“‘Suaviter fortiter.’ That’s gonna be my next tattoo.” Actor Jackson Rathbone made this declaration last week while he and actress Nicola Peltz were in Tokyo to promote The Last Airbender, a new fantasy adventure movie.
The film was directed by M. Night Shyamalan and is based on a popular American animated TV series called Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Rathbone, 25, and Peltz, 15, play a brother and sister named Sokka and Katara who are members of a polar ethnic group called the Southern Water Tribe. Their parents have been abducted by marauders from the imperialistic Fire Nation, leaving Sokka, a young warrior, responsible for the care of his little sister, Katara.
Rathbone explained that “Suaviter Fortiter” is the Latin motto on his family crest, and that it means “sweetly yet bravely” or “nice and strong.” It’s a phrase that could describe Sokka’s responsibilities as a fighter and a surrogate parent.
“It’s the idea of being strong in who you are and your beliefs and what you think, but also being respectful as much as you can be without breaking. Literally, ‘Rathbone’ is a stick, a reed, that bends without breaking,” Rathbone said in a joint interview he and Peltz gave The Daily Yomiuri.
The actor, whose full name is Monroe Jackson Rathbone V, comes from a family that can boast of more than just a Latin motto. His ancestors include Stonewall Jackson, a Confederate general in the American Civil War, and Monroe Jackson Rathbone II, who was a chairman of Standard Oil. “I’m actually even very thinly related to the incredible English actor Basil Rathbone,” he said.
Similarly, Peltz is the daughter of food industry billionaire Nelson Peltz, the chief executive officer of Wendy’s/Arby’s Group, Inc. “My dad always taught me to work hard and always give 110 percent in everything I do,” she said. “I definitely keep learning and learned a lot from my dad.”
In The Last Airbender, however, Rathbone and Peltz play characters whose only family is each other (plus a very briefly seen grandmother) until they find the title character–who has the psychic power to “bend” air, controlling the wind–trapped in a state of suspended animation in a giant bubble of ice.
“Sokka and Katara stumble across him and we take him in, make him part of our family and then we kind of go on this quest to really right what’s wrong in the world,” Rathbone said.
In the United States, some fans of the anime-style cartoon have protested against the casting Rathbone and Peltz, who are white, in roles the fans saw as Asian.
Asked to comment on that, Rathbone said: “I originally was a finalist for Prince Zuko [a Fire Nation role that went to Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel]. Almost a year later, I was brought back in for the character of Sokka…I think what they were really looking for was the qualities that people represent, not so much focusing on race…All these characters [in the cartoon] have so many different features, you can’t really say that they are one race…It’s a shame that people really focus on the race thing and they don’t understand that it’s a story for everyone.”
“And there are over 120 different types of people in the film,” Peltz added.
“In terms of a big-budget film, it’s most ethnically diverse cast there’s ever been,” Rathbone agreed.
Some of that big budget went toward two weeks of filming in Greenland, while scenes of the Northern Water Tribe’s ice palaces were shot in Pennsylvania in what Rathbone called “the biggest sets built in sound stages on the East Coast. It was incredible. The sets were ridiculously gorgeous…There’s actually rivers and ponds. There is like a flowing river throughout the set.”
“And there’s waterfalls,” Peltz said. “It’s unbelievable. I was like, ‘Can I live here?’ It was awesome.”
Source via jackson-rathbone
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