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Post by dragonflly on Dec 16, 2008 1:05:45 GMT -5
All my faith in humanity is now gone.... Seriously this film will now BOMB because really its depending on the fans of the show to go and see it but pissing everyone of us off with more and more stupid decicions isnt the way to go. One of the most important and treasured shows to me (and many others on these boards) will just be completely slaughtered Nicely stated! I think they are heavily relying on fans of the show to see this. I have been gone for a while and come back to this!!! I'm speachless and fell rather ill right now, I'm horrified by the casting. I'm sickened. I have yet to read ONE postive response to this news, I hope Mr. Whatever his name is, is reading this. He's killing a beautiful show, and it seems as though he has not one ounce of fan support on this now. And M&B, I thought they were working closely with Mr.Knight on this, SPEAK UP GUYS!! This is your show, the casting is wrong, say it out loud before your incredible work is ruined for all time!!!!! M&B have to have a little bit of influence, if they don't like it, it would speak volumes, one would think anyway. And I agree with Gamergrl, Jesse is the DIRECT opposite of Zuko. Can we honestly see this guy playing the angst, the hot head, the temper, ect...........I can't even picture this kid getting ticked, he is certainly not the "bad boy" type that is needed to play Zuko. He is a complicated character, Jesse cannot even act. WTF is this guy thinking. I hope there is a petition or a site we can to to and B!TCH up a storm on. I wnat this guy to know he needs to cast properly, A blonde white boy is just not Zuko. But all of the characters need to be re-examined. An Asian based series with all white actors? He doesn't see a problem with this? How is he even a director? I only made it to the second page, I had to get the rage out. I will go finish reading what my fellow fans had to say now. I am sick and sad........truely sick and sad. EDIT: Ok so I have read some more pages and it seems as thought there are a FEW peeps who think t he coices were good. If it were a High School Musical or something to that effect I may be ok with it too, but this is AVATAR, I'm sorry but none of these people seem to fit the bill, they just don't do it for me. And this Jackson guy was in Twilight! I heard nothing but complaints from so many people who were excited about the movie. The only thing I kept hearing was how BAD the acting was! I have yet to see it for myself, I'm waiting for PPV, I'm not wasting $10 on something I've heard such bad things about. And to the person on the last page, directly posted before this one: Jesse played on AMC? I've watched that show since I was little and I don't remember that. How young was he? I will not say more about the subject yet, but I will say that I don't see JR anything close to Zuko. I will explain that later, but no, JR is NO Zuko. Still I can't remember him playing that role. What was his age at the time? Very curious, I've watched it since the age of 9.
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Alleluia
Kyoshi Mai
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Post by Alleluia on Dec 16, 2008 1:33:01 GMT -5
Guys, not that I think these the best choices in the world, but I think the hair and eye colors aren't valid complaints here. I mean... there is hair dye... wigs... and contacts. The skin tones will be harder to change, especially for that water tribe brown, so that is a more legit point, I think.
And we won't know if the people chosen can act the parts till we actually see them acting. This will likely have to wait till the movie is finished and we see trailers, though. Unless the infamous episode leaker from nickelodeon somehow gets access to the set? lol
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Post by luthien on Dec 16, 2008 2:08:59 GMT -5
When McCartney was a child actor he played a character on All My Children who's character matches Zuko's exactly, JR Chandler. They are both controlling, obsessive, somewhat violent, but not evil and no the difference between right and wrong. The only problem is, Jesse played that character before he displayed all those traits. His JR was more a confused child who developed a drug problem because he was upset that his mom was sleeping with a guy that wasn't his stepfather. The incarnation of JR that you're thinking of is played, and has only been played, by Jacob Young.:/ As for physical traits, I wasn't expecting exact matches - I mean, what human in the world has golden eyes? It's the ethnicity that bugs the heck out of me. For Pete's sake, not to cast even one person among the main characters of even faintly Asian descent is criminal. Can you just imagine white Iroh?
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Post by Akira Takahashi on Dec 16, 2008 12:07:27 GMT -5
Quite frankly, I'm more horrified by the people playing our favorite Water Tribe characters than the guy playing Zuko. He's not officially signed on yet, anyway.
Sokka and Katara are the only characters who are noticeably ethnic in appearance, so you'd think they'd get cast properly at the very least!
