You would be hard-pressed to find someone who will not agree that Avatar: the Last Airbender is one of the best animated series to hit American TV in the last decade. It’s an epic fantasy saga with a thoroughly engaging storyline and set of characters that, despite the show airing on Nickelodeon, is just as appealing to adults as it is to kids. So when adapting that into a big-budget, special-effects laden action movie from Paramount, how can you go wrong? Well, as The Last Airbender proves, there are ways.
Beware the Angry Fans
The first thing to note is that writer/director M. Night Shyamalan has taken it upon himself to make a few subtle changes, that don’t affect the film for what it is but will bias fans of the cartoon series against it. For one thing, the pronunciations of character names Aang, Sokka, and Iroh are different in the film. While the pronunciation used in the movie may actually be more politically correct, that doesn’t matter; the pronunciation of these names has already been cemented in the fans’ minds, and the only thing changing that accomplishes is making them mad.