M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender

I would definitely recommend the cartoon. It's amazing.

 

Is it okay for me to suggest that, just from the teaser, the martial arts is going to be weak? That was a sad display of staff usage...

 

Why no Azula?

 

I would think that she would prob. not be introduced till the second movie. I think Zuko will be main villan for movie 1. Anyway I am looking foward to seeing Iro on the big screen.

 

Tell me more about this 'second movie'

 

Likewise.



I'm really stoked for this. It looks from the teaser that Shyamalan is going to do this right.

 

The only thing I really want is for Zhao to have the sideburns. Without them, he's not really Zhao.

 

Was it? It seemed skillful yet realistic to me. I've seen a few martial arts floorshows, and the kid in the trailer seemed to match any of the performers I've seen. Is it possible you've been "spoiled" by high-speed, quick-cut Chinese action movies, and no longer have a frame of reference for what "real" martial arts look like? This is not an accusation, I'm just curious if that might be the case.

 

My brother actually knows one of the actors hired to do martial arts scenes in the film.

 

I do agree that a few moments of the martial arts looked weak. However, this was probably shot very early on, and I don't know whether or not Noah's actually done any staff fighting before, so we'll see how it turns out. It's just a teaser so far; not actual movie clips.

 

No! Avatar movie would be cool but M. Night? I hate that guy ever since the Village came out.

 

I'm sorry you feel that way.Let me ask you this: Have you see the Village more than once? I disliked the film on the first viewing, but the second time I was totally absorbed. Somehow it helped knowing the secret up front.

Anyway, even if Night's plots and scripts have been questionable for his last few movies, this one is based on a pre-existing body of work, and I believe he'll treat it with intelligence and style.

 

He has a terrific vissual style and an intriguing sense of pacing...not sure how that would work with this material but I am not familiar with the show beyond the broad strokes. But as Merlin says this isn't his brain child this is his approach to material that was already existing, so its difficult to compare to his other work.

 

Apparantly, it seems that Noah Ringer is skilled with the staff. Before he was cast in the film, he was a part of this short film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2I1Wbr-i7g

He preformed the Motion Capture for the little ninja toy(they show him on the motion capture stage during the end credits).

I think the reason why he may have seemed a little slow in the teaser trailer is because of the big hooded cloak he was wearing might have slowed him down. Either that, or he was just having an off day.

 

That's awesome! Thanks for posting that.

 

You'd be wrong. I'm a practitioner of Chinese martial arts. Furthermore, check out KungFuCinema.com populated by not only Hong Kong movie fans, but practitioners of Chinese martial arts, who find that particular staff work to be rather sloppy. Or, for that matter, check out the thread regarding this movie at kungfumagazine.com and you'll find people there also commenting on the weakness of the staff work.

It's not great. Furthermore, for this type of movie... being as fantastical as it is, you'd think they'd want to flash it up a bit more than that.

 

I'm hoping they at least try and plump him up a bit.

 

Yeah that is what I was thinking. Give him a couple of cases of beer for a few weeks.

 

LOL, or even a fat suit. SOMETHING.

 

Okay, fair enough. At this point the producers are probably monitoring this feedback to the teaser, and advising Night to "flash it up a bit". Considering his last three films have been critical and financial bombs (though I personally have loved 2/3 of them), he's probably going to be open to marketing advice like this.

 

Quite honestly, and as much as I know people still hate his casting, marketing is exactly why he considered putting Jackson Rathbone in the film. Is he a good actor? Who knows, at this point, since the only thing he's done is Twilight, and his role was ridiculously tiny at that. But he's connected to Twilight, which, regardless of whether or not you like it, is a HUGE financial success, and having Jackson in the film will also help bring a large amount of Twilight fangirls into the theaters just to see him. Just like, as ridiculous as it was to try and cast Jesse McCartney, he has a fan base that would have followed him to the box office. Whether or not we want them in our theater is one thing, but from a production standpoint, it was an incredibly smart financial decision.

 

I couldn?t escape seeing the trailer in the cinema and it was just as weak as I expected. And this is saying nothing about the casting issues. Which I will bring up again because unfortunately for humanity, the privilege to ignore racism is not something we can all afford to do.


It?s been revealed in a recent interview with M Night Shyamalan that Noah Ringer needed acting lessons. A lot of ?fans? have defended the racist casting of the movie by claiming it was a colour-blind casting of the ?best? actors for the job. Well, apparently, that wasn?t the case. Noah Ringer required acting lessons. The former poster is probably right in saying that Rathbone was hired to bring in the Twilight crowd. And Peltz was in a few Disney shows ? not exactly Academy Award material. In fact, the only actor in the Big Four who has worked in an Award-wining production is Dev Patel, the token minority. And once again, Hollywood reminds us that a non-White person has to be twice as good to be half the worth of his White contemporaries.

 

Oh damn, that's it! That must be why Denzel, Will, Samuel, and Halle have such a hard time getting leading roles.

 

You can literally count all the big name African American actors on one hand. This is only one of the many indicators of the racism in Hollywood that is perpetuated by its White audience.