History Trivia / TheLastAirbender

** As noted above though, some time after the film's release, Shyamalan has admitted he though the film was a "junk film".

* DeletedRole: 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.

** Creator/NicolaPeltz was cast as Katara largely because [[{{Nepotism}} she's the daughter of businessman Nelson Peltz, who the producers owed a favor]]; her audition tape was described as [[DullSurprise "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.

** Creator/NicolaPeltz was cast as Katara largely because [[{{Nepotism}} she's the daughter of businessman Nelson Peltz, who the producers owed a favor]]; her audition tape was described as [[DullSurprise "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 a fan of the series who could capture the character's humour, but the producers cut the intentional jokes from the script 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.

** [[Music/JesseMcCartney 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 ''Film/SlumdogMillionaire''. 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 actors[[note]] 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 [[/note]], resulting in a film about heroic white kids fighting evil brown people.