He doesn't have that light-hearted, sweet little kid look that the animated version has. Probably because anime can give you larger eyes and narrower chins, which are associated more with children and women, which makes us think cute and sweet.
I don’t know anything about Avatar but curious why it seems to be based on East Asian cultures (I’m guessing mostly Chinese) but the name “Avatar” is Indian? Like I get why James Cameron’s Avatar is called that but any reason why here?
There are definitely themes in ATLA based on Indian cultures, such as the name of the show itself, but most of the characters are more based on East and Southeast Asian cultures. Dunno why things ended up that way. Lots of the characters are lighter skinned like the actors but Katara and Sokka are definitely exceptions. Both actors are indigenous North American but their animated versions were much darker. As a fan of the show, I think the actors seem like good choices so far but I can see it being seen as lightwashing for sure. Having more South Asian looking characters would feel very normal in-universe so they could do that in later seasons.
It seems like they really are going for a 1:1 adaptation. So, unlike other IPs that have had unfaithful (and shitty) live-action adaptations, this one will live or die by how well it manages to create the magic and heart of the original. It might come off as soulless, because things like “heart” are so intangible (unlike plot points and character lines) that it’s incredibly difficult to replicate.
Costumes look too clean in my opinion, but these are promo shots, we’ll see how it actually looks in the show. But if that’s my second biggest complaint, then we’re off to a good start visually.
(The biggest complaint is the new lady with the Walmart looking kimono - way too detailed for random island village)
I believe the rumor is they added Suki’s mom. (Or it was actually announced in the cast list, I dont recall, and instead of looking it up real quickly, I’ll just type this pointless sentence.)
If not Suki’s mom, my next theory would be they just cast a woman for the town mayor. Maybe both? Dont really care as long as they don’t try to shove modern politics into the fact a town is run by a woman.
As bad as the m night movie was, I can’t image they would attempt this unless they were going to do it right. But it also seems impossible to do right.
It was more like “Ahng”. Not sure where people are getting “Eeng” in this thread. Supposedly it was to make it sound more “ethnically correct” or something along those lines. Clearly the movie was just a complete disrespect to the source material — still hard to believe such garbage was produced.
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