If The Last Airbender was remade

From what I saw in a couple of reviews it seemed like the movie replicated season 1 by taking the plot relevant episodes and then just doing them really fast.

And doing them in a very stupid fashion.

For instance, the "liberating the Earthbenders" scene. EVERYTHING about it. Not only did it rob Katara of one of her best moments, it was so fundamentally stupid in every way that by the time I got to it in the movie, I was reduced to gaping at the TV in a combination of disgust and awe at the god-awfulness.

Oh, come on, don't tell me you didn't laugh at the infamous "pebble dance."

It streamlined the details but the movie was basically taking these episodes and stringing them together.

• The Boy in the Iceberg
• The Avatar Returns
• The Southern Air Temple
• The Waterbending Scroll
• Imprisoned
• Avatar Roku/The Storm (elements of both were mixed in throughout the movie)
• The Northern Air Temple/The Blue Spirit (location of the first with the story of the second, truthfully probably the best part of the movie)
• The Waterbending Master
• Seige of the North 1 and 2

The Warriors of Kyoshi had scenes cut from the final movie and Shyamalan said he really wanted to put June the Bounty Hunter (from Bato of the Water Tribe) into the movie in some way but was ultimately an unneeded episode.

If all you did was watch those episodes it would only be about 3 1/2-4 hours, and streamlining them (tell it as part of one interconnected adventure rather than 10 or so individual stories) it wouldn't be difficult to get it down to 2 1/2-3 hours.

Frankly the movie as is had problems that don't even have to do with being unfaithful to the source material.

1. Even with the explanation of having machines, the Firebenders shouldn't have held that much of an edge over the other nations. In order to make the Firebenders strong, the movie pretty much had Aang, the Waterbenders and the Earthbenders taking turns with the idiot ball. Kind of like how Aladdin The Animated Series had the Genie not making full use of the magic he had to get them out of danger, only whereas with the Genie it was intentional, with TLA it's out of place since we even have one scene where the Waterbenders are told to put out the torches.

2. Questionable moments like Aang taking about a day to give his name to Sokka and Katara, or Zhao immediately suspecting Zuko to be the Blue Spirit without showing him coming across evidence.

3. In any movie with a good vs evil type of a story, you make sure that the main villain is defeated by a main character. Not a bunch of random characters. Even having Pakku do the deed would be sensible.

Take the first Ninja Turtles movie. Sure, the Turtles don't defeat Shredder, but he's still taken down by two characters who've had significant screentime (Splinter and Casey Jones). Heck, even the 3rd movie for all of it's flaws had the main villain being brought down by his associate (who had quite a bit of screentime) This isn't about faithfulness to the source material, it's good storytelling in general.

4. The characters just didn't seem to have any personality. I'm not talking about them having different personalities from the show, I'm saying none at all. Kind of like the Superfriends, where the heroes and villains were different in name, costume and powers only.

edited 2nd Apr '12 10:26:30 PM by Antiyonder

To be fair, Sokka in the movie seemed to have a personality; it was just that of an unrepentant douchenozzle.

edited 4th Mar '12 11:43:03 PM by 0dd1

Meh. Much like how the casting of Zhao is unintentionally amusing, I can't help but feel that Sokka's "personality" is unintentional as well.

The nerfing of the Firebenders' abilities into "must have an external source of fire" made their conquest of the world so much harder to swallow. Plus it made the protagonists look very bloody stupid since they never once...you know...extinguish the torches/campfires/etc. to reduce their opponents to standard mooks rather than fire-flailing mooks.

And really, the problem with that change isn't differing from the source material, but more like a change not well thought out.

Cause frankly, it seemed like that line about their machinery was a last minute rationalization to sell the Firebenders as a threat.

They had some interesting ideas, as they not only had some tanks but also that fire cannon used to punch a hole into the ice wall and those personal drillers so they came up under the feet of the enemy soldiers. While the waterbenders weren't shown trying to put out the napalm cages those kind of things make sense with firebender battle strategy.

For me what made the movie hurt wasn't that it was a bad adaptation but that it had so much potential to be a GREAT adaptation and never took advantage of all the different ideas they had.

If this were remade, the two creators of the original show should be producing it, and it should be animated. In an interview, they said they could be interested in producing a feature animated film after Korra. Simple and done with.

edited 13th Apr '12 12:50:31 PM by kyun

Get the voices actors back together and make an animated movie set after the end of the series. It may not have the stakes of the series final, but I doubt that Ozai was last villain Aang ever fought.

Make it an animated movie chronicling the first season written by the guys who did the television series. Add some scenes that weren't in the original series that flesh out the characters and world more, make the theatrical animation look GLORIOUS etc.

Basically what they should have done in the first place.

If I made a live-action Avatar The Last Airbender, I would not only get actual Asian actors to play the characters, I would have to insist that Ken Jeong play the Cabbage Merchant.

Make Appa and Momo actually cute, not those horrendous photoshopped monsters that M Night went for.

Also, Question. What if instead of hiring brand new actors, they had just trained the voice actors on the show to perform in the film? Would people still jump on all of those racial issues- I mean even if Aang was white, because his original actor is still playing him, Aang is still Aang.

EDIT: I'm aware of their relative ages, being that they would probably be a bit too old to play the characters themselves, so let's just say that by some Temporal Stasis Thingy they were all their relative ages for the film.

edited 15th Apr '12 10:59:16 AM by Mattonymy

Well, I think one thing that's important to note about that is how Dante Basco wanted the role of Zuko in the film but was refused.

I think the fans were the ones who wanted him (especially because of being Rufio in Hook) and he was flattered, but freely admitted he was too old and out of shape to pull it off.

Just because "voice acting" has the word "acting" in it doesn't mean that it's the same thing as acting in a live action movie. There are those who do both (Mark Hamill for starters, for an Avatar-ish connection), but it's not guaranteed that a VA can do both.

edited 15th Apr '12 3:35:47 PM by Nohbody

They could get trained. Anyone can become an actor, with practice and time commitment. Plus these people know their characters better than anyone else (sans Mike and Bryan)

KJ: Well I do recall reading a blog post he made where he said he wanted the role, but I could be misremembering.

Most of the voice actors are too old to play their characters live action. And to be perfectly honest I think a live action adaptation is already starting on the wrong foot most of the time. I think either a sequel movie or an anime style Non-Serial Movie would be the best option for bringing Avatar to the big screen.

edited 15th Apr '12 10:37:59 PM by BigMadDraco

As someone who is not part of the fan base, I would still probably go with Inuits/Japanese actors, or Chinese People that looked close enough. Why, because assuming I'm a Hollywood studio, it would be different for my peers and because a lot of people whined about my predecessor. Mostly unknowns, like in Apocalypto.

I would make animatronic monsters in the vein of Jurassic Park a selling point, particularly the flying bison. There would at some point be a race, chase scene or battle focused around flying a bunch of flying bison and that would be the scene used most in my trailers.

Ang's wire work would mimic the flying snow from Jet Li's Hero and the Rubber Man from Kung Fu Hussle. Somewhere a water bender will drop a shout out to the Matrix Revolutions, a fire bender will throw hadokens and an Earth Bender will summon the rock monster from Galaxy Quest.

Rather than try to adapt any "arc" I will instead make use of the episodic show and run a mostly original story that aims to be somewhat accurate to the setting and its characters. It would start with a summary on the air benders while a of a group of them battled a Lawyer-Friendly Cameo of Aku alongside the avatar, then it would cut to the warpath of the Fire Nation and the last of the Air Benders in the current time, Ang.

Edit:I'm sure everyone would hate that premise, so to take it even further

It will be revealed that the opening scene was simply the air benders cleaning up their own mess. They let the filth into the world and for a long time, it was believed that they were the only ones who could sweep it back out until the Fire Nation King, emboldened by technological advancements, new archery techniques and improvements in lightning control, decided the Air Benders were no longer needed and wiped them out. He wasn't nearly as meticulous in removing the contamination from the world though, the filth was allowed to fester and a new terror arose from its remains.

Though Fire Nation officials believe this only to be a minor setback, outside observers fear their defeat is inevitable without assistance from the Avatar. A large amount of the Fire Nation's Armed forces are also dedicated to exterminating the avatar, as he is the last of the King's much older and more familiar enemies, the last air bender.

edited 12th Jun '12 6:37:36 PM by Cider

Forget doing a single movie at all; instead, make it a live-action miniseries. That way the writers can develop clear beginning-middle-end parts. The first season was too serialized to come up with a proper full movie without a bunch of stop-and-starts, regardless of how bad M.Night ruined the 'verse with his "Firebenders can't attack if it's raining" idea.

The miniseries could adapt the first season, except the last 3 episodes; then they could do a movie on the last 3 eps. Then repeat the same process for season 2 (miniseries until they get to the Earth Kingdom, then do a movie as a sequel) and season 3 (miniseries, then adapt the last 4 eps into a 3rd film).

Mini-series? Don't they have the problem of having nowhere near the necessary budget?