Line #77 WMG/TheLastAirbender


1	[[WMG: The Firebenders were Able to Conquer the Other Three Nations by Bending Magma.]]
2	Without the ability to create their own fire, the Firebenders (or, at least, the most powerful ones) had to learn to summon the magma from the very core of the planet. With this power, they were able to take over the world by flooding town after town with molten lava (as well as the fires that they create). Additionally, they're also capable of erupting and then controlling volcanoes- specifically, supervolcanoes, which literally have the potential to wipe out the entire human species. Given all these powers, it's easy to understand how Firebenders were able to get the other nations to surrender.
3	* Granted, magis arguably more earth than it is fire, but then again, where there is lava, there is certainly fire, and it's plausible to believe that the Firebenders are more powerful than the Earthbenders, so their control over the substance would be more powerful as well.
4	** Considering earthbenders are apparently very, very stupid, based on the prison camp, it doesn't seem like the Fire Nation would need anything more than pointy sticks to conquer them.
5	* ''The Legend of Korra'' reveals that magma ''can'' be bent by certain people... however, it's an ''Earthbending'' technique, not a Firebending one.
6
7	[[WMG: The movie Avatar was actually the true adaptation of the Avatar cartoon.]]
8	* Alternately, both the cartoon and the movie are adaptations of the real in-universe events produced many years later, as Liberty's Kids and 1776 come at the same time period and feature many of the same characters. (I would prefer closer analogs, but haven't found them yet.
9	* After season 4 of Korra, this becomes significantly more plausible. [[spoiler:Since the opening of the spirit portals, the ecosystems from the spirit world and human world start to compete. Spirits - both plant and animal - are generally more intelligent and more powerful than most animals, so in time they take over the human world ecosystem, resulting in the weird glowing animals and the huge jungles reminiscent of the Republic City vines. Both the Avatar and Last Airbender planets have a huge "spirit tree" connecting all life. Unobtainium is either spirit world weirdness, or rocks somehow imbued with Guru Laghima's weightlessness. The avatar cycle was broken, and the human population has died out because the ecosystem turned too hostile for them to handle, because they lost a war against sapient spirits (confirmed to exist, via Wan's story), or some other reason, and that's why nobody is using bending.]] Completely independently from that, humans evolved on the nearby actual planet Earth as well (which lacks spirits, and therefore bending), and traveled to the Avatar world for the precious unobtainium.
10
11	[[WMG: The word "Avatar" is blessed as a title.]]
12	A cartoon and a film with "Avatar" in/as the title became instant sensations. ''The Last Airbender'' failed because they dropped the magic word from the title.
13	** That doesn't quite explain ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', though, which was successful despite also dropping "Avatar" from the title.
14
15	[[WMG: The 'friends' that were to be sacrificed during the battle were Mai and Ty Lee]]
16	During the scene when the boy and Zuko are relaying the story of the Fire Nation prince, Zuko mentions that he was trying to defend his friends from being sacrificed in a battle. What better bait than a pair of children of influential Fire Nation aristocrats?
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20	[[WMG: They will inevitably write around the plothole caused by Avatars being unable to have a family by...]]
21	[[spoiler:Keeping in the plot point that Zuko and Azula were descended from Avatar Roku, but it will have been ''an affair''.]]
22
23	[[WMG: Alternatively, Avatars are not allowed to have a family, but Roku broke the rules.]]
24	With disastrous results, as his desire to settle down with a family prevented him from taking the necessary steps to preserve peace, which would have required a much greater time commitment.
25
26	[[WMG: M. Night's real twist is that Zuko joins Aang rather than Azula at the end of the book 2 movie]]
27	It would help cut out a lot of what he would need to do to adapt book 3 into a movie by not having to show Zuko going back to the Fire Nation and could jump into Aang's firebending training right away.
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29	[[WMG: Alternatively, his twist would have been ''Azula'' being the one who does a HeelFaceTurn]]
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31	[[WMG: The cameraman was Koh.]]
32	That's why the acting is so dead; they literally couldn't show any expression to keep from having their faces stolen.
33	** You are awesome, good sir/madam.
34
35	[[WMG: Shyamalan was attempting to make the anti-Ember Island Players]]
36	He just went too far in the other direction. Thus, movie-Sokka lost the comedic side of his character, movie-Aang lost his [[{{Keet}} bounciness]], movie-Katara never got to make her stirring speech about hope to the imprisoned earthbenders, and Movie!Iroh is skinny.
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38	[[WMG: Movie!Iroh got his dreadlocks during his spiritual quest.]]
39	This assumes that the movieverse Fire Nation has Indian influences beyond Dev Patel and a few references to Agni. In some strains of Hinduism, dreadlocks are associated with asceticism and spiritual power, and the Vedic "Hymn of the Longhaired Sage" mentions mastery of fire.
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41	[[WMG: The Film is a case of UnreliableNarrator.]]
42	Obviously it is in no way connected to the cartoon but instead is a story about a plucky nation deciding they no longer wish to be under the oppressive thumb of the Spiritworld and by definition the Avatar, only the story is told from the point of view of the oppressors. This way it is logical why the Earthbenders are kept in an open place with no attempt to cover the ground with something they couldn't use, the Firebenders kill people (it's a revolution after all), but see no point in killing needlessly. Also explains why we never really see the much talked about Machines and why the most sympathetic people in the film are the guys playing the Firebenders, it was genius casting by M.Night. The entire film is in fact a propaganda story told by the supporters of the Avatar, Katara and Co might never have actually existed and are simply badly thought through characters in the story.
43
44	[[WMG: Shaymalan thought the [[VillainProtagonist real hero]] was Iroh.]]
45	He was certainly more heroic than any of the actual MainCharacters. His giving Yue the idea for her HeroicSacrifice rather than it being her own choice all along was just the icing on the cake. Movie!Iroh was more [[Film/ThePhantomMenace Qui-Gon Jinn]] than the tea-crazy, wise-but-world-weary DefectorFromDecadence that ATLA!Iroh was.
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47	[[WMG: Shaymalan intentionally made the world's most elaborate FixFic.]]
48	The sheer number of things that were changed and cropped out make little sense, for such a supposed "fan" of the series, other than he wanted to do the Avatar story his way - the "right" way. Look at all the unnecessary changes, the skewed characterization, the change in perspective (more focus on Ozai, less on Katara, Sokka, Momo, and Appa), the different tone, shortening a lengthy plot, events working out differently. Film Adaptations have to change some things, but did they really need to change ''so much''? Some of the changes were necessary (mainly leaving a few things out due to time constraints), but a lot of them were pure AuthorAppeal (changing the name pronunciations, the change in firebending) since they didn't really have any affect to the plot and served more to [[TheyChangedItNowItSucks piss people off]] than anything else.
49	* It's more possible [[http://atla-annotated.tumblr.com/post/14793155731/on-the-movie-and-why-the-casting-is-the-least-of#note-container evidence]] with racism and a side of UsefulNotes/MisplacedNationalism.
50	* The characterization of Sokka in the film seems closer to his original characterization in the cartoon's test-pilot, rather than what we got in the official cartoon series.
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52	[[WMG: Due to near universal panning of the first film, the other two planned films will never be released.]]
53	It's been two years, and opinions have not changed. The film also flopped financially.
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55	[[WMG: The movie was intentionally done poorly]]
56	As theorized on the AwesomeDearBoy page, the movie may have been written to intentionally flop and ensure an animated continuation instead of converting to a series of live action movies. Two more movies were planned and they're likely not to come out now. Add into the fact that Shaymalan is a fan of the series.
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58	[[WMG: The movie was Ba Sing Se propaganda]]
59	There is no war in Ba Sing Se... at least, not one worth fighting. The movie was made to make the heroes out to be dull, unlikable people fighting against dull, less-than-threatening villains. That way, people won't get involved if they see the 'heroes' or 'villains' and leave them to their own devices.
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61	[[WMG:The whole movie is part of the Shayamalan movie universe.]]
62	The planet Earth used to be a relatively normal world with questionably intelligent people until ''Film/TheHappening'' occurred, wiping out almost all of humanity and leaving a small percentage of the world population alive. For the next thousand years, the remaining survivors developed advanced enough technology and left Earth, with those who decided to stay behind left to die, which leads to the plot of ''Film/AfterEarth''. After the plot of that movie ends, enough humans have gathered together and decided to terraform and repopulate Earth.\
63	\
64	Before society was established, however, a portal from another dimension suddenly appeared and interdimensional aliens came out of it. Being much more advanced and [[YouCannotGraspTheTrueForm incomprehensible]], humanity fell to these aliens and their technology and intelligence was wiped out, sending them to the Stone Age. The aliens realized their mistakes and decided to look into humanity's past and try to recreate their world as it was back then. However, before the process was complete, they succumbed to the incompatible natures of the reality they were residing in and altogether collapsed into four massive interdimensional-spliced, barely sentient tortoises. They became the landmasses of the modified planet Earth, which the modified (and incomplete) humans have come to live on and procreate. From these tortoises came a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas that filled the planet and reacts with the tampered DNA of some of the humans that allowed them to control the elements, among other abilities. Humanity has created entire religions and cultures around these miracles, thriving off of their advantages.\
65	\
66	And thus sets forth the plot for this movie.\
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68	[[https://archive.foolz.us/co/thread/61124100/#q61139184 Source]]
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70	[[WMG:"The Last Airbender" isn't a satire of the Ember Island Players' version of "The Last Airbender" but Legend of Korra]]
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72	It's a satire of a future Varrick Mover.
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74	You see, M. Night Shyamalan is a Time Lord, and as such he was able to see the future of VarriMovers before we knew movers even existed. There’s a catch though: the mover was based on a remake of the classic Ember Island Players production “The Boy in the Iceberg,” which flopped in the box office due to its poor quality, just like its real world counterpart. So when Shyamalan was saying that the movie was actually good, he quite literally meant it because he was staying true to, and satirizing a mover adaptation of the Ember Island Players “The Boy in the Iceberg.”
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76	In Book 2 of The Legend of Korra, Bolin became a mover star when he played with his role in the Nuktuk movers. Like in the ATLA adaptation, our protagonist was miscast. Instead of being played by someone that looked like they were of Southern Water Tribe descent, or instead of actually getting a waterbender to play Nuktuk, Varrick placed Bolin in that role and hired some waterbenders to compensate for Bolin’s inability to waterbend. Although we do see some light-skinned waterbenders in “Nuktuk,” with some dark- and light-skinned Northern Water Tribe guardsas well, they were most likely from Republic City and not actual natives of the Water Tribes. In-universe, the debate over Varrick’s casting decisions are discussed in such film history lectures as “Was Nuktuk Racist?” “National Representation in Movers,” and “A History of Early Movers.”
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78	Fast forward to what in-universe would correspond to our modern times. VarriMovers is now the biggest movie production company in the avatarverse. A young aspiring director, who we will call Lee, travels to Republic City and pitches a new mover to the heads of VarriMovers by the name of “The Boy in the Iceberg,” based off a classic play by the same name. VarriMovers agree to this proposal, and grant Lee $150 million yuans to make what they think will be the mover of the year…
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80	But it flops for almost the exact same reasons its real-world counterpart did. Although the effects “were decent” as one reviewer put it, the mover was heavily criticized for its terrible writing, its awful casting choices, and its terrible costume design.
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82	Our Time Lord, Shyamalan, instead of actually creating a film adaptation of the show took this future mover and decided to make a movie adaptation of that mover instead which satirized the reasons for its failure tenfold. To properly satirize it, Shyamalan knew that he had to exaggerate every single criticism of the mover. As a result, the actors were even more miscast, the amount of exposition in the film was increased, and the writing remained pretty terrible (most of the bad writing was Shyamalan’s fault though; let’s give some guy some credit at least).
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84	BUT THAT’S NOT ALL! You see, two other big criticisms of “The Boy in the Iceberg” was that it made a mockery of traditional bending forms and that it only counted one firebender among its cast: the guy playing Iroh—the only person in the entire movie/mover who can create his own fire.
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86	In response to the claim that he was mocking traditional bending forms, Lee claimed that the bending forms were quite accurate even though he was quickly proven wrong by several masters and White Lotus members. Unfortunately, the director persisted in his claims regarding bending accuracy.
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88	Although Lee remained silent ion the issue of firebender casting, one popular theory was that the director was secretly an Ozai apologist who wanted to subtly feed his propaganda into the face of the public. This is why we see the earthbenderr prison surrounded by rock—Lee wanted to demonstrate the stupidity of earthbenders who had to be saved by their “savior” the avatar. Some also point to this remark made by lee in an interview following the mover’s first showing “If Nuktuk was allowed to get away with having a non-waterbender playing a waterbending protagonist, why can’t I?”
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90	Also of note was the alteration of Aang’s motives. By saying that Aang ran away because the avatar can’t have a family, it was said by some critics that Lee was trying to attack Aang by making him look like a hypocrite and a coward who ran away and ended up raising a family even though his avatar status would have prevented him from accomplishing this. Of course, avatar scholars quickly pointed out that the avatar could raise a family as demonstrated by avatars Kyoshi and Roku. But revisionists persisted anyway, pointing to sketchy revisionist history books like “The Untold History of the Avatars,” and “The Wounded Dragon” which tend to claim Avatar Aang was an aggressor and a coward who victimized the Fire Nation until the day he died with the help of Firelord Zuko who is still seen in a few small circles as a usu
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92	The mover, like its real world counterpart, was also said to downplay Avatar Aang’s struggle by claiming that the avatar was unable to kill his adversary. Although avatar scholars were again quick to point out this inaccuracy, some less knowledgeable individuals pointed out the fact that Avatar Aang never actually ended up killing Ozai. But here again historians pointed out how plenty of avatars ended up killing people, suggesting instead that Aang’s reluctance to kill the Firelord was due to a conflict between his Air Nomad upbringing and his avatar duties. Unfortunately, this didn't stop people from pointing to less pacist Nomads like Zaheer and others who although they were airbenders, were not originally air nomads prior to Harmonic Convergence in an attempt to claim that the avatar himself was unable to kill.
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94	As a result of the mover’s terribleness, Shyamalan decided that the mover warranted a real-world satire, which eventually manifested itself as “The Last Airbender.”
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96	Bonus: Seychelle Gabriel was hired to play Yue because M Night Shyamalan knew that she was to meet Bryke so that she could eventually voice Asami.
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98	[[WMG: Shyamalan intentionally sabotaged the movie]]

Context WMG / TheLastAirbender