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Airbender Animatics Are So Much Better Than Live Action Footage

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 9:47 am by Jamie

This is an animatic for one of the greatest animated fight scenes I have ever witnessed, Fire Lord Ozai vs. Aang. Even in this unfinished state, it looks so much more epic than any live action fight scene I’ve seen even with fancy CG and wire shit. It certainly destroys anything in that live action Dragonbleh movie. I can guaran-damn-tee that M. Night Shyamalan’s live action interpretation of Airbender will fall way short when it comes to the action.

And that’s a good thing.

Not to necessarily hate on the live action movie, but there are just some things that won’t work with real people. There’s no way you could stage even a shadow of that fight safely. Your stunt people would get seriously fucked up. And CG people just aren’t there yet. Those fight scenes in the Matrix with the virtual Neo and copies of Agent Smith were horribly laughable. But without the constraints of safety or reality, animation lets you go absolutely nuts. Seriously, people, if you haven’t seen the fight between Aang and Ozai, there’s a hole in your action fandom.

Ultimately, this is why I’m hating on the live action Airbender movie. Yes, the casting damn well infuriates me. But even if they had cast more brown people in the leads, I’m just not convinced Night could pull off such epic action scenes. Some things fit best in the genre they were made for and I feel that Airbender is certainly one of those properties.

So this holiday weekend, should you find yourself with some time to kill, grab yourself some Last Airbender and seriously drool over the last episode. It. Is. Fucking. Uh. May. ZING!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 at 9:47 am and is filed under Tele, Animation, Crunchy Pants, Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Responses to “Airbender Animatics Are So Much Better Than Live Action Footage”

  1. AvatarSamurai Penguin
    Posted: Nov 25th, 2009 at 3:12 pm
    1

    Amen.

    That fight scene is by far one of the greatest i have even. I cant agree more with what you have said.

  2. AvatarFmF
    Posted: Nov 25th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
    2

    Personally i like the last 5 sec of the fight that wasn’t showed in that.I found the hamster ball of doom kind of funny when i saw it in action.cool but funny.I seriously doubt Shyamalan movie going to be good for so many reason now it all most uncountable.They can give the sequel to Michael Bay and we can talk about witch one sucked more though.

  3. Avatarraize
    Posted: Nov 25th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
    3

    I’ve got a class of kids here in Japan studying English off Airbender. They LOVE it, and they’re only elementary school kids. There’s enough to identify with for them thanks to the asian culture, the language is fun and fresh (and getting easier for them to pick up on), but more than anything, they just did a wonderful, WONDERFUL job on the whole series. Fun for kids, fun for adults, and the animation just carries you away and right into their world.

    Although it might be cool to see a live action movie, I am just amazed by what they accomplished with the animation, and I was expecting a real let down with that last fight after figuring the show couldn’t possibly get any better.. and that fight, and its conclusion were just exactly right.

    Thanks for posting this, it’s made me want to go back and rewatch a few of my favourite episodes (specifically the last fight :)

  4. AvatarLurklen
    Posted: Nov 25th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
    4

    I dunno, I think that fight could be done in live action. But I don’t think it will be, at least in this movie. I’m not sure M. Night has the choreography chops, but others could pull it off. It wouldn’t be exactly the same from a certain style sense just because with animation there’s a kind of flow that’s hard to translate to Live action.

    And the Casting thing still bugs me.

  5. AvatarAmaniwolf
    Posted: Nov 26th, 2009 at 12:22 am
    5

    Best fight scene in the series, they really should’ve gone with an animated movie taking place a few years down the road with the characters. Let us see where they are and perhaps use the search for Zucco’s mother as a story. I fear for the live-action one, they’ve already removed any ethnicity from the characters and even the colors from the tribes. Why do they try and make realistic, something that was a cartoon, and steer away from what made it great? Ah well….we’ll see what comes down the road, and hope.

  6. AvatarJenS
    Posted: Nov 27th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
    6

    Yeah, I would have loved to see a big screen full length animated Avatar movie. Hell, Nick did it for Rugrats, Wild Thornberrys and Spongebob to great success, I can’t imagine why they went for live action instead. Top that with removing pretty much any of the Asian flair that is what it asthetically stand out (authentic costumes, writing, the correct martial arts styles and…you know…some Asian American heroes…), I really can’t see why they’re even bothering to call it “The Last Airbender”.

  7. AvatarKunoichi
    Posted: Nov 28th, 2009 at 1:22 am
    7

    I can think of better fight sequences, but it was a pretty awesome final fight (especially considering the tension held up decently even if any viewer over the age of 15 should have known how it would end…) But, I should amend that, what makes a great fight scene for me is probably different from a lot of people’s.

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