Audience-Alienating Era: For Shyamalan, this movie was easily the lowest point of his career, having received universally bad reviews from professional critics and all corners of the Internet, along with earning a huge backlash for its unfaithful, soulless approach to its source material. It followed up on the critical failure of The Happening and for many (at the time) signaled the end of Shyamalan's dominance in Hollywood. However, after the similar critical failure of After Earth, Shyamalan was able to make a comeback with The Visit and Split.
Awesome Moments: Towards the end when everyone bows down to Aang, there’s a small section of Fire Nation soldiers who also bow.
Awesome Music: Say what you want about its lack of faithfulness to the original show's lovely musical style, but James Newton Howard created an incredibly beautiful soundtrack that tries its hardest to elevate the film. It is genuinely hard to find someone who hates the music of The Last Airbender, with special props going to "Flow Like Water".
Bile Fascination: Those who joined the Avatar fandom after the release of this movie can't help but be curious to know why it was panned to kingdom come.
The debate over the movie casting was so intense that entire forums were divided over it, with those supporting the casting and those against it both being banned for their opinions. Protesters considered those who supported the casting as blind and shrugging off a big issue, while those that eagerly anticipated the movie regardless thought the protesters were not "true" fans.
Firebending only being able to manipulate preexisting flames (except in special circumstances). People either considered it a nonsensical change that severely underpowers firebending, or felt that it now fits with the other three bending types in that it doesn't create the bendable element, only manipulating what already exists. BackstoryThe likely reason why firebenders can summon fire is due to how rare it is to naturally occur, which was explained away in the show by Iroh saying it comes from the firebenders' internal body heat. Shyamalan however thought that this made them too powerful and thus put back in the already-existing requirement.
Film & Zuko's Story prequel: Fire Lord Ozai leads the Fire Nation in endless conquest and war. A brutal tyrant who stifles all dissent, Ozai causes countless deaths in his attempts of conquest, and even sacrifices his own troops without any hint of regret to achieve victory. A horribly abusive father who brutalized, scarred, and exiled his son Zuko for speaking out against such an action, Ozai intends to mold Zuko into a heartless killer like Ozai's other child, Azula.
Commander Zhao is an ambitious Fire Nation militant who seeks the utter annihilation of the Northern Water Tribe. After failing in his plan to imprison the young Avatar, Aang, for the rest of his life, Zhao uses knowledge gleamed from the Great Library to scheme an affront against the Spirit World itself. Zhao goes behind Fire Lord Ozai's back and tries to assassinate Zuko to eliminate him as a rival, before invading the Northern Water Tribe with intent to kill the entire population. To further his goals, Zhao ruthlessly murders the Moon Spirit — lethally wounding Princess Yue in the process — and is uncaring to the broader effects of destruction that such an outrage against the spirits would cause, so long as it weakens the Water Tribe enough for his genocide to be carried out.
Some people have taken to calling this movie's version of Princess Yue "Penis Hair".
Due to the extremely negative reception, many people take the film's odd naming pronunciations of the characters literally in order to disassociate the cast from their animated counterparts. As such, Aang is "Ong" and Sokka is referred to as "Sohka".
Bending in the movie altogether is severely depowered. Instead of the elements moving with the Bender, the Bender preforms entire Kata "to build up Chi" before anything happens, which slows things down and sometimes makes it seem like it would just be better to just fist fight instead.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Claimed by the director. M. Night Shyamalan has claimed on several occasions that the film was better received in Europe, and has gone on to claim that American critics "don't get" his European sensibilites. There is, however, very little evidence that this is true, and Shyamalan has only offered personal anecdotes to support the claims that Europeans like the movie better.
Ham and Cheese: Aasif Mandvi plays Zhao pretty similarly to how he plays himself on The Daily Show, only, well, evil. Ironically, this makes it one of the movie's better performances, since the over-the-top smugness and melodramatic delivery are pretty accurate to how the character was portrayed in the original show.
Harsher in Hindsight: In the movie, Gran Gran Kanna said "Once, a long time ago, the Spirit World kept balance over us." In The Legend of Korra, that pretty much meant the Spirits invaded the human world, spiritformed everything, and forced the remnants of humanity onto the backs of Lion Turtles. Or put another way, "Then, everything changed when the Spirit World attacked."
Heartwarming Moments: The scene where Iroh gives Zuko advice on how to survive the freezing cold before Zuko leaves for the North Pole is genuinely touching, due to how well the actors acted in that scene, with Iroh showing genuine concern for Zuko's welfare. It's one of the few moments to feel like it could have come from the show.
"The Ember Island Players" episode, which came out during the production of the movie. Needless to say, many jokes were to be had using footage from that episode to show how bad the film was — particularly its last line, wherein the heroes say the show they just saw was awful but the effects were nice.
