Hacker Cinema
The Last Airbender
2010 · Film · 103 min
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
A century has passed since the Fire Nation declared war on the other three nations of air, water, and earth in its attempt for global domination. Aang, the long-lost Avatar, is found by Water Tribe siblings Katara and Sokka and must learn to master water, earth, and fire bending to defeat the Fire Nation and restore balance to the world.
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10 comments on Hacker News
I’ve never seen ‘The Last Airbender’, but always heard good things.
As far as Avatar ’The movie’, the plot & storyline was certainly not the most original, or memorable, but I’ll never forget watching it in 3D in the theater.
Still to this day, I don’t think any movie has come close to utilizing 3D visuals they way they did. It’s was absolutely stunning, and added a lot to the experience!
Especially for the time it came out, the 3D tech was just starting to become popular in theaters. I’ve seen many movies since then in 3D, and it always seems like an afterthought. Doesn’t really change or add that much.
Avatar, on the other hand, seemed to be designed from the get go to be a 3D movie and it shows. I will always hold it in my mind, as the pinnacle of 3D movies. Still waiting for someone to make a movie that even comes close.
I am dreading the release of Netflix' s "The Last Airbender". All indications are that it will be much more worse than that awful movie version.
Sometimes this type of long form journalism is nice because it lets you marinate in a different world. Here I can't help but feel like I just want them to get to the point because I don't really want to marinate in the Flat Earth world.
If a super intelligent AI came to me and said, "I'm going to take over the world and destroy humanity, but first I wanted to see if there was anything you needed." One of the things that I would ask it to do in order to buy time would be to annotate all the background details of every movie. For example, in Jurassic Park when Hammond is trying to get Dr. Grant to come to the park, the trailer they are in has a bunch of newspapers on the walls. What do those say? Who are all the extras that are hanging out at the dig site? Like who are the actors and can we give their characters any backstories that are consistent with the world of Jurassic Park.
I can't help but want the same thing from a story about a Flat Earth conference. How many other people went there just to see what was up. Who is there as a joke. Occasionally people send fake articles to journals to see if they can get them published. Does the same thing happen to Flat Earth conferences? People try to see how much of an outlandish presentation they can get away with? And finally, how many people go there, have a good time, pretend to buy into the whole Flat Earth business, but then when they get back and are cornered indicate that they only went because their friend went / to see what it was like / because they make fun of them later / etc.
Finally, this whole business feels very similar to me as the whole Evolution in education stuff. Sure people believe in the wrong thing, but at the end of the day very few people actually understand how the right thing works and even if they get that far they don't see what any of the implications are. Yeah, I would prefer people believe things that are true, but they don't understand it either way and they refuse to think about the implications.
I greatly appreciate the world building in things like Lord of the Rings or Avatar the last airbender. Everything works together in great detail to create a holistic world where actions have consequences that echo through the centuries. It feels like most people are just as happy to watch Michael Bay's Transformers. Maybe they like Avatar as well, but they don't understand why the shyamalan movie "adaptation" is bad. So I have a hard time caring that they agree with me that the cartoon was good as well.
By that logic, movies should just use existing props or set designs rather than creating any new artifacts.
Conlanging isn't just gibberish, it's a legitimate artform like anything else.
However, I don't have any issue with using real-world languages to give the desired exotic flair for certain settings. I actually think that was one of the things that was great about, for example, the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon, because it took the time to use real Chinese calligraphy as part of the worldbuilding (one of the many flaws with the film adaptation was that it tried to deemphasize the explicitly Chinese influences and ended up with pretty uninspired chicken-scratch fake-ideograms for the writing).
Similarly, the video game Riven: The Sequel to Myst had some cutscenes where the fantasy native population were actually speaking Tok Pisin, which is a creole language from Papua New Guinea. This was only fragmentary, though, and much of the Myst games have a quite well constructed language "D'ni."
My favourite instance of this was the reaction of UK cinema audiences to dialogue in "The Last Airbender":
"I could tell from looking at you that you were a bender". Genius.
> If they don't, then why should US movie studios?
Because not all americans are white, and if there ever was a chance to see someone who looked like me in a movie being cool, I would hope it's the anime adaptation. GitS is merely the latest in a long line of movies to re-cast asian roles for caucasian actors. Some more: Avatar the last airbender, Aloha, Cloud Atlas was especially cringeworthy since caucasian actors had prosthetic eyelids... imagine if robert downey jr's character's blackface was played non-ironically.
I wouldn't mind if it just happens sometimes, but it happens almost every time... They could easily find american actors who speak perfect english, that's supposed to be one of the advantages of being a country of immigrants no?
I understand the financial motivations of a casting decision, but its somewhat of a catch 22. It's difficult to find minority actors who have lots of experience. It's difficult to get a lot of experience as a minority actor since you end up getting typecasted for a few roles.
I'm personally refusing to support a movie which continues a long legacy of poor representation of asian americans in Hollywood movies (e.g. the last airbender, aloha, along with some others which removed asian secondary characters). Though I can't deny it looks like it might be a decent adaptation.
Hollywood doesn't really like asians to be their main characters, though we're starting to see some good side characters like Glenn from the walking dead.
> Do you mean the computer-graphics movie, or The Last Airbender?
I meant Avatar, the computer-graphics movie, although I really like The Last Airbender, and I wish it had gotten more attention.
Avatar is nothing more or less than a very long mathematical expression, sort of like a computer plot conducted very carefully for aesthetic reasons. When they watch Avatar, viewers are looking at mathematics.
> None of those really has any mathematical interest for the viewer
People who watch Avatar, who find it interesting, are appreciating mathematics even though they may not realize it. All the lighting, the colors, the motions, are expressed by the mathematics of physical reality.
When a real tree falls, it's very mathematical. When the big tree fell in Avatar, that was also mathematical. As to the first, mathematics could be used to predict exactly how the real tree falls. As to the second, the falling tree was the result of a computer solving a differential equation that described the tree and gravity.
They're really the same -- mathematics predicting reality, and mathematics generating an imaginary reality.
Oh, this is so wrong. Did you like Avatar? Then you like math. Avatar is one long, beautiful mathematical expression, from beginning to end.
Do you mean the computer-graphics movie, or The Last Airbender? None of those really has any mathematical interest for the viewer -- though The Last Airbender rocks.
This comes back to know your audience, or at least know your intended audience and don't worry about everyone else.
As you allude to, it is easy to offend people unintentionally, often without realizing it. In certain parts of the Middle East, crossing your legs in such a way that the bottom of your shoe or foot is exposed is highly offensive, but most Americans wouldn’t even notice. The movie "The Last Airbender" had some issues in Britain because "bender" has a slang meaning there that has nothing to do with either elemental control or reshaping objects.
You cannot worry about the possibility of offending anyone if you want to make any kind of point at all. Rather, you take your audience into account. If I am addressing a group of Infantrymen, swearing might be quite appropriate and might both help me connect better with my audience and emphasize the part I really want them to get. If I am addressing a group of Church Elders, then swearing is probably distracting at best.