Honestly, coming out of the theater, I was just stunned. Stunned that it was even possible to make something so horrible out of such a good source material, particularly when that source material was television. I mean, when you're translating a work from book to movie, it's a completely different medium so there's bound to be some problems; everyone has a different idea of what the characters look like, sound like - a different idea of all the little nuances. But with Avatar: The Last Airbender, the source material was already on film, albeit cartoon, so I just don't understand how some of the mistakes were made, except for by willing incompetence.
Let's start with the pronunciation of the names. Now, I know it's a small thing as far as the movie as a whole is concerned, but it's really symptomatic of the movie's main problem. All the names were pronounced wrong - despite the source material being an American TV show... with sound... You can't really "interpret" the way a character's name is pronounced when it's spoken out loud in the source material; sure, with a book, there might be a couple ways to pronounce a character's name, but NOT WITH TELEVISION.
Next, the nationality of the characters... Again, when going from book to movie there might be a few different ways to interpret a character's heritage and appearance, but not with a visual medium. In the cartoon, the characters were clearly of Asian descent. Yet, the main characters Katara, Sokka, and Aang were all American actors. Also, I was surprised that M. Night Shyamalan chose to cast the Fire Nation (the main villains of the film) as an Indian/Middle Eastern nation (in the cartoon I always felt it drew from Chinese culture). It seems like lately Middle Easterners are becoming the Stock Villain of movies, just like Russians were during the cold war, or Germans before that.
Now, there were many other problems with this movie aside from the pronunciation and the appearance, like the dialogue and acting, but those are run-of-the-mill mistakes. Rarely does a movie come along that makes such visual and aural mistakes when working from a visual/aural medium. In my personal opinion, somebody wrote up a brief summary of the animated series, emailed it to M. Night Shyamalan, and he wrote his movie off that... the most probable reason I can think of that he would make such mistakes with the pronunciation is that he had only ever read the character's names, and never seen the show itself...Really, that would explain a lot.
Let's start with the pronunciation of the names. Now, I know it's a small thing as far as the movie as a whole is concerned, but it's really symptomatic of the movie's main problem. All the names were pronounced wrong - despite the source material being an American TV show... with sound... You can't really "interpret" the way a character's name is pronounced when it's spoken out loud in the source material; sure, with a book, there might be a couple ways to pronounce a character's name, but NOT WITH TELEVISION.
Next, the nationality of the characters... Again, when going from book to movie there might be a few different ways to interpret a character's heritage and appearance, but not with a visual medium. In the cartoon, the characters were clearly of Asian descent. Yet, the main characters Katara, Sokka, and Aang were all American actors. Also, I was surprised that M. Night Shyamalan chose to cast the Fire Nation (the main villains of the film) as an Indian/Middle Eastern nation (in the cartoon I always felt it drew from Chinese culture). It seems like lately Middle Easterners are becoming the Stock Villain of movies, just like Russians were during the cold war, or Germans before that.
Now, there were many other problems with this movie aside from the pronunciation and the appearance, like the dialogue and acting, but those are run-of-the-mill mistakes. Rarely does a movie come along that makes such visual and aural mistakes when working from a visual/aural medium. In my personal opinion, somebody wrote up a brief summary of the animated series, emailed it to M. Night Shyamalan, and he wrote his movie off that... the most probable reason I can think of that he would make such mistakes with the pronunciation is that he had only ever read the character's names, and never seen the show itself...Really, that would explain a lot.