#hmmmm... maybe I should get an actual hat to wear when I'm putting on my 'diplomatic hat' for Tumblr
Explore tagged Tumblr posts
Note
Okay I have seen several people say that Bryan and Mike supported the original movie until after the backlash and was wondering if you knew of any sources on it?
Okay, I know you just saw some of the stuff I managed to dig up (or had friends find for me, thank you so much @lady-of-bath, you truly are the queen!), but since the internet has been blowing up over the announcement that Bryan and Mike are no longer working on the Netflix live action ATLA remake, I might as well throw this out in public too!
So, in the interest of being as objective as humanly possible, let me start off by saying that the internet being what it is, itâs hard to find sources of information about the creation of a 10-year old, widely panned movie. The fact that I canât personally find it doesnât mean that it isnât out there, or that it wasnât purged in the past 10 years. But, that said, I wound up with more than I expected. Brace yourselves đ (sources will be linked!)
So, back in 2008, both Bryan and Mike were very enthusiastic about the movie. And, in their own words, well... Bryan said:
The one thing we weren't joking about is that we really are helping on the movie quite a bit. Night has been very collaborative from the get-go, from the first time we ever met him. Very respectful of the project and of us. So we're helping out a lot on that.
They also did this interview with M. Night Shyamalan (posted in July 2009, though Iâm not sure when it was filmed), in which it was confirmed that:
Bryan and Mike were actively working with M. Night
Bryan and Mike looked over M. Nightâs script and approved of the changesÂ
Bryan and Mike were planning to be on set for filming
Based on the content of the video interview, itâs clear that casting wasnât complete at the time the interview was filmed, though the initial cast was announced in December 2008, before the interview was posted. So itâs hard to say whether Bryan or Mike had strong feelings about the whitewashing of the cast at the time, but based on the fact that Mike said (6:05 in the video linked above), âWell, if you donât find anyone for Aang, Iâd like to suggest perhaps I could, yâknow, maybe play himâ, I donât think whitewashing was high on their list of concerns at the time. I know itâs a joke. I know that. But given Brykeâs tendencies to make insensitive, or downright insulting jokes, then double down on them years later (Book 4: Air, and Bryanâs later repost of the video with the worldâs most condescending caption (featuring a dictionary definition of the word âjokeâ), Iâm looking at you) rather than admitting that they were in poor taste (and the fact that that adult Aang looks exactly like Mike with a jawline), Iâm inclined to believe that they genuinely DID NOT CARE about the ethnicity of the actors cast at this point. And again, this interview came before the casting and before the associated backlash.
Now, admittedly, this is the last information I can find from Bryke relating to the live action movie before the movieâs release in 2010. And a lot can change in 2 years. According to this post, a lot did change, and not at M. Nightâs request, though this is a secondary source of a now-deleted forum post, so the reliability of the information is anyoneâs guess. But, that said, there was an active controversy surrounding the casting of the live action beginning in 2008 (taking the timeline from the wiki because I canât find a semi-comprehensive rundown anywhere else). The movie was released in 2010. Plenty of people associated with the original series made their disapproval public. Bryke, though? The first time I can find them even referring to the live action disaster is in this interview from 2011:
Wall Street Journal: Have you heard anything about whether there will be a sequel to the "Last Airbender" live-action feature film? Michael DiMartino: Uh, no. It's definitely not up to us, so.
No mention of their opinion of the thing. And three years of silence doesnât exactly equate to an endorsement of the movie, but uh... three years is a lot of time in which they could have made their opinions known, especially about the whitewashing, which was a widely-known problem.Â
If they were truly concerned about representation, which seems to be the thing that a LOT of the internet is worried about after their exit from the Netflix live action, wouldnât they have had something to say about it? Just asking.Â
Oh, but they did... eventually. In 2013, 3 years after the movieâs release, and 5 years after they (to my knowledge) last expressed an opinion on the movie, Bryan made this post in response to criticism of the Kataang kidsâ skin color in LOK. And he had this to say about the live action movie:
I prefer to stay out of this type of discourse on Tumblr and let the large body of work Mike and I have put out there over the years speak for itself (which obviously DOES NOT include the gross misinterpretations and misrepresentations of our work in this guyâs work).Â
Thatâs as specific as it gets. Pretty passive-aggressive and open to interpretation if you ask me. The only reason you can tell that heâs actually referring to the live action movie is because in the original post, âthis guyâ links out to M. Nightâs page, and the only reason you can tell that heâs referring to the whitewashing of the cast is because the post is a response to similar criticisms levelled against LOK.Â
Then apparently there was an interview in 2014 that finally went more in depth on the subject of the live action, but the original was deleted, and the transcript I was able to locate is practically unreadable. No names attached to any of what was said, so I really couldnât tell you who thought what about the movie, and honestly, if anyone can decipher this garbled mess, I salute you. It seriously looks like a cat walked across a keyboard for an hour while autocorrect went bananas.Â
Ah, old internet drama. So hard to track down.Â
Anyway, all of that is why the wiki summarizes the situation by saying:
Before the film's release, co-creators Bryan Konietzko and Mike DiMartino vocally supported the film, even appearing in an interview with M. Night Shyamalan. However, following the film's release and the negative reception it had received, the two remained quiet on the film, making only brief statements on it.
And that is why Iâm laughing my butt off with every person I see lamenting Brykeâs exit from the Netflix live action. Donât get me wrong, I donât have high hopes for the thing. Ideally, Iâd like to see the whole thing cancelled, ATLA allowed to go down in history as a great show, and the creators to move on to new, unrelated projects (come on, dudes, you���ve gotta have at least one more original idea you could try instead of beating the ATLA universe into a bloody, unrecognizable pulp). And failing that, Iâd like to see the show recreated faithfully, some plot threads in Book 3 tied a little tighter, and no canon romances with the possible exception of Suki/Sokka. But Brykeâs involvement was never a guarantee of quality. Sure, it might suck without them. But it could have sucked just as badly with them on board. Maybe now it will suck in new and unexpected ways!
#atla#atla live action#atla live action salt#anti bryke#bryke salt#as usual I'm just covering my bases#I put my diplomatic hat on as much as I could#hmmmm... maybe I should get an actual hat to wear when I'm putting on my 'diplomatic hat' for Tumblr
154 notes
¡
View notes