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Kana
Yu Yan Archers
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Post by Kana on Dec 16, 2008 17:25:58 GMT -5
This cast list is just kind of sad. Did Shyamalan try at all? Really?
I need to see a picture of the kid playing Aang before I completely reject him.
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Post by AvatarAbby on Dec 16, 2008 17:43:05 GMT -5
Honestly, I don't care that they aren't all Asian; I don't have anything against Asian people, please don't get me wrong, but the Avatar characters just don't look Asian to me, except for the Firebenders. So it really doesn't bug me a lot that they're all Caucasian.
I think Sokka and Katara were chosen pretty well, but Jesse McCartney as Zuko...? I just can't picture it. I wanna see a picture of this Noah Ringer kid, though.
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Post by graywand1 on Dec 16, 2008 21:50:49 GMT -5
All right, what would you do that, the next time Bryke gave a podcast interview, and they stated in no uncertain terms that neither Paramount, Nickelodeon, or MTV put any pressure with regards to casting on either them or Shyamalan whatsoever. That Shyamalan cast these people himself, and that they agreed with everything I said about this not being Asia, just an Asian-like culture, and, not only that, they wholeheartedly support and like the actors they hired?
And, don't evade the question, don't answer the question with another question, don't evade it anyway. Answer the question. What would you do? Because I would really like to know.
Oh, and please keep an open mind and don't automatically assume that they're simply parroting Paramount or something stupid like that.
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Post by Empy on Dec 16, 2008 22:36:15 GMT -5
Even if Bryke approved of the cast, that wouldn't stop me from being disappointed. I'm sure the actors who were cast are talented (I certainly HOPE so, at least) but they definitely weren't what I was imagining. There is definite ethnic variety in Avatar and I was hoping to see that on screen, that's all. They didn't have to be all asian but I did want to see more than one ethnicity on screen =P Personally, to me, all the nations (save for maybe the Air Temples) were very Asian. =P
However, since they are the creators, I would accept it. We can't agree on everything the film does however I'm hoping that the spirit of Avatar will be preserved ^^;
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asian malaysian
Avatar Kyoshi
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Post by asian malaysian on Dec 16, 2008 23:17:28 GMT -5
After this, Id almost rather know as little as possible about the movie so I can quietly watch it and just as quietly commit seppuku at the end so the cleaners will have time to deal with the mess before the next screening. For me, its like those Star Wars prequels. I just had to watch each and every one of them out of a Yue-like sense of duty and Zuko-like sense of honor. Same thing with Avatar. Even knowing that I may have to gouge out my eyes with that bendy soda straw at the cinema before shoving the straw into my ear and piercing my brain after the movie, Id still probably watch it.
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Rainyaqua
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Post by Rainyaqua on Dec 17, 2008 0:21:47 GMT -5
I'm kinda indifferent to the cast, so I'll give them/the movie the benefit of the doubt, here. I haven't seen Twilight yet, so I can really talk about Jackson, and never saw the girl playing Katara, before. So it wouldn't be fair for talk about acting skills. Jesse as Zuko, it's going to be interesting to see him as Zuko (even my mom said, it's a weird to think of him as bad, and Zuko). I barely remember his acting when being JR. But, I'm going to give them a try, it would be much easier if I could see what their auditions for the part were (though they could have got better as time went on).
As far as race and everything, when I first thought of the cast, I did kinda picture them to be (somewhat) like the characters they would be playing. I don't really think judging them now when we haven't seen how they protray them (or how exactly they look) is right, but I'm going to atleast wait to see how they do before giving my thoughts. Thing is, as long as the acting/movie is good, and it doesn't look/feel like Avatar was (somehow) ruined, I'm fine. So, in the end, I'll still go to watch the movie, or atleast the first one. Then after seeing how the first one was, that will help me decide if I want to see the others.
