I watched “The Last Airbender” in 3D with my son (he's 8 years old), his dad (34) and his dad's other son (6 years old) yesterday in a beautifully restored ornate Oakland theater, off the I-580 on the Lake shore drive exit.
I wasn't expecting much – neither the trailer on TV nor other people I met (the girl at the hair salon), gave me a good impression. The main complaints were that the story line in the movie differed too much from the Nickelodeon cartoon show “Avatar: the Last Airbender”. [sidenote: I guess they couldn't use “Avatar” in the movie title because of copyrights by the OTHER “Avatar” movie released earlier this year.]
Anyway, I was mostly pleasantly surprised – I loved the effects, and I loved the thought that millions of American children are hearing words like “meditate”, “ying yang”, “evolution”, “nature spirits”, “sacred site” etc. This was great. Also, one of the Avatar's spirit guides informs him that his job is “never to hurt others” but yet still to show them who is boss. Beautiful, a hero who does not Hurt. The editing of the movie was good, and the special effects were perfect.
Here are the things that I found horribly wrong with the movie:
- The Water Tribe people, Katara and Sokka and the rest of their tribe are WHITE skinned. Um excuse me? Their skin is beautiful and BROWN in the cartoon show, and I am disappointed that Hollywood yet again went the white-y route. There are plenty of dark skinned child actors and actresses in Hollywood, WTF?
- Ang – WHITE skinned… not even Asian? I mean Puleeze. This is disgraceful. Really.
- The bad guys? Dark skinned… even more f**ked.
- Oh, and no honor and glory for the divine feminine in the beginning either – it's Katara that finds Ang, not her brother Sokka as shown in the movie.
Got any other comments? I'd love to hear your take too, so do share!
x Z
