When it was announced that M. Night Shyamalan, Indian-American director of The Sixth Sense, would be directing the live-action adaptation of the popular cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender, I had mixed feelings on the matter. I was, without question, glad that a director of such high profile had been given the project, and glad further than he had a distinctive Asian heritage which could translate into a keen awareness of the story's Asian orientation and a desire to bring that intact to the big screen. I was worried that this movie was not exactly up his alley, as it will be his first adaptation of someone else's material and it will be an action movie, which is quite a contrast from the slow-burn thrillers he's done throughout his career.
Still, as a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender I was excited for the project, even when I heard they had to drop the word "Avatar" from the title due to legal conflicts with James Cameron, whose highly anticipated return to filmmaking, Avatar is due out this December. I followed updates on location shooting and casting, though for a while I fell out of the loop.
Still, I wondered who'd they'd cast as the characters. I knew they'd probably go for unknowns, so I figured, things being the way they are, they'd get Amerasian kids (American citizens of Asian descent) for the roles.
Recently, though, I was able to catch some snippets online, and what I read appalled me. Apparently they've hired WHITE kids to play Aang, Sokka and Katara! Aang, to anyone familiar with the show, is clearly derived from a Buddhist monk, while Sokka and Katara look and dress distinctly like Inuits (the people who, if I'm not mistaken, are more popularly known as Eskimos) so it would have been a no-brainer to cast an Asian unknown as Aang and two Native American unknowns as Sokka and Katara. Right? Right? Wrong, apparently.
It's Mickey-fucking-Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's all over again.
It makes me wonder if Shyamalan and Paramount even understand the whole concept of the show being a love letter to Asian culture and the values it espouses. The series creators have even openly professed their love for the works of Hayao Miyazaki whose styling they often tried to ape in the course of the series.
I smell marketing all over the casting of three white kids, and wonder if the dipshits over at Paramount need to look over the grosses of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon again, a movie that made a bundle of money without a white person in sight, and without a word of English even being spoken. It's kind of mind-blowing how, in an age where a man with American, African AND Asian heritage can be elected President of the United States of America, and where the biggest movie star in the world is an African American, a bunch of myopic movie producers and an even MORE myopic movie director still believe that the only way to sell an ASIAN themed movie is to fill it with white kids.
I took little consolation from the knowledge that the story's primary villain-turned-hero, Prince Zuko, was recast from a white teeny-bopper to rising star Dev Patel, the British Indian actor currently making waves in Danny Boyle's Oscar frontrunner Slumdog Millionaire. Zuko is, next to Aang, probably the most important character of the story, and one Shyamalan himself has identified as his favorite, so it's nice that a person of Asian descent (though he is British) should get this role. But, with a white kid still in the lead role, a role written for an ASIAN kid, it's all still all wrong. Sure, all of the lead voice actors for the characters (again, with the exception of Prince Zuko, who was dubbed by Filipino-American Dante Basco) were white, but the intention for them to be Asian is ALL OVER THE PLACE, from the houses they live in to the clothes they wear to the values they profess to cherish.
People are raising a hue and a cry over the suggestion that Will Smith, the biggest box-office star on planet earth, play Captain America because Steve Rogers, as a character, is blond and blue-eyed. Well, while Aang is certainly nowhere near as iconic as Steve Rogers he is meant to be Asian in his looks AND his personal philosophy, so the decision to go with a white kid, who hearkens from a culture that represents a COMPLETELY different value system (and comes from a state which gave birth to a President more reprehensible than the series' main villain, Firelord Ozai), is every bit as objectionable if not more so.
What kills me about Paramount's and Shyamalan's decision is that Asians outnumber Caucasians by something like five to one on Planet Earth, and in America alone they could have practically thrown a stone and hit a kid of Asian descent and looks, especially if they'd gone to California or Hawaii. Instead, they get a WHITE kid from TEXAS. Just TYPING that makes my skin crawl.
This early, I've pretty much decided not to see this in the theaters; if it turns out to be any good I'll just go to a street corner and pick up a bootleg DVD. Unless and until Paramount get their shit together and show those white kids the door they are not getting a blessed centavo of my money and, if there's ANY justice in the world, not any money from any Asian person anywhere.
It's my hope now that the upcoming Dragonball movie, which also features a white guy in a role arguably created for an Asian, tanks horribly, thus forcing Paramount and Shyamalan to seriously and I mean SERIOUSLY rethink their casting decisions.
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