Spoony wrote:You're deciding which countries are and are not significant now? Mind showing me your measurement scale there? What about Indonesia? Vietnam? Tibet? India? Sri Lanka? All insignificant?
They are the ones with greatest internal diversity and are the largest in scale. Also, they are the ones that the west is best in touch with. So yes, significant, at least as far notability goes. (By the way, when I said two of the three largest and significant, the third I was referring to was India.)
Also, there were Indians (although they were few), and the Air Nomads seemed Tibetan to me.
North Korea, not South. They're incredibly different. I doubt that's why they added them either. They put North Korean aspects in because they wanted some militaristic bad guys. Also, geographical proximity doesn't really have much bearing on culture.
I didn't see the Fire Nation as North Korean that strongly, but all right.
But I'd like to say that I don't see how proximity
doesn't result in cultural similarity. The Japanese would never have used Kanji or knew Confucius if China were on another continent.
Ghibli movies, Monkey, Firefly (yes, watch it again) The Magnificent Seven (horrible movie, but a Western one heavily inspired by The Seven Samurai), Death Note (very Western), Jade Empire (game, not a movie, but still an excellent example), Little Buddha, Kundun, The Dish, Kung Fu Hustle, Fire (movie about lesbians in a very male-dominant society)... there's thousands of examples out there, the fact that you can't think of any only illustrates a lack of knowledge on your part...
I said "made in the west".
I love Studio Ghibli, but they're from Japan.
Monkey is from Japan.
Death Note uses a lot of western ideas such as utilitarian ethics, but it's from Japan.
Kung Fu Hustle was an awesome movie but it was from Jap-I mean, from Hong Kong.
Fire was from India, as far as I understand. I could be wrong.
I also said "show", not "movie"; I was thinking of TV series when I typed that. Otherwise, I'll admit that I have never seen Kundun, nor played Jade Empire.
But Firefly was an interesting example. I know they use Chinese all the time, and I believe Inara was a Buddhist, but I don't know if I'd call it culturally deep. It had a strong western cyberpunk dystopian future (wow, that's a mouthful) feel that lends itself to being cultureless, in my opinion.
(Now that I think of it, for all the Chinese that Firefly used, none of the main characters were Chinese. It doesn't matter that much, but I find it funny.)
...only illustrates a lack of knowledge on your part.
:I Sounds a bit too ad hominem for my tastes.
On another note, I've never seen In Bruges, but I want to.
And the Wolfman seems interesting. I'm glad that there are movie makers out there who want monsters to be monstrous instead of date high school girls.