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Alleluia
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Post by Alleluia on Dec 17, 2008 0:34:50 GMT -5
lol wow, Amay, you have a vivid imagination. Morbid, but creative. Suicide via bendy straw? XD Graywand, you sound a bit perturbed in that last post of yours. You aren't taking our griping about the cast not having asians personally, are you? In answer to your question, I'd say Mike and Bryan are ignoring their own canon if they think Sokka and Katara should be played by white people. They're happy with it? Good for them. They're happy with a lot of things. Look at the screen and look at every water tribesman we've seen. They are brown. And its a brown that goes beyond a simple tan, too, whihc makes me think the spray on tan option would only be able to go so far. Now, considering the asian cultural influences on the show, I always saw Katara and Sokka as looking more Indian then anything else. But Inuit worked too b/c they are brown skinned in color(as far as I know?) and it was supported by the clear Inuit influence on the tribes. But, even if those were both no goes, you can't tell me you couldn't find a good young actress and actor of some darker skin color. Hispanic, African, Italian even? Some mix of the above or others I haven't mentioned? I mean, come on. Now what would I do beyond saying what I just did? Wait to see if the actors could act. If they can't I won't go see the film, probably. Those trailers better be well made, all I have to say. lol
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Post by travellingfay on Dec 17, 2008 3:22:12 GMT -5
They didn't have to be all asian but I did want to see more than one ethnicity on screen YES! THIS! Honestly, I'm open minded about how they could do this, but the prospect of having all white people is just baffling and thoroughly disappointing to me. The fact that they gave the peoples of different nations distinctive physical traits was one of the show's strengths; now I'm trying to be open-minded about including white people, on the basis that this IS an American show, and the story is actually very rooted in Western ideals and story patterns despite the Asian trappings on the surface. But - ALL WHITE PEOPLE? WTF? Some white people - okay.
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Post by graywand1 on Dec 17, 2008 10:12:54 GMT -5
lol wow, Amay, you have a vivid imagination. Morbid, but creative. Suicide via bendy straw? XD Graywand, you sound a bit perturbed in that last post of yours. You aren't taking our griping about the cast not having asians personally, are you? In answer to your question, I'd say Mike and Bryan are ignoring their own canon if they think Sokka and Katara should be played by white people. They're happy with it? Good for them. They're happy with a lot of things. Look at the screen and look at every water tribesman we've seen. They are brown. And its a brown that goes beyond a simple tan, too, whihc makes me think the spray on tan option would only be able to go so far. Now, considering the asian cultural influences on the show, I always saw Katara and Sokka as looking more Indian then anything else. But Inuit worked too b/c they are brown skinned in color(as far as I know?) and it was supported by the clear Inuit influence on the tribes. But, even if those were both no goes, you can't tell me you couldn't find a good young actress and actor of some darker skin color. Hispanic, African, Italian even? Some mix of the above or others I haven't mentioned? I mean, come on. Now what would I do beyond saying what I just did? Wait to see if the actors could act. If they can't I won't go see the film, probably. Those trailers better be well made, all I have to say. lol Sorry, on Avatarspirit it started getting really ugly. And I had to go so I copied that post exactly, sorry.
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Post by teknomage on Dec 17, 2008 15:15:57 GMT -5
Looking at the little thing in EW, it says "Shyamalan discovered karate star Noah Ringer and offered him the part...", "Jackson Rathbone has been asked to play", "Nicola Peltz will star as", and "Jesse McCartney, meanwhile is negotiating to play" So Nicole is the only one that sounds remotely set in stone, and I'm not convinced from this little blurb that it's necessarily a done deal.
I don't know any of these people. I mean, I'm aware of Jesse, but I have no idea if he can act, so I'm not going to assume he can't. Though he's the one of the group that I most hope doesn't get cast. Looking at Nicola on IMDb, I'd say she has a prettiness that isn't entirely dissimilar from Katara's. Though of course I'd prefer that all the characters get cast with actors who look more appropriate, as far as race goes. As for martial arts, obviously everyone needs to do some training (hopefully with Sifu Kisu), but also, the stuff in the show goes beyond any real martial arts, so special effects will be necessary, regardless. As for age... hell yes, they need to try to get it right, just as much as they should get race right.
But no matter who gets cast, I AM GOING TO SEE THIS MOVIE.
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Post by Grimmjow of the Funk on Dec 17, 2008 16:21:39 GMT -5
this upsets me. very much. i think everyone else has said just about what i would say. it just really destroys the whole ideal of the show. even the avatar abridged guy had something to say about it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y_c4e2p4Nw. but yes it is a travesty, and the worst thing is even with all the hate mail, i don't think anything will be changed. i was just hoping that they would be able to caputure something of the origin of the show. but hey its m. nigh Shmaylan there are gonna be twists. and since the script was already there the twist came in the casting
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