Avatar Studios hasn't said a word. Nor has Paramount. This was supposed to be the grand launch of their big new animation push for the franchise and they clearly spent a lot of $$ on it...so why not even so much as a squeak?
and Dante Basco is fucking Filipino which is close enough to the generic non-specific "Asian" culture of the Fire Nation but I'm guessing he wasn't down with recasting everyone else (or maybe they didnt approach him at all)
Watched the leaked movie with the kids on Sunday, didn't really have the same feel as the series, the series felt a lot more philosophical, introspective, a lot of asian philosophy type of stuff. This just seemed more like an animated action movie with constant reversals of who has the upper hand.
This is the sequel to Korra, has been in production for a few years, and is expected out next year. Post-apocalyptic and the avatar is blamed for causing the apocalypse so on top of the main character being a female amputee, she will face persecution for an immutable characteristic beyond her control.
The amputee thing isn’t that bad if they do it right - that water bender villain in Korra that was missing her arms and had water tentacle arms was pretty cool. This new one is an earthbender, so she could have metal limbs that she can turn into weapons in a fight
Post apocalyptic and Korra being blamed thing kind of makes sense, since she was the one who stabilized the link between the spirit realm and physical realm, so if a disaster happened that fucked both up it makes sense she would get blamed. Plus I suspect they went post apocalyptic so it wouldn’t be Avatar in the modern day (since they were 1930s era in Korra)
Ming Hua wasn't the main character so her lack of arms was largely irrelevant aside from being something that made her look more intimidating as a villain. Konietzko and Dimartino were on board with the faggotry of replacing the original voice cast for 'ethnic authenticity' which means an MC that sounds like someone trying to write a parody of a walking diversity checklist probably actually IS going to be nothing more than a walking diversity checklist.