M.Night Shyamalan Defends His The Last Airbender Adaptation

M. Night Shyamalan Defends His Avatar: The Last Airbender Adaptation

I will never ever forgive this man for ruining one of my favorite shows ever.

M. Night Shyamalan has returned to the murky waters of the mystery with his new surreal FOX series Wayward Pines. IGN was able to sit down with the writer director to talk about the show, where we also touched on the potential of an Unbreakable television series and the...less than enthusiastic fan and critical response to his live-action adaptation of Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender.

M. Night Shyamalan Would Love an Unbreakable TV Series

“You could make it one of two ways: You could make it for that same audience, which is what I did -- for nine and 10-year-olds -- or you could do the Transformers version and have Megan Fox.

"You know, I've adapted a few things," Shyamalan mused when the topic turned to The Last Airbender and what he may have learned from that experience that he brought to Wayward Pines, which was adapted from a book series. "I think the four things I've adapted are Stuart Little -- which I just wrote -- Avatar: The Last Airbender, After Earth, and now Wayward Pines. With both Stuart Little and Wayward Pines, I was just a part of the process. I think it was really wonderful and healthy; I approached it like -- I want to do right by the material, and I want to help people create the tone and that kind of thing. The other two were more taking it and trying to make it my own, which is really a different thing entirely. With Wayward, I never felt like it was mine. I felt like I was in charge of it and stimulated by it and inspired by it. So I could say to the actors and the other writers and directors I hired, 'Are you inspired by the material?' So as each director came on, I would talk to them and say, 'This and that inspired me. I want you to lean into this question. You can have whatever answer you want, but you need to lean into this part of the question.' It was really healthy to kind of keep going back to the painting, even though you didn't paint the painting, and keep having a discussion. It was provocative. There's something really healthy about that."

The Last Airbender stands at a 6% on the review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes, and is largely considered a failed adaptation amongst the fan base of the original Nickelodeon series. When we spoke with Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante Dimartino, