Update: Nothing's changing

Two years ago, Nickelodeon signed M. Night Shyamalan to make a movie out of Avatar: the Last Airbender. Shyamalan proceeded to cast all white actors for the main roles of the movie. Finally, a month ago, he replaced Jesse McCartney with Dev Patel, from Slum Dog Millionaire, to play Zuko.

I bring this up for two reasons. First, the Avatar cartoon is set in an Asian-inspired fantasy world, so it seems incongruous to fill it with nothing but white folks. And second, cutting Asian Americans out of Asian American inspired films is a pattern. Speed Racer was originally a Japanese anime, but when it came to the big screen last year, none of the main characters were Asian. 21, similarly wrote Asian Americans out of the script, although it was inspired by the largely Asian American MIT black-jack team.

And so on and so on. Even in movies like The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which is set in Tokyo, import white leads. Asian Americans continue to appear as secondary characters and stereotypes.

Usually I don't make a big deal about it because plenty of other people do. But I like Avatar. And I don't want anyone making a terrible movie out of it.