't great in the 2010 movie, but maybe the production will improve with this. However, the fact we get a glitzy new version doesn't mean we should overlook the flaws which show up simply because it is prettier than the original version. The recent Wrinkle in Time movie was prettier than the original live action, but it wasn't better - it was worse.

Yeah, I get the fact the original creators are involved, but they're not good writers. I'm not even sure how they're going to pull this off when AtLA isn't their IP the last time I checked. It's a Nickelodeon IP which is a Viacom IP. More importantly, this announcement came before the situation with VLD hit the fans in December. And honestly, I simply don't trust those two if they're the ones doing the writing among other things.