The Last Airbender was one of the most anticipated movies this year, and with amazing movie poster artwork like this and the stunning work done on the trailers its no surprise. Today I’m going to cover my thoughts on the poster artwork as well as offer you my views on the movie itself as well as the controversy behind it.

The Last Airbender movie poster by BLT

The poster artwork for The Last Airbender was done by BLT, a full solution creative house out LA with a tremendous body of work in cable and movies. BLT is one of the leaders in the industry when it comes to producing work like this for a feature film. I also included the artwork for some of the international posters that many of you haven’t gotten a chance to see.

As you can see BLT produced 12 stunning movie posters for the Last Airbender. The photo-manipulation skills required to this are quite incredible. While many of us have certainly done effects like these before, I’ve rarely seen them done this precisely. Also notice that despite the variety of concepts used all the posters still manage to be fairly consistent. Even when its the same person or same team of designers taking on a project this big, that can be very difficult.

One of the things that stood out to me with this artwork as the type treatment for the title logo. I was so happy at first just to see a movie poster that wasn’t using Avante Garde, Helvetica or Compacta for a change. Those are great fonts by the way, I’m just getting tired of seeing them everywhere and wouldn’t mind some variety. I spent a week looking for whatever font was used in these posters and couldn’t get any solid leads. Even “What the Font” failed me in this. If any of you can find it, please let me know!

Review of The Last Airbender

Well let me begin by saying that I watch the TV series “Avatar the Last Airbender” all the way through and I did so again before seeing this movie, knowing I was going to be writing about it at some point. I’m not going to completely nitpick at everything they didn’t do “quite” right compared to the series, but there were something that just “bothered” me. In the movie the completely mispronounce easy names, like the main character Aang, they keep pronouncing it Ung. I mean how hard is it to sit down and watch the source material. They did this for about 3 of the main characters.

The effects in this movie were great, which was going to be the main draw for a lot of people, however these weren’t as amazing as I thought they would be and the timing of certain this was way off base, so was much of the fight choreography. Anyone who has every seen a sci-fi movie or a martial arts movie will realize this was the first time M. Night Shamylans has ever had to deal with the scale of intense fight scenes and choreography. As a result the fights seem less than what they could have been, and honestly the fight scenes in the cartoon had better fight choreography. Some people would say this is overly critical with me talking about the fight choreography and effects, and who am I to criticize a major film studio and director.

When I see the early work of Ryan Weiber, the most successful film school drop out I know about (Emmy Award Winning Special Effects Compositor at age 25), I realize that effort an innate ability can surpass experience and a ridiculous budget, so I can’t let it go when someone with major resources and training produces something less than spectacular when Ryan was doing work the quality of RVD and RVD2 on a shoe string budget.

What I will say about the Last Airbender that I appreciated was the way they utilized the narrative style of the TV series, and the fact that the mostly stuck to the cannon of the show. The battle with the Northern Water Tribe is the highlight of the whole movie. The performances of most of the actors were well done, though the script they were provided in some cases wasn’t great.

The Controversy

As some of you may have heard there was a huge controversy surrounding the choices in casting in this film, and implications of racism. The funny thing is that this really only applies to the casting of the lead roles, where as otherwise this is one of  the most diverse films produced in years, having an enormous cast of extras from a range of ethnic backgrounds. It is accepted that being the TV series is considered Anime, and given the names, traditions and clothing of the characters that they are Asian. Many people took offense to the idea that the lead roles were given to white actors, mostly unknowns over Asian actors more suited to the roles. A website was even developed as well as the spreading of the twitter trend #racebending . Donte Bosco the voice actor behind the character of Prince Zuko in the series makes his opinion known here.

Here is my opinion… simply the best actor for the role, no matter what. Nobody protested that “Nick Fury is white!” when Samuel L. Jackson took the role in Iron Man, or when Michael Clark Duncan took the role of the legendary King Pin of Crime, in Dare Devil. Granted these were established and well known actors in the role, and that supports the stance of having the right actor for the role no matter what. You always as a creative have to do what is best for the project regardless of how people are going to feel about it.

I think that is what the director and the casting crew “intended” in their decisions. I will however say I believe they dropped the ball, and I find it hard to believe given the performances that there were not better actors, Asian or otherwise to cast in the some of the roles, particularly the role of Aang.

Having seen the Karate Kid reboot this summer I could have picked half a dozen kids who I personally believe would have been better actors and more believable martial artist than the current lead. Again this is just my personal opinion. So while I believe that it was more poor decision making than a racial preference, I can also appreciate how people feel about it, and that the wounds from years of racism in the industry particularly with white actors playing ethnic roles, has not quite healed, and has upset a great number of people. As creative people sometimes we have to take a step back and approach things with more empathy. Clinging to your decisions sometimes isn’t being principled its just being stubborn in the face of a mistake.

Conclusion

Overall the Last Airbender was an enjoyable film, not as epic as the hype surrounding it, but it made want to buy the whole TV series on DVD and the art from the posters has inspired me to try and create this effects to the level that the team at BLT did, so I can honestly say I got what I wanted from the experience. You should see the movie and make your opinion about it known. If you’ve already seen it and you want to agree or disagree with me, feel free to drop me a comment or two!

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Roberto Blake

Roberto Blake is a Professional Graphics Designer and Photographer, living in Fayetteville NC, has work been working with Photoshop® for over 8 years now, and Flash® for the past 5 years.

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