Hooooooly hell.

[nenena]

asdfghjkl;asdfghjkl;

I know that I don't post much about the gawdawful The Last Airbender film, mostly because by this point the number of epic, jawdropping failures that the film has managed to pull off before it even hits theaters has become too large to count. Still, this one REALLY leapt out at me:

http://community.livejournal.com/racebending/214837.html

Look at the way that Katara, Yue, and Suki's clothes are folded.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Airbender-Dave-Roman/dp/0345518551

Look at the way that Katara's clothing is folded.

Jesus.

The next thing you know, they're going to have Suki sticking her chopsticks out of a ricebowl.

(By the way, in the animated series? They did the clothes-folding correctly. And if you were paying attention during the "Ember Island Players" episode you would have noticed that Jet's clothes were deliberately folded backwards in order to indicate that he was DEAD.)

ETA: Look, everyone! A dumbass came to play in our sandbox! How pwecious.

ETA 2: This comment sums up pretty well the astounding level of failure on display in the costume department.

Comments

[sno-oki.livejournal.com]

*cries*
Why costume department, WHYYYYYY?! It's left-over-right, not right-over-left! YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS, DAMNIT!

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I'm just baffled, utterly baffled, as to how this could have happened. Either the costume designers didn't know about the significance of the right-over-left fold (which speaks very poorly about the amount of effort they put into researching the costumes - I mean, this is BASIC CLOTHING 101 STUFF right here), or they did understand the significance but choose to deliberately ignore it for some reason (which speaks very poorly about their respect for the source cultures).

There's speculation on the racebending post that it's only the women who wear clothes folded right-over-left, whereas all of the men wear their clothes folded left-over-right. So this was like, something deliberate that the costumers did to make a distinction between genders. In which case, what the hell?!?!?! WHHHHHHHHYYYY would they do something so COMPLETELY unnecessary and so COMPLETELY disrespectful to the source cultures?!

[pheonee.livejournal.com]

Now I can't watch this movie (not that I was going to) at all, because I will be too busy being CONSTANTLY DISTRACTED by the tradition-breaking clothes. Angry keysmash. >|

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Arrrrrgh I know. It is really, really, REALLY distracting.

[pseudo_tsuga.livejournal.com]

Whatever! I no longer acknowledge the existence of this movie. Anytime I get upset at how badly it's failing, I will watch happy-making fanvids.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

OMG those are awesome. ^___^ Thank you for linking me to them!

[une-pomme-folle.livejournal.com]

Just out of curiosity, what is the significance of the way clothes are folded?

[pheonee.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was wondering this as well. _{(I graduated from the school of Born In China with a participation award.)}

It's incredibly distracting only because I'm so used to seeing it the other way. (I figured that the costume department should have just pulled out a few photos, saw that they all went left-over-right, and simply went with that, since that's what I do.) Then again, my dad had no answer apart from "it's tradition" either, so perhaps it's not a Chinese thing? >_>;

[nenena.livejournal.com]

The right-over-left fold is only used to dress corpses.

[neocloud9.livejournal.com]

My head and the wall have become very good friends lately.

[ilikebigtoes.livejournal.com]

not only in Shyamalan land are Asians turned into Caucasians (unless they are bad guys of course) they are turned into MAGICAL ZOMBIES.

[badninja.livejournal.com]

I would watch a movie with magical zombies.

But not this one. :x

[kyrafawxe.livejournal.com]

I might have thought for a second that this was worth seeing but if you did not research then I have no time for you.

Maybe it'll be Shymalan's plot twist. Everyone is actually dead.

-____- Yeah, right.

[earthy-dreamer.livejournal.com]

>>Maybe it'll be Shymalan's plot twist. Everyone is actually dead.<<

THIS.

Or it's all a mass conspiracy of the Ember Island Players.

...What? I can pretend, right? T_T

Honestly, the cultural/racial fail is SO GINORMOUS in basically EVERY ASPECT of this film, the clothing folds seem a small thing overall. But of course I noticed, too. And of course pro-casters call it nitpicking.

Incidentally, am rewatching the series with meiousei and her brother (who hasn't seen it), and while they wound me with their Kataang jabbering (*SIGH*), at least we can all agree that the movie is a racist, poorly-researched, horribly cast POS.

Um. Not that I have an opinion or anything. <.< >.>

[meiousei.livejournal.com]

Whatevs, I'm not really that much of a Katara/anyone shipper. Aang is fine, Zuko is fine, so either way it ended up okay for me.

I won't be seeing the movie. Every time I see anything related to it, I am inevitably disappointed. I'll stick to the kickass series, thanks.

[zakuro-jane.livejournal.com]

So, not only did they make Iroh look like Jafar, they also decided to make everyone into a corpse. *Head desk*

I will never EVER see a movie by this director EVER.

Who is he planning to market this to, anyway? He screwed up the casting, so the fans won't see it. The CGI looks like crap so regular people won't see it. The fact that he pissed all over the Asian culture means they won't see it.
This is going to be such a bomb at the box-office that they'll be making references to it in jokes for years. It'll be the new Batman and Robin!

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Eh, I dunno. Pretty much everybody that I talk to in real life is unfortunately very, very excited about the movie. And avatar_fans is full of people defending the movie. Just the amount of ignorant crap that keeps getting directing toward the Racebending protests makes me think that there are a lot people who are going to see this movie.

Unfortunately.

(I really hope it flops, though.)

If Avatar - I mean, that OTHER Avatar movie - proved anything, though, it's that people will pay a lot of money to see a steaming pile of cinematic shit.

[sagesoren.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I think they assumed the demographic watching this wouldn't care or notice. I know it's definitely true of most ten-year-olds and stereotypical animu fans. D:

I mean, I actually had no idea myself. (That's really interesting, though. I've learned something new.)

Even though it's too bad everyone seems to be obviously white, I think Yue is really pretty!

[(Anonymous)]

How about you stop talking about irrelevant shit and make your Soul Eater recap.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Right, because racism is irrelevant shit.

Hey, IP 65.23.210.26, how about you buy me a copy of Shounen Gangan, and then I can write my recap.

If you don't want to pony up, then fine. You can wait until I'm able to buy the magazine myself. Until then, no recap.

[smurasaki.livejournal.com]

Are they trying to rack up as many asshat points as possible? Because, really, the more I hear about this movie, the more that seems like the most reasonable explanation. It's like a checklist of what never to do.

[goldenflames.livejournal.com]

People are asshats. Irrational asshats.


At least, the vast majority of people are. The sensible types come along just often enough to keep your faith in humanity going.


(P.S. Mr./Ms. IP 65.23.210.26, entitlement much?)

[theskyiscrying.livejournal.com]

The only good thing about this film, I've concluded, will probably be the special effects. And maybe the lighting.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Shyamalan is very good with lighting and atmosphere, you gotta give him that. He can't write or tell a story worth crap, though.

[vaultedthewall.livejournal.com]

I've had a couple pro-casters trolling my deviantart page lately, so I thought I'd give them something better-drawn to whine about. This was totally an inspiration.

Zombie Katara and Vampire Sokka (http://bucketmouse.deviantart.com/#/d2q1n33).

[(Anonymous)]

Why would something like "pro-casters" exist, this is stupid.

[1010nabulation.livejournal.com]

De-lurking for a moment to say how horribly offended I am by that anonymous comment demanding a recap... I'm sorry there are hateful, selfish people like that out there. I, for one, have loved peeking in on your journal from time to time to read all the interesting (not to mention VERY RELEVANT) things you post about. :)

This past weekend I went on a search for Shounen Gangan specifically so I could help out and provide raws even though I don't read a bit of Japanese, but neither of the Kinokuniya stores within driving distance even had it. (I asked the clerk and everything, not trusting myself to recognize it even if it was right in front of me! LOL) And the one place online I can find to subscribe to Shounen Gangan charges an arm and a leg to ship it, and I am a destitute grad student, so... my attempt to help failed. I'm sorry. :(

Anyway, much luck with getting raws! Now back to the zombie girls of ATLA... :)

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the kind words and your magazine-hunting efforts. :) I really do appreciate the help.

And I'm pretty sure that our anonymous friend isn't actually interested in reading my recaps. He or she is just trolling for trolling's sake.

[(Anonymous)]

oh god, whhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyy. Dont these people know if you want to make a live action as authentic as possible, you do research, not just suddenly say "im skipping all the relivency of props and doing it my way"
fail, bad fail
ps- i know you can see the new soul eater chapters in english on youtube, but no rush, i wanna laugh my ass off the right way ^^

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I think that a lot of people responsible for the Last Airbender movie - Shyamalan included - still honestly don't believe that there were real cultures depicted in the animated series. In interviews Shyamalan keeps insisting that the animated universe wasn't diverse enough. Likewise, people online keep insisting that the characters in Avatar actually were intended to be WHITE, and that the animated universe is something purely fantastical that Nickelodeon created out of whole cloth, as opposed to, you know, distinct fantasy cultures based on very close analogues of real-world cultures. So that's the root cause of a lot of this failure, I think. I mean, why would you bother to research real cultures when you think that Avatar is a pure fantasy with no real-world cultural elements in it?

As for Soul Eater... Sigh. Did somebody seriously put the scanslation of chapter 74 up on Youtube?! Are you effing kidding me?! Jesus skateboarding Christ.

You can use Google to find a proper scanslation of 74. It's been available for well over a week now.

[corinn.livejournal.com]

UUUGH, I was reading about that. I'm surprised the movie's TVTropes entry isn't linked to They Just Didn't Care. It becomes more and more obvious that they don't.

Another thing that has me RAAAAGING:

A French poster darkens Katara's and Sokka's skintones: link (I think that poster looks like they took the photo of the kids, duplicated the layer in Photoshop, and set it to Multiply or Color Burn. Probably Color Burn.)

The illustrated cover of the trade paperback adaptation (I think?) of the film (the one you linked above on Amazon) makes a drawing of Dev Patel's Zuko white.

I just... yeah. NO WORDS.

[nenena.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, that is some bad photoshopping. Ugh.

The thing I linked on Amazon is the official comic/manga/whatever-you-want-to-call-it adaptation of the film. And yep, you're right: Despite being based on the film version of the characters, they still majorly whitewashed Zuko. UGH.

lol racism

[(Anonymous)]

I love how you claim folding clothes wrong is racist. I guess you have an IQ lower than your shoe size.

Re: lol racism

[nenena.livejournal.com]

I love how you claim folding clothes wrong is racist.

Because it is. Period, full stop, end of story. It's disrespectful of the cultures that the Last Airbender movie is appropriating, it sends the clear message that the movie's creators don't care about the huge cultural taboo that they're recreating, and it shows that the movie creators don't care about how distracting or upsetting seeing the funeral-style clothing on the characters will be to a huge portion of their potential audience.

I guess you have an IQ lower than your shoe size.

Oh, come on. That one is as old as dirt. Seriously, 173.16.45.146? This is the best snappy comment that you could come up with? A cliché that you regurgitated after stealing it from some other source?

I'm sure you're feeling pretty badass right now, as I guess trolling anonymously and repeating clichéd insults is what passes for badass down in Fairhope, Alabama. In the rest of the world, however, it's cowardly and pathetic.

But if you would like to continue to provide me with entertainment today, by all means, go ahead. I can always use the lulz. ;)