Seychelle Gabriel (Movie Yue) voicing Asami in The Legend of Korra, a character first intended as a simple Romantic False Lead but was changed to become much more prominent when she became popular with the fans. The hilarity doesn't reach its peak until the end of the show, though, where Asami ended up becoming the titular Korra's final love interest. Complete with the fact that Seychelle originally auditioned for the role of Katara, Aang's love interest. So she amusingly ended up the love interest of an Avatar anyway.
Cliff Curtis later joined the sequels to Avatar, the film which gained the ire of Last Airbender fans for preventing The Legend of Korra (and this film itself, but not too many people cared about that) from using the word in its title. Funnily enough, Cliff Curtis even goes from playing a fire lord here to the chief of a water-based tribe in Avatar: The Way of Water.
Before the movie had even come out, early test screening reviews mentioned a scene that turned the phrase "punching the fish" into a meme.note He actually stabs it with a knife.
"Bring me... all your elderly!" Zuko mistakenly assumes that the Avatar is a man in his 80s, but it sounds like he has a fetish for elderly people.
The pebble dance, the most notorious example of Fight Scene Failure mentioned above.note Six Earthbenders. Four seconds of kata. One rock, slightly larger than a human head, gently floating along.
Kat-tackle (Katara pushing over a random guard and then just standing there).
Zhao constantly mentioning the secret library (Movie Zhao mentions the library several times, as opposed to Animated Zhao, who vaguely mentions it once).
Ozai's glowing ass (from a screenshot in which the source of light appears to be Ozai's rear end).
Yue's line about believing in beliefs, and her penis hair (how it looks like when viewed from the back◊).
AANG! JUST ONCE! (Fans of the show got annoyed at how 'Aang' was pronounced 'Ahng.')
X, there is Y under your feet! Why don't you fight? (Aang motivates the imprisoned Earthbenders by pointing out that the material that they can magically manipulate was completely surrounding them.)
A common trend on sites like Reddit is to pretend the film was never made (e.g. "I would’ve liked to see that movie. Too bad it was canceled"). A snowclone of this is to post the statement "There is no movie in Ba Sing Se. The Earth King has invited you to Lake Laogai,"ExplanationA reference to the phrase "There is no war in Ba Sing Se" from the show, a meme in its own right (or some variation upon it) whenever the film is mentioned.
M. Night Shyamalan was certainly not blameless in the quality of the final product, but it is now known that a lot of Executive Meddling robbed Shyamalan of a lot of the control he had on set, including much of the editing that led to the film being deemed an incoherent mess in theaters. Shyamalan, either out of pride or because his contract demanded, preferred to take full responsibility instead of admitting that he did not have total creative control over his film. Just a few examples of the issues he ran into:
Paramount didn’t want to wait a year to let the show wrap up before they started filming, so there was a fair amount of writing in the dark. Shyamalan's original script, that was thrown out, is reported to more or less have stuck plot by plot to the show. The ghostwriter of the final script accidentally backed them into a huge corner plot-wise for the rest of the series; specifically, Aang running away because he was told the Avatar couldn’t have kids massively contradicts the original story, as Zuko’s whole character arc depends on him being the direct descendant of Avatar Roku, Aang's immediate predecessor as the Avatar.
The studio blew most of the budget filming the opening sequence in the Southern Water Tribe on location in Greenland. This caused the rest of the movie to be filmed inside and not look nearly as good by comparison. They then realized that they couldn't use as many practical effects as they had thought they could, adding to the budget woes.
Shyamalan didn’t actually want to cast white actors to play Katara and Sokka. Katara’s actress was cast because Paramount owed her father a favor. Sokka and other actors from the Northern Water Tribe were thus cast to match her appearance.
The studio also mandated that the runtime be under 100 minutes, making a lot of it incoherent. The short run time was mandated because they needed to rush to get it converted to 3D in time to meet the lucrative Independence Day weekend release. They also would have likely run out of money to convert the original cut of the movie.
The actors are often criticized for mispronouncing the characters' names, with this being ascribed to them not being familiar with the source material (Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone were in fact long-time fans of the cartoon). This decision was made by Shaymalan, who felt that the original pronunciation was wrong, and that he was being true to the Asian roots of the names.
This film's version of Sokka is known primarily for suffering a huge case of Adaptational Angst Upgrade. The comedy and sarcasm that Sokka was known for in the show has been replaced with constant whining and angst.
Katara is known for two not so great things. The first is the terrible effort she put up against Zuko in the Final Battle. The second is how ridiculous it is that despite all the time she was with Aang beforehand, it took all the way until the group had traveled to the Southern Air Temple for her to finally ask Aang what his name is.
Offending the Creator's Own: Some people criticized the film because the good guys are played mostly by light-skinned actors, but the villainous Fire Nation is given a Race Lift from a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Japan to being played by a wide variety of darker-skinned actors, including Indians and Polynesians. Director M. Night Shyamalan is Indian and even gave himself a Creator Cameo as a Fire Nation mook.note Although as noted in the Misblamed section, Shyamalan had very little control over the casting process and had to abide by Paramount’s decisions.
Presumed Flop: It was intended to be the first film of a trilogy, but the negative reception put those plans on ice. However, despite the hasty conversion to 3D bloating the budget to $150m, it still broke even and became the 19th highest grossing movie of 2010, and the highest grossing Nickelodeon movie at the time.
Questionable Casting: The casting of all the main characters was near-universally met with this reaction, with certain examples standing out:
Aasif Mandvi as the villainous Commander Zhao. Mandvi is a primarily comedic actor best known for his work on The Daily Show. Shockingly enough though, he ended up being one of the most faithful characters to the source material.
Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone as Katara and Sokka, given that most viewers of the cartoon viewed the blue-eyed, tan-skinned characters as Asian or Native American. Many years later, it came to light that Peltz received the part as a gesture to her billionaire father, which required Sokka to be cast with an actor who looked like her. Puzzlingly, the filmmakers went ahead and cast uniformly Asian and Inuit actors as Waterbender tribe extras, making the main characters look out of place in their own tribe.
At the beginning, Katara splashes an off-screen Sokka with water, but he is completely dry when the camera moves to him.
In what is purportedly an arctic area, you can't see anyone's breath.
At times, the Waterbending is not even animated.
The Firebending is pretty much nothing but poorly composed live-action fire elements with CG that even the film version of Spawn would reject.
The last-minute 3D conversion was universally panned for being barely noticeable and earned a one-off Golden Raspberry Award; Roger Ebert called it the nail in "low-rent 3D".
The first time Aang opens his hang glider from his staff, the support wires simply appear on the other side of his fingers. This makes even less sense than many of these, since the special effects department had no reason to cut corners like this — the whole of the hang glider was CGI.
Yue's scenes were apparently filmed long enough after Seychelle Gabriel had her hair dyed white that her brown roots are clearly visible.
Strangled by the Red String: Yue and Sokka's romance gets this treatment. In the show, their romance is developed and they get several scenes together. In this movie, it's reduced to exposition.
Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The spinoff comic for the movie, Zuko's Story, was actually regarded as a pretty decent read. Part of this is because its writers went out of their way to include references to the animated series. Another is that it also gives a lot of creedence to What Could Have Been too.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Long before the movie was anything more than a casting list and a few trailers, fans complained about changes to the source material. One of the biggest examples from the movie once it finally came out was the changes to the characters' names, which Shyamalan opted for to make them match more their etymologies than the Anglicized pronunciations used in the cartoon. The film also gave a Race Lift to various characters. None of these changes pleased fans of the show.
Shaun Toub and Dev Patel as General Iroh and Prince Zuko were noted to be amongst the better parts of the film for having genuinely emotional moments and for being faithful enough to the animated series.
Francis Guinan as Pakku was noted by several reviewers to be the one actor to escape the film with his dignity intact, having put real effort and emotion into his scant screen time in stark contrast to everyone else.
Seychelle Gabriel's performance as Yue also was moderately well received by fans, and Bryan and Mike would later cast her as Asami Sato in The Legend of Korra.
In just the few seconds she's on-screen, Summer Bishil (Azula) left enough of a good impression that fans felt sorry for her for not getting the chance to actually show what she would've done with the role.
Breather Level: "Surrounded" is so easy that it's almost funny. All you do is stand in the middle of the room and shoot at Fire Nation soldiers. You can get the level's collectables when you're not busy shooting fireballs, but that's it for that level.
DS version only: Fire Lord Ozai is the tyrannical ruler of the Fire Nation, and Zuko's abusive father. Ruling the land with an iron fist, Ozai has Earthbenders imprisoned and Airbenders killed when he hears of the Avatar's return. Previously willing to allow an entire battalion of his own troops to be sacrificed to take out some Earthbenders, Ozai challenged Zuko to a fight as punishment for speaking out, scarring the boy to teach him respect. Ordering the invasion of the Northern Water Tribe and all the deaths that follow, Ozai seeks to have Zuko killed when he rescues Aang from Zhao's prison, viewing him as a traitor.
That One Boss: The final Boss Battle with Zhao can be difficult at certain points. For example, closer to the final stage, he summons more soldiers to fight and he also gets down to fire at you. You'll get hit by Zhao's fire-blasting as well as the sword attacks.
, six Earthbenders move in precise choreography, stomping the earth and releasing a mighty battle cry… and a tiny rock barely bigger than a football floats by very, very slowly. A seventh Earthbender then launches it at a guard. The dancing Earthbenders were actually responsible for making a previous earth wall to block a fire blast, but the scene was so poorly shot it looks like they're taking all this effort to bend a single small rock. And to make matters even worse, because the whole scene is shot with a single camera, with no jump cuts, the audience can see a large number of mooks standing in the background, not doing anything and waiting for their turn to join the fight while their friends are getting knocked senseless.
