Why Faithfulness, Not Honesty, Is The Best Policy

M. Knight disgraced the source material. He rewrote it to make it his own.
The heart of Avatar: The Last Airbender was gone. Aang is a fun-loving kid. Sokka is a joker. But that wasn't the case in the film.

Instead, we got something “Written, produced and directed by M. Knight Shyamalan.”

So they're just a bunch of white kids with asian/inuit names. running around in asian/inuit clothes and eating asian/inuit food. But no really they're white, really!

Hmmm,… I'm curious as to when on the avatar cartoon did they ever point out the race of the characters? They just look like cartoon characters to me? The race of the actors who play them on a film “adaptation” shouldn't be that big of a deal. As far as the script for the avatar movie, well they tied up the entire book one in 110 minutes. Of course there were going to be changes. I get the feeling some people wanted a literal translation of the cartoon, just with live actors, and when they didn't get it they started crying. The avatar movie is different from the show but in spirit and plotwise it is very faithful. Watch book one again and I don't see how people can say that it's not. I think that many avatar fanbase couldn't possibly be satisfied with anything other than a movie “exactly” like the show. This just seems like a case of fans being too picky.

IMO, when Hollywood fucks up a comic book story or concept it's because they thought the property's obscurity was due to flaws in the story or concept. Instead of realizing its obscurity is due to the medium. Most people aren't into comic books. That's why most people didn't know who or what Jonah Hex was. It didn't need tampering with – it just needed to be translated to film.

I wouldn't argue with that. I hear terrible casting suggestions and story ideas on message boards all day long. It's hard to weed out the thoughful and intelligent comments from the “mehs”, “this sucks” or “cast my favorite wrestler.”

Clear case of Did Not Do The Research, here.

….WHO'S general consensus? All I see are people tripping over themselves to convince people its a decent movie like when Spider-Man 3 and Transformers 2 came out.

So…we need more movies with white people, and…you Did Not Do Research. Got it.

Airbender did pretty good at the box office 50million in 4 days & considering it went up against that new Twilight movie it did pretty good i have not scene it yet so i don't know if it's any good or not but it made money they probably should have put this movie against that Salt movie in a few weeks it probably would have made 70 or 80 million

Agreed. And by the way, Load Bearing Fictional World Beam is classic.

You mean this research? http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/… (“Avatar” isn't meant to mirror existing Asian history, imagined future or mythological canon. It's clearly set in an original fantasy world – invented by two white Americans, Bryan Konietzko and Mike DiMartino.”)

This is not casting Hugh Jackman to play T'Challa The Black Panther, King of the African nation of Wakanda. This is people seeing Asian design and folkloric influence and insisting the only people allowed to be involved HAVE to be Asian. I'm with you guys—it's a crying shame that minorities have to fight so hard to get leads (I'm a Hispanic actor, believe me, I know how hard it is), but people need to pick their battles. This movie sucks for reasons well beyond the race of the cast.

I'll let you decide where you can shove your snarky remark.

“How does that justify Katara and Sokka being made white? The Water Tribe had the darkest skin of all the four nations, and in the movie those two (and their grandmother) were the only white people in the Southern Tribe.”

That's Shyamalan's “twist”, in the third movie, you'll find out they're also Airbenders. :-p

I seem to remember fans raising a hue and cry over organic web-shooters in Spider-Man, not to mention that for all the visual nods to Mazzuchelli and Miller, Ledger's Joker in Dark Knight was a fairly strong departure from any regular depiction in the source material. And the previous record holder for most successful comics adaptation was Men in Black. From wikipedia: “Among the changes in the [MIB] film version are the focus of the secret organization (only policing and monitoring extraterrestrial activity on Earth, omitting the other paranormal elements), its methods (using memory erasure rather than killing witnesses), and its goals (merely maintaining order on Earth, rather than directing it).”

I don't think faithfulness is really the issue in terms of how successful a film is with a mass audience so much as whether a film is entertaining on its own merits.

Way to cherry pick a segment from the article you linked to and in doing so completely missing the point. Here's the article's closing statements:
(In short, these casting decisions ring false to the show's spirit; the very spirit that has transfixed millions of young fans and brought legions of Avatards together into a passionate community. “What frustrates us most is that you had this amazing opportunity – you've got a nation of fans who love this quintessentially Asian story,” Kim says. “This could have broken down every barrier in the business, proving you can have an all-Asian cast and score three blockbuster successes. Instead, we just get three more chances to cringe.”)

If you're gonna post an article to support your view use one that ACTUALLY AGREES WITH YOU.

Yeah, the architecture, martial arts styles, names, lore, etc wasn't enough. Lets have the characters start spouting their race when they introduce themselves so the audience doesn't have to strain themselves by picking up on all the visual and story cues that are dumped in their lap. And lets make their skin yellow and their eyes REALLY slanty for good measure, just in case that's not enough either.

Y'know, this whole casting people from those cultures thing is just getting completely ridiculous and out of hand.
Elektra must be played by a Greek Girl.
whoever plays Black Panther MUST be from Africa so on and so forth.
Get over it. Hollywood wants to cast people who can plant asses in seats. If someone that is culturally elevent and a solid actor is availible, then great. But hiring a Tibeten Monk who can act, or a bunch of Japanese Actors who can speak in broken English does not a successful film make.

Avatars problem aside from the loss of proper character developement is the fact that they tried to compress 10 hours of story into a two hour film.

I write. I can tell you from first hand experience that when you are forced to take a story that is properly told over 32 pages and attempt to compress it down to 20, you are not only going to lose a lot, but you also have the task of getting whats left to form a proper narrative.

Jonah Hex could have been a great Western like one of the old spaghetti Westerns or even a 3:10 to Yuma, but Studio Executives live in abject terror over any new IP and the large amount of money they have to put forth to make them.
It is the fear of losing that money that has driven the film industry into the Trilogy/sequel/remake business. They figure if it worked once, It will work again.

Hex is a perfect example of why Directors should get final approval over their films.

WATCHMEN was a solid film. While it was neccessary to remove the Squid, and All of the neccessary storyline that dealt with the conspiracy to construct and deploy it, in order to keep the film under 4 hours. The change to Dr. Manhatten's powers being the cause was a good one.

This film is the closest any existing comic property has ever come to a faithful adaptation.
I will go as far as to say that the fanboys who didn't like the film simply did not understand all of the complex nuances that were explored by it.
The non-fans were expecting all kinds of Superhero action and were completely unprepared for a nuanced film that was more of a pschological drama than a Iron Man.

Film Studio's should to a degree listen to the fans. But to an even greater degree, they need to do research to understand what it is about a property that made them buy the film rights in the first place.

Never thought Aang looked Asian in the toon, plus he spoke white, lol.

Precisely. I thought it was a poor, poor movie – but this articles thesis is ridiculously false, and the dozens of comments in nodding agreement just demonstrate the sheep-like self-reinforcing qualities of geekboys living in shells.

I think the writer should be ashamed. This was clearly written prior to the release with a preconception that the film was going to tank – and the author can't even be bothered to check in on the real world to see if that assumption was correct before allowing the post to see online publication. That's beyond smug self-satisfaction, that's just stupid.

The movie was god-awful, but it's raking in the dough. Everybody seems to know that except for the reality-denying ostriches at this URL. Ridiculous.

You are so off base about the cultural thing being a problem in Airbender. That was not the the problem. Changing someone's ethnicity should be looked at as a minor thing, because at the end of the day we are all essentially the same. It is true that we all have different culture, but that does not enter into the equation when you are talking about a world that is completely alien from our own. Would the Klingons NOT be Klingons if they looked like Vulcans? Do you get what I mean, making an alien/fantasy culture look white, black or asian doesn't change the story or what they represent, it just changes how they look.

If this took place in ancient Japan I might agree with you, but it is a fantasy that is not about race in any way, so therefore changing their race does not enter into it.

The question is were the actors any good? The answer is no.

Jesse

I wouldn't personally call $53 million a terrible box office take, but it is true that other sci fi/super hero movies had similar returns and no sequel. It will probably be big on DVD. Bad movies always are.

I do agree with you that the success of the film isn't entirely dependent on the accuracy of the source material. However, the source material for the Airbender didn't have one major change, it had many minor ones that pretty much ruined the film for fans. I believe the racial aspect is overblown but it would have been disregarded had the film been more entertaining and respected the minor aspects of the Airbender story.

And FYI:
“Ledger's Joker in Dark Knight was a fairly strong departure from any regular depiction in the source material”

Ledger played the role of The Joker EXACTLY to many, if not all, depictions of the character.

“Ledger played the role of The Joker EXACTLY to many, if not all, depictions of the character.”

What?

I mean, I haven't read every single Batman comic out there, but I've read more than a health man should. And I can't think of a single one for which that statement makes sense. Maybe a half-star for Morrison and McKean's Arkham Asylum, but that's all I can dredge up. Can you throw out some examples just so I know where you're coming from on that?

Ummmm … Air Nomads were clearly based off Tibetan with ties to Shaolin (that whole mountaintop thing.) Fire Nation was similar to Japan with imperialistic Chinese elements, but Earth Kingdom seemed a lot more Chinese. The Water Tribes are clearly supposed to be mainly Inuit with a more advanced Chinese influence at the North Pole.

I see why you think it's silly to obsess over this because you don't see what's going on.

I would argue that Ledger's performance got down to the essence of the character and exactly why this villain is the antithesis for Batman. Batman=Order, Joker=Chaos. That is why they are yin and yang. And that is why Ledger's performance was seen to be spot on by many fans. Even down to the changing 'origins' Ledger played him perfect. But that's one fan's opinion.

Your comments are spot on. I introduced my daughter to Season 1 before we saw the movie specific so she could be expose to the show as intended. While I was skeptical of M.Night, particularly becuase of his leaning towards the dark and his inability to develop characters or pace a story since Unbreakable – it seemed like a doomed match. He was definitely a curious choice.

Bottom line: For me the casting wasn't as big of an issue (except Sokka was so far off) it was really the butchering of the story. Yes, I'm sure it's difficult to translate 20 episodes into 2 hours but this as an abomination. No emotion. No humor. No personality. Completely missed the tone of the characters. Aang come out of the gate as a character who has embraced his destiny not one who ran from it or struggles with it. Sokka was not at all the light-hearted goof with a warrior spirit that we all know and love. If he just wrote it then possibly a competent knowledgable director could have saved the film. But since he wore all hats the blame rests solely on his shoulders. Maybe the DVD has scene on the cutting room floor that better tie the movie together…my guess is that's too much to hope for. My only hope is that if by some miracle they do a sequel they punt MNS and find a director who cares about the rhythm of the show, the characters and the mythology. And maybe get Aaron Ehasz to write it.