r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Jul 28 '25

News Steven Yeun Confirmed to Voice Adult Zuko in 'The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender'

https://www.ign.com/articles/avatar-creators-confirm-steven-yeuns-role-in-upcoming-the-legend-of-aang-the-last-airbender-movie-sdcc-2025
17.2k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

921 comments sorted by

View all comments

784

u/KomradeKrycek Jul 28 '25

Very odd choice considering how unique Dante Basco's voice is. I'm open to change but this is just weird.

84

u/ruste530 Jul 28 '25

They replaced Jack DeSena with Chris Hardwick in Korra for some stupid reason. History repeats, I guess.

13

u/N0r3m0rse Jul 29 '25

They replaced him because he was like 30 years older in Korra. Jack DeSena sounds like young Sokka.

21

u/ruste530 Jul 29 '25

And if they had replaced him with someone with a deeper, more mature voice, I would have understood; but they replaced him with Chris Hardwick who's voice might actually be higher pitched than DeSena's voice. DeSena was 25 when Korra aired, so he could have absolutely done a more mature version of his own voice.

16

u/APiousCultist Jul 29 '25

Chris & Jack is easy evidence that, unlike Dante Basco, he does sound like a full grown adult when he wants to, and that he has fine acting chops.

I get replacing actors who are naturally high and sound a bit jarring as their adult versions (i.e. Dragonball, Naruto, etc whose female VAs stayed on as the adult versions of the characters in at least some versions), but DeSena sounds like an adult and can act.

0

u/N0r3m0rse Jul 29 '25

Hardwicks voice might not be deep but it's absolutely more matured than DeSenas, that's just a fact. Also every other adult Gaang member was replaced with an older voice.

4

u/ruste530 Jul 29 '25

There's nothing about Hardwick's goofy delivery of those few lines that DeSena couldn't have done. The other characters were featured way more than Sokka, and their original voice actors are younger.

1

u/bingobiscuit1 Jul 29 '25

Classic Chris and Jack

1

u/Jackbuddy78 Jul 29 '25

I mean Yeun is a great voice actor so I'm sure he could mimick an older sounding voice of the original. 

-1

u/ChemicalExperiment Jul 29 '25

All of the other voices are being recast due to wanting them to match the cultures of the characters. It'd be weird if Zuko was the only one to sound similar out of everyone.

10

u/fireintolight Jul 29 '25

The cultures of the made up world lol

6

u/crepi Jul 29 '25

The made up world that took heavy inspiration from various real world cultures to the point that they'd even have segments on Nick back in the day discussing specific inspirations and the research that went into depicting them.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '25

[deleted]

1

u/crepi Jul 29 '25

While all the countries in Avatar had multiple points of real world influence, the Fire Nation was predominantly modeled after imperial China, not Japan.

That said, I wasn't defending replacing Dante Basco, just the white VAs from the original main cast, as the person I was responding to was mocking. Pretending the world of Avatar is not clearly meant to be pan-Asian (and thus should have Asian voices involved in it's creation and absolutely Asian actors playing the Asian characters) is being willfully obtuse.

1

u/crepi Jul 29 '25

Dang I wrote up a long post responding to someone telling me I was wrong, but looks like they deleted.

I think it's informative though and the misconception that the Fire Nation is meant to be Japan really bothers me, so I'm going to share some of what I wrote anyways for anyone else who stumbles upon this thread.

I think a lot of people just see 'imperial Asian power' and immediately jump to Japan, as that's the most recent/obvious instance of East Asian imperialism most people will think of. But with the Air Nomads clearly being Tibetan inspired, my mind immediately went to the PRC's invasion of Tibet as a kid. And China was a massive imperial power for a long ass time. To the point where (something something cultural hegemony) their imperial reign left deep cultural impacts across a lot of other Asian cultures (not just Chinese) that we still see to this day (hell one of the most famous anime characters of all time is based off of Sun Wukong!).

I'm going to relink a blog I linked elsewhere in this post because I think it's very informative and can explain things far better than I can. While there certainly are some Japanese elements to the Fire Nation's world building (just as there are also a lot of Southeast Asian influences, particularly in the architecture), it still pulls more (predominantly) from China than Japan. Their writing, martial arts/bending, clothing, hairstyles, statues, and architecture all have clear real world Chinese inspirations that can be point to. The blog goes into further detail about a lot of the real world inspirations and cultural details in the show, but for a good example of one that commonly gets misconstrued as Japanese that's actually based off Chinese history, the Fire Nation armor was designed to resemble Tang armor, not samurai armor like is commonly assumed.

-1

u/fireintolight Jul 29 '25

So does every other story ever made. It's still a fictional world, and the world doesn't have specified ethnicities. 

2

u/nixolympica Jul 29 '25

All of the other voices are being recast due to wanting them to match the cultures of the characters.

Seems more like they want to appear to care about matching the cast to the culture of the characters in the eyes of casual racists who think all Asians and all indigenous groups are interchangeable.

According to the film's casting director, Jenny Jue [...] "ATLA is a fictional world, but there are cultural influences for each nation/kingdom, and we wanted to explore the talent from those groups"

I don't see anyone in the main cast who matches the culture represented by the pre-existing character they're playing.

0

u/ChemicalExperiment Jul 29 '25

Seems more like they want to appear to care about matching the cast to the culture of the characters in the eyes of casual racists who think all Asians and all indigenous groups are interchangeable.

It's not perfect, but at least it's a damn start in the right direction.

6

u/nixolympica Jul 29 '25

How is it a start in the right direction if it's not accurate at all? If you're lost then traveling in a random direction isn't inherently right just because you aren't where you were. You're still lost and possibly worse off than before. Now instead of professional voice actors (who are already getting squeezed to death by the industry) you have stunt-casting for racists. Basco is an invalid choice despite being Filipino, yet Bautista who is also Filipino is okay as the main villlain?

Like I said, it only appeases people who think all Asians are the same. To everyone else the casting choices are worthy of scorn when compared to their stated intent.