Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse....

As if watching the Olympic Preliminaries for Male Basketball match between China and the USA wasn't frustrating enough (I'll let you know why later, if you didn't watch the game), I found out another piece of frustrating news.

Most of you already know I'm a pretty huge fan of the series Avatar: The Last Airbender *dodges all your "LOLZ!!1JOOISZAKIDZ!!1" bullets*. Hey it's pretty epic stuff okay? You just don't know any better if you're still watching shit like Naruto (oops, I'm sorry, did that hurt?).

I can probably give you a thousand reasons why AtLA is the work of genius, but that's not what this is about right now.

We Avatards (Avatar-retards, it's the term for Avatar nuts like us, you can look the definition up on UrbanDictionary.com) got word about a year ago (give or take), that Nickelodeon Movies will be making a live-action trilogy adaptation of the series. Yeah pretty much like The Lord of the Rings.

The trilogy will be made based upon the the three seasons of the series:

Movie 1 = Book 1: Water
Movie 2 = Book 2: Earth
Movie 3 = Book 3: Fire

Now we Avatards had mixed feelings, most of the time due to the fact that adaptations are usually either risky business or strictly taboo for movie producers. LotR got lucky, they had geniuses working on the movie, I'm talking about stuff like Harry Potter, Narnia (I'm part of the half that thought the movie franchise sucked ass), and in the future, Chun Li (Kristin Kreuk WTF?! What part of Chinese don't Hollywood understand?!) and Dragonball (I don't even know what to say about this).

We thought, an adaptation could be good, seeing as how Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko (creators of Avatar) are made out of awesome sauce, and we also thought, ah what if the directors or actors screw it up?

Then it got worse. We got word that M. Night Shyamalan will be directing it.


This comic was done back in March 2007 by the awesome Deviant, Booter-Freak in response to the news. I quote the description for this artwork.

" ...What a twist!

Now, I know I exaggerate (slightly) the general reaction towards the upcoming Avatar flick, but to be honest, I haven't met a fan yet who hasn't felt any apprehension over the live action nature and who's directing it.

I try to be optimistic, because I know Mike and Bryan would never do anything to their series that would jeopardize it's inherent coolness. I'm sure things will pan out somehow. It might even turn out really great!


I hope. >_<;;;"

-Booter-Freak, March 25, 2007, booter-freak.deviantart.com.

M. Night Shyamalan?! Okay The Sixth Sense was good, and Signs was okay, but The Village? Lady in the Water? The Happening? If you're as serious a movie-buff as I am, you'll know why we Avatards are a little worried about the adaptaion.

Now like Booter-Freak, we try to be optimistic, cos' Mike and Bryan will be involved with over-seeing scripts and story-writing, and Avatar is their baby, they'll never let anything bad *coughbox-officeflopcough* happen to their baby right?

So that's last year's news.....and fans have gotten over it when the finale of the series aired on Nickelodeon last month (I AM STILL HYPED OUT ABOUT IT, TEH EPICNESS!!! O_o). But I just found an update. I got it as a Friendster Bulletin from the Friendster Avatar fanclub and apparently this news has NOT appeared on the number one Avatar fansite, avatarspirit.net (they have contacts to the Avatar staff at NickStudios themselves), so I thought it wouldn't be credible. But I checked out the links given, and yeap, it's the real deal.

"Posted in avatar on Aug 10, 2008 at 2:17 PM by Limmy Forever:

I happen to chance upon a website from Paramount Pictures that is looking for a suitable actor for the role of Aang in the upcoming Avatar Book 1 movie expected to release in July 2, 2010. This movie is directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

Here's what it says:

"We are looking for a young man to play the lead role of Aang in this motion picture franchise. We are considering male actors 12-15 years old, Caucasian or any other ethnicity.

He must be athletic and graceful with an ability in Martial Arts (not necessarily extensive experience, but at least an aptitude for it). Kids with experience in gymnastics, dance, or sports could also be good. He is a young adventurer and should seem like the type of young man who will grow up to be heroic."

Interested? Here's your chance to rise to fame.

1. Download the script from the website:

http://www.thelastairbendercasting.com/how_to_apply.php

2. Mail in your audition tape and sent it to the Paramounts Picture Corporation Feature Casting, 5555 Melrose Avenue, Bob Hope Building, Room 206, Los Angeles, CA 90038.

The date due is 15 September 2008, so quickly sent in your entries now. Good luck! Hope to see you on screen. :)"

See what I bolded. Caucasian?! CAUCASIAN?!?! They want, amongst others, Caucasians for the role of AANG?!


Worst part is, it says: "Caucasian or other ethnic groups", which means priority goes to the Caucasians.

First of all, what is Avatar: The Last Airbender? I'd explain it, but it's long, so I'll just copy-paste what Wiki defines it as: The show is set in an Asian-influenced world of martial arts and elemental manipulation.



So.......how is a Caucasian boy gonna fit in an Asian-influenced world of martial arts and elemental manipulation?

Well to sum it all up, it's gonna look a wee bit like this:



And we all know how that movie turned out! P.s. can you sense my sarcasm, despite the inability to make jokes about a gravely disappointing matter?

Seriously, what the fuck? Have we not learned from previous flops that this is seriously gonna affect how the movie's gonna turn out?! M. Night Shyamalan, just cos' you're an American citizen, have you lost all that has made you Asian, that you are making the biggest mistake anyone can make when directing a movie like this?! As an Asian to another Asian, I say, you of all people should understand what I mean, c'mon you're Asian too! Doesn't it look a tad strange to you?! AT ALL?!


Hollywood is a pretty silly albeit amazing place. Forget what Booter-Freak says, I've pretty much lost hope for this movie....and I was so hoping, that they'd prove me and other non-believers wrong. But nope, my hopes just nose-dived to hell.


On another note, it was expected of the USA to kick China's ass. They had the NBA and China had....well, Yao Ming. But China could have done a lot better, IT WAS SO FRUSTRATING!! And seriously, Yao Ming was doing all the work. China had good momentum at the beginning, but the NBA began to get to them and through third quarter, it seemed like China had given up (though Yao Ming, other than him being clumsy as usual, slipping and tripping all over the place and looking especially DUR-HURRR...., was still pretty much doing most of the work). Their offense and defense was bad, their lay-ups sucked, they didn't catch many rebounds which were pretty much open to them, they only had like 2 steals in the entire game, and they didn't make any effort to block the shots from the US. At least try la okay?! Then the difference between the scores wouldn't have been so bad!! They lost to the USA, 101-70, the difference was frickin' 31 points.

Okay, I'm done ranting. I don't feel so frustrated now. 8D


MAJOR EDIT!!!

Fellow blogger all-the-way from Mexico named Sil has commented on this post saying how she agrees with me on the stupidity of the Avatar movie casting. Even she as a Mexican (I assume she's not Asian) can see that they are clearly making a HUGE MISTAKE!!

Oh and she was nice enough to post a link to this angry entry of mine on her also-agreeing post, which is also about her discontent for the casting. So I shall link her post as well, it's entitled Para mí es racismo. Go visit her blog.

What? I know it's all in Spanish! D8 By assumptions of what she's saying in her blog (cos I don't have extensive knowledge about the Spanish language), they're also looking for people to be cast as Katara and Sokka, and I think they're also looking for Caucasians or other ethnic groups.

KATARA AND SOKKA ARE INUIT PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN THE NORTH/SOUTH POLE!!!! Gosh!! What is wrong with them?! They need dark skin, DARK SKIN!!

Well still go visit her blog, she has some real neat pictures of what the actors and actresses should really look like....and the kind of people (or at least close to the kind of people) they shpuld be casting.

Thanks again Sil for sharing your insight!