Netflix's big-budget, live-action remake of Avatar: The Last Airbender has been a huge success. In terms of viewing figures, it's currently the biggest show on the planet. While we're still waiting for confirmation of a second season, its stars are setting their sights on using the experience to help find other big projects to get involved in.
Take 22-year-old Dallas Liu, who's burst onto the scene thanks to his brilliant portrayal of Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. Liu previously had a small role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Ruihua Chen in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Now he wants Marvel Studios to cast him as a much more significant MCU hero. But like his Avatar character, he wants to stick with fire by playing Pyro from the X-Men franchise, when mutants inevitably become more widespread in the franchise.
"Iceman is a good pick just because I felt like nobody wants to talk about him," Liu told Nerdist. "But now I would have to say I’m fully Pyro. He’s so bad. So bad. I think it’s a lot easier to imagine fire in a fight scene versus ice. You don’t know exactly the shape of it, how fast it’s moving. So yeah, I’m fully just Team Fire in general. The color red, it’s good."
Dallas Liu got creative freedom to bend fire in Avatar: The Last Airbender
The bending in the Avatar remake looks really good, unlike in the 2010 movie, where it took a group of earth-benders to shift one rock. In order to capture the magic of the original animated series, the team allowed the actors to use their imagination and run with it, giving the moves a natural feeling.
"We got to use our imagination to imagine what these bending strikes would look like and how the fire would rotate," Liu explained. "So yeah, it felt like second nature to me, and the stunt team was nice enough to let me have some input on what these fights would look like."
He recalls one fight in particular that he got plenty of freedom in creating. "There were a few fire blasts in me and Zhao’s fight that I really got to play with."
Avatar: The Last Airbender is now streaming on Netflix.
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