Avatar rant: another note...visual contrast?

I thought about something as I was flipping through some websites about the matter and not going to sleep like I should.

Apparently Shyamalan (the director) wants to show the four countries as being different ethnicities, more so than animated show does.

I am totally fine with this - I actually like the idea of visual contrast, since it builds upon the "eye color" thing the animated series had. And since it IS an adaptation, it makes sense for changes like these, as long as their done well.

If I was the director and I wanted to do this, which I might if I were the director, and for some reason I could only do a casting call for Aang's role in Texas...yeah, Noah Ringer might be great. He's (allegedly) really good at karate, and he could probably be trained to be really good at bagua/"airbending". And hey! The last airbender, right? Wouldn't it look really cool to have one Caucasian boy look visually isolated amidst a sea of people of other appearances in order to symbolize Aang's cultural isolation? You know, since his whole people just got genocide-d by the Fire Nation, and all.

Personally, as long as Noah Ringer was good (and I didn't see...Perris? was that his name? first), I would probably go with my above idea. Make the Air Nomads Caucasian. There are plenty of cool Caucasian actors out there you could grab for flashback appearances of the Air Nomad monks. It could work.

After that, I would probably cast people who either were or looked somewhat like they were Inuit. Yes, I understand that compared to other ethnicities, Inuit actors aren't overwhelming Hollywood like the Caucasians are, but there are probably some who would be interested. I'm sure that people with more similar likenesses to Katara than Nicola Peltz. Perhaps those of Southeast-Asian or South-Asian descent?

Considering the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom look fairly similar on the animated show, if Shyamalan wanted to increase the visual divide between the two, he could make one predominantly East-Asian (there are a lot of Japanese-American, Chinese-American, and Korean-American actors out there, you know) and the other...not. Maybe the Earth Kingdom could be more Chinese, and the Fire Nation could be more Phillipino. Or if Shyamalan wanted to go further, he could adapt one of them to be more Indian, as the idea of the avatar originates from India.

It is fantasy. I'm sure the fans of Avatar wouldn't mind it so much as completely whitewashing all the major roles.

Just a thought.