Avatar Airbender first thoughts
Apr. 17th, 2008 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterYesterday I heard from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gamera_spinning about M. Night Shamalyn's plans to make a live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender. On the Miyazaki mailing list, I heard it mentioned that M. Night was saying it would be like a live-action Miyazaki movie, or words to that effect.
As it happened, a friend had tivoed the episodes and copied the first few of them for me a while back, but I hadn't gotten around to watching them. Last night I watched the first six of them.
It's pretty good. It has some of the more annoying earmarks of American kidvid—characters who talk too much, somewhat juvenile humor from time to time, and one of the characters has to be an annoying whiner to provide comedy relief (think "Eric the Cavalier" from Dungeons and Dragons). But these become much less noticeable after the first couple of episodes. What becomes more noticeable is a strong Miyazaki influence on the show's creators, as well as sterling voice direction by Andrea Romano (best known for the various Paul Dini Warner Brothers DC Comics animated adventures) and guest appearances by George Takei, the actor who plays Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies (forget his name), and a supporting role by Mako (one of those actors who is so awesome he only needs one name).
Yes, I'm definitely going to be watching me the rest of this.
gamera_spinning about M. Night Shamalyn's plans to make a live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender. On the Miyazaki mailing list, I heard it mentioned that M. Night was saying it would be like a live-action Miyazaki movie, or words to that effect.As it happened, a friend had tivoed the episodes and copied the first few of them for me a while back, but I hadn't gotten around to watching them. Last night I watched the first six of them.
It's pretty good. It has some of the more annoying earmarks of American kidvid—characters who talk too much, somewhat juvenile humor from time to time, and one of the characters has to be an annoying whiner to provide comedy relief (think "Eric the Cavalier" from Dungeons and Dragons). But these become much less noticeable after the first couple of episodes. What becomes more noticeable is a strong Miyazaki influence on the show's creators, as well as sterling voice direction by Andrea Romano (best known for the various Paul Dini Warner Brothers DC Comics animated adventures) and guest appearances by George Takei, the actor who plays Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies (forget his name), and a supporting role by Mako (one of those actors who is so awesome he only needs one name).
Yes, I'm definitely going to be watching me the rest of this.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-17 07:16 pm (UTC)Irho is my FAVORITE CHARACTER EVER..
I've now seen all three seasons and it gets much, much better... Saka isn't always a whiner. *grin*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-04-17 08:19 pm (UTC)That's Jason Isaacs - he gave an interesting interview early last year on IGN TV that covered his voice work on Avatar:TLA and Shyamalan's proposed movie.
Though I can't see why anyone would want a live action version of something that's fine as it is.