The Last Airbender

M. Night Shyamalan certainly isn't afraid to fight

Mashing up his passion for anime with heavy realism, M. Night Shyamalan is bringing a live action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender to the big screen starting today. Fans of the franchise have responded passionately, with accusations of whitewashing in lead roles (Prince of Persia, anyone?) and inattention to detail. Not so, says Night. He has watched every episode of the show with his kids and claims studio execs had no say in who he put in the film.

When the gates of Industrial Light and Magic were thrown open to GeekChicDaily for an sneak peek, it was clear attention has been paid to the original show, with a few new twists. Micheal Balog (he animated Yoda vs. Sidious) spoke of long discussions about show favorites like Momo the flying lemur (his wings now pop out of his elbows instead of his head) and Appa the...flying...sheepdog? (Yes, Appa still has six legs, and uses his beaver tail to fly.) And brand new technologies were invented in classic ILM style to make the elemental kung-fu that saturates the film's many battles convincing.

But does all that add up to a good summer flick? GeekChicDaily went directly to M. Night Shyamalan to ask a few tough questions so you can decide which side of the fight you're on.

GCD: Would you describe this as a traditional action film?
MNS: I didn't do a traditional action movie, because the characters don't actually hit each other. They're doing martial arts forms at each other.

GCD: Color has always played a prominent part in your films: red in The Sixth Sense, purple in Unbreakable. Will we see that in this film?
MNS: I'm generally a monochromatic guy. The Village was earth tones and had a gray patina. Unbreakable had a bluish patina with pops of color to represent the comic books. In this film, each nation has unique, rich colors attributed to it: the Fire nation has vibrant reds and deep blacks, the Earth nation has rich greens and golds, and so on. We really splashed the palette and pushed the colors hard in each world.

GCD: There has been some controversy in the fan community about the nationalities of the actors not matching up to the nationalities of the animated characters on which they are based.
MNS: I'm obviously Asian, so this is a bizarre accusation. It's sad to even have to talk about it because this is the most culturally diverse movie, and hopefully trilogy, of all time.

GCD: The most puerile criticism is that you've got a white kid (Noah Ringer) playing the good guy, and a person of color (Dev Patel) playing the bad guy.
MNS: Then they haven't seen the show. Is that really what Dev's character [Zuko] is? Dev actually is the Hamlet character. Do they know what happens to Zuko? HE'S THE HERO! The part that anybody in the world would kill for is Zuko. The whole thing is just nonsense, because it's not exactly the way that they thought it would be. It's not a political agenda. It's just the world [of the story] as I saw it, broken up into all these nationalities. [The movie's diversity] is actually its great strength.

GCD: What was it about Noah Ringer that made you decide he had to be Aang?
MNS: To me there is no other human being on the planet that could play Aang. Period. There's not even an argument. For me, [Noah] has very ambiguous features, and looks mixed to me. So I made the entire Airbender nation mixed race...because they're nomadic. The thing these fans have to keep in mind is that I have complete creative control. If I wanted to cast the entire movie Japanese, or Black...the studio would have let me do that. This isn't about The Man. Unfortunately for them, the face of racism is me. If they have a problem, they have to point the racism gun at this Indian face.

GCD: Was there anything that you had to leave out of this story that came from the cartoon that you really hated to let go?
MNS: We shot a group of female ninjas that were on the show, but I had to cut the scene. It's such a rich world, but you can't put everything that you want in. The movie would be five hours long. I'm hoping to get them into the next film though, if we get a chance to make it. Who doesn't like female ninjas?

Forward to a Buddy Invite a Buddy