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For fans looking for an excuse not to watch it if the pesky ethical issues weren't enough, have no fear. Apparently the reviews have it rated slightly below the 'Generation X' movie in terms of quality and fun viewing experience. In short, every critic has labelled it as crap on a cracker for a movie.
Big budget movies are not art; they are commercial products that from major studios are directed at specific audiences. Hollywood, Bollywood and Hong Kong all play race cards hard because recouping the investment depends on mobilizing specific markets. However, 'Avatar' managed to go past the typical level of market-based racism by selecting an existing media that was almost entirely non-caucasian, successful as such, and then identifying their intentional bias from the very start of their casting. There is simply no evidence that any actors with ethnicities closer to that of the original characters were even considered, which strips away any coverage for any of the actors to have simply been the best candidate. It would be a little different if, say, it was a transformative element because a big name signed on for a role. Brad Pitt as the Fire Lord would have been ridiculous, but that would be a financial decision entirely. No, this was looking for unknowns and operating against the existing materials for no other reason than the preception that the original tropes simply wouldn't play to their audience.
Here's the thing; there's nothing inherently wrong with the transformative elements of actor selection. If you accept that acting is an art, you have to allow a level of colour-blindness and gender-neutrality. However, this should have been blindly obvious to even the actors and others involved in the casting process as a deliberate attempt to eliminate the ethnic variety of the source material At that kind of level, that's a project you should be passing on.
Big budget movies are not art; they are commercial products that from major studios are directed at specific audiences. Hollywood, Bollywood and Hong Kong all play race cards hard because recouping the investment depends on mobilizing specific markets. However, 'Avatar' managed to go past the typical level of market-based racism by selecting an existing media that was almost entirely non-caucasian, successful as such, and then identifying their intentional bias from the very start of their casting. There is simply no evidence that any actors with ethnicities closer to that of the original characters were even considered, which strips away any coverage for any of the actors to have simply been the best candidate. It would be a little different if, say, it was a transformative element because a big name signed on for a role. Brad Pitt as the Fire Lord would have been ridiculous, but that would be a financial decision entirely. No, this was looking for unknowns and operating against the existing materials for no other reason than the preception that the original tropes simply wouldn't play to their audience.
Here's the thing; there's nothing inherently wrong with the transformative elements of actor selection. If you accept that acting is an art, you have to allow a level of colour-blindness and gender-neutrality. However, this should have been blindly obvious to even the actors and others involved in the casting process as a deliberate attempt to eliminate the ethnic variety of the source material At that kind of level, that's a project you should be passing on.
