Ability over Appearance: The filmmakers invoked this against criticism of the Race Lift of various characters. Many years later, accusations came to light that Nicola Peltz was cast as a favor to her billionaire father Nelson, and Jackson Rathbone was subsequently hired to match her appearance. If true, this would probably count as a subversion, particularly with how harshly both actors' performances were criticised.
Actor-Inspired Element: During the open casting call, creator M. Night Shyamalan received a video of Noah Ringer doing performance martial arts. He never originally thought about casting Ringer (saying that he thought "Wow, that's cool", but didn't originally intend to have so much of it in, or not quite so awesome), but then called him in for some acting auditions and screen tests to see if he could double anyway. He was apparently so impressed by the boy, who does look a lot like Aang as well, that he was hired.
Cast the Expert: Noah Ringer (Aang) was cast more for his martial arts experience (he earned a black belt in Taekwondo at the age of ten, and was very proficient with a staff) than his acting ability; in fact, he had to take acting lessons before shooting started because he’d never acted in front of a green screen before. However, he did seem to have the personality that would fit Aang (energetic, fun-loving, etc.), and he had already shaved his head. This ironically lines up with Aang's ability since, in the show, Aang was considered a master airbender by the age of 12, hence the arrow tattoos.
Jackson Rathbone auditioned for Zuko before being cast as Sokka.
Seychelle Gabriel (Yue's actress) originally auditioned for the role of Katara, but subsequently lost out to Nicola Peltz.
Christmas Rushed: The reason this film clocks in at 100 minutes long is that Paramount wouldn’t budge on the lucrative Independence Day Weekend release even though they mandated that it be converted to 3D. There just wasn’t enough time to convert the original cut of the film and they didn’t want to play two versions of the same film. Ultimately, this was all rendered pointless as it managed to roughly break even financially despite its release date.
In a 2019 lecture Shyamalan gave at New York University, he called this along with After Earth "junk movies," with the critical failure they received making him disillusioned with the Hollywood system and leading him to self-fund his own movies in the future.
Dev Patel admitted that he regretted participating in the film, stating that his ideas were never heard by anyone and that the experience made him decide not to participate in major studio films.
Creator's Favorite: Shyamalan made no secret that Zuko was his favorite character, and who he considers "the true hero" of the story.
Creator Killer: M. Night Shyamalan’s career wasn’texactlyspotless before this film, but it looked to be the final nail in the coffin. He was neither the screenwriter (though he did get a “story by” credit) nor the director of his next film, Devil, and his name actually drew jeers from audiences when it appeared in trailers. His next directorial effort, After Earth, did not mention him in any promotional material and also avoided showing his name until the ending credits rolled. He has begun a tentative comeback with The Visit and Split, though.
Creator's Oddball: M. Night’s only direct adaptation, only children’s film, and also only action-adventure film.
Jackson Rathbone (24 at the time of release) as Sokka (15–16). The actress who was intended to play Suki, Jessica Andres, was the same age. The other characters are played by actors of a closer age. Rathbone apparently had a good screen test with Peltz and very much looked like her older brother. He looks awkward playing opposite Dev Patel, who is six years younger despite playing a character one year his senior.
Summer Bishil is 2 years older than Dev Patel, whereas Azula is 2 years younger than Zuko.
Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors were in the earlier cuts of the film but didn’t make the theatrical version once Paramount mandated a 100 minute runtime.
A fortune teller - the film's version of Aunt Wu - originally appeared to help Aang contact Gyatso from the beyond the grave (though it's made clear that she's just a sham). She would then get possessed by the Dragon Spirit, who ominously warns Aang about the Fire Nation's attack on the Northern Water Tribe.
Deleted Scene: A significant number, the exclusion of them apparently due to Executive Meddling. At 100 minutes the movie had a real breakneck pace, with the deleted scenes fleshing out the story, personalities and doing some more world building. Notably, an entire subplot with Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors were part of the film. Some have noted that a lot of these scenes harken closer to the spirit of the show, with one in particular having Aang enjoy himself dancing with villagers after rooting out the Fire Nation (versus almost always being rather dour throughout the movie).
Disowned Adaptation: Avatar co-creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko seem to share their fanbase’s distaste for the film, having said in interviews that it distorted their vision of Avatar and have even advised people, including members of the original cast, not to watch it.
Executive Meddling: Nepotism, script rewrites, and cut scenes to keep the movie under 100 minutes long seem to have ultimately killed Shyamalan and company's enthusiasm for the project, leading them to phone it in just to get their paychecks. A crew member of the movie posted on the film's Troubled Production. To add insult to injury, production of the film was rushed at different times just to get it converted to 3-D in time for its release. In fact, there are said to be about twenty differences between the film and its novelization alone.
Magnum Opus Dissonance: During filming, M. Night Shyamalan proclaimed this would be his best movie. Given that it won five Golden Raspberry Awards and lost Paramount Pictures a fair chunk of change to boot, it's probably safe to say it is not.
As noted above though, some time after the film's release, Shyamalan has admitted he thought the film was a "junk film".
Two of them involve Sokka. One has him flirting with Yue by telling her “I taught him that,” implying that he was talking about Aang. Another one had him cheering during the climactic battle after defeating the Fire Nation. It’s pretty jarring that they were cut, since they were quite in-character for Sokka.
Anything with the Warriors of Kyoshi, whose entire story was cut. The entire teaser was not even meant for the original movie. This got to the point where entire TV spots for the film were made of footage never seen in the film itself.
As result of the legal requirements regarding dubs, the Latin American Spanish dub doesn't use the Chilean voice cast from the TV series, but this one was dubbed in Mexico instead.
Likewise, the Japanese dub use a very different cast from the one from the TV series as well.
The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi as Admiral Zhao. At least he’s already got the ham down.
Although M. Night Shyamalan is famous for his supernatural movies, this movie marks his first fantasy action-adventure epic, as well as his first franchise-based adaptation.
Shyamalan first heard about the show when his daughter asked to be Katara for Halloween. After watching a few episodes, he decided to make an adaptation almost immediately.
Nicola Peltz was a fan of the show, and Katara in particular, before being cast as her.
Star-Derailing Role: Most of the performers with major roles in this film saw this happen to them, with Ringer only appearing in one other nuclear Box Office BombGenre-Killer, Cowboys & Aliens, the next year, and he hasn't appeared on the big screen since. However, Dev Patel (Zuko), Shaun Toub (Iroh), Aasif Mandvi (Zhao), Cliff Curtis (Ozai) and Seychelle Gabriel (Yue), escaped this.note Gabriel, as a matter of fact, remained in the Nickelodeon Avatar franchise and took the major role of Asami Sato in The Legend of Korra, which was a Star-Making Role for her. Bryan and Mike even note that getting to meet Seychelle was one of the few positives that came from this train wreck of a film. Likewise, Nicola Peltz managed to get later roles in Bates Motel and the Transformers franchise, since her Stage Dad Nelson is a businessman and an investor.
Stillborn Franchise: The intention behind this film was clearly to be the first of a trilogy, and that the other two seasons of the original show were to be adapted next. Its lackluster performance at the box office put an effective stop to these plans, but even after the film failed, Shyamalan expressed hope that he could one day get a sequel off the ground as late as 2015. Viacom did not share this idea: the next live-action adaptation would be a a television series set in a new continuity, while the franchise's next theatrical outing would be an animated film set in the main continuity and overseen by the original creators.
Shyamalan, a fan of the series, wrote a seven-hour treatment spanning all twenty first season episodes, one reason why it gained Avatar creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko's approval. Unfortunately, Paramount was not nearly as familiar with or fond of the series, and they were in charge of some of the film's more poorly-received aspects, starting with the casting.
Nicola Peltz was cast as Katara largely because she's the daughter of businessman Nelson Peltz, who the producers owed a favor; her audition tape was described as "subpar at best." This one unfair decision is almost singlehandedly responsible for the infamous whitewashing, as a Caucasian Katara forced the casting of a Caucasian Sokka. Jackson Rathbone was at least familiar with the series and auditioned with Sokka's sense of humour in mind, but the producers cut the intentional jokes out in the interest of time, leaving the dull characterization of Sokka that landed in the finished product. Noah Ringer as Aang had talent but lacked experience, and felt particularly lost in talking to air for scenes that would be green-screened later.
Jesse McCartney was originally cast as Zuko, since the producers wanted at least one star in the main cast. Paramount soon realized the problem they had created for themselves by whitewashing the entire cast. They couldn't get rid of Peltz (and Rathbone with her), so McCartney voluntarily stepped down and was replaced by Dev Patel, fresh from his star-making turn in Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire. Unfortunately, Patel's casting actually exacerbated the problem, as it had the domino effect of necessitating the re-casting of the Fire Nation characters, the film's antagonists, with brown-skinned actorsnote for reference - Aasif Mandvi (Zhao) and Patel himself are both British-Indian, Shaun Toub (Iroh) is Persian/Iranian, Cliff Curtis (Ozai) is Māori, and Summer Bishil (Azula) is Indian-Mexican , resulting in a film about heroic white kids fighting evil brown people.
The budget was also very sloppily allocated. The opening scenes at the South Pole were shot on location in Greenland at great expense, but after the producers decided that they couldn't believably render the scenes of elemental manipulation with camera practical effects and so gave a large fraction of the budget to Industrial Light & Magic for post-production of those scenes, most of the rest of the location shooting was done on a far more modest scale in Pennsylvania. The Fire Nation palace was a Philadelphia high school, the Earth Kingdom was the area in and around Reading, and the North Pole scenes were shot in an old aircraft hangar and greenscreened.
Post-production was similarly rushed and left in the hands of staff members hopelessly out of their depths, leading to such scenes as the widely derided "pebble dance". By this point, Shyamalan had given up arguing with the overheads, and DiMartino and Konietzko were only listed as executive producers because they created the original series, not because they were allowed any input into the film itself. Finally, 30 minutes were cut when Paramount decided at the last minute to convert it to 3-D and found there wasn't enough money to convert the entire film. The result was eviscerated by critics and fans of the series, DiMartino and Konietzko publicly disowned the film altogether, and Shyamalan eventually came to regret his involvement.
Word of God: When describing why the Earthbenders didn’t escape from the quarry, Shyamalan responded that they were “too dispirited” to do so. This answer somehow makeslesssense when you think about it. This actually was the reason in the show, but it was caused by circumstances which were totally different. While dispirited, the Earthbenders in the show were on a coal derrick made out of metal, located in the middle of the ocean, rather than the landbound quarry in the film.
One of The Last Airbender’s Razzies was for Worst Picture of 2010. Another was the one-time “Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3-D.” It also "won" Worst Screenplay, Worst Director and Worst Supporting Actor (Jackson Rathbone, who also won for his role in Eclipse). The film also received four additional nominations, tying it with Eclipse for the most razzie nominations of that year.
Video Game
Bonus Material: The game has little tokens scattered around the levels. Each contains movie concept art, which did have the cartoon in mind when it was drawn. Others focused on what the movie actually went with.
he called this along with After Earth "junk movies," with the critical failure they received making him disillusioned with the Hollywood system and leading him to self-fund his own movies in the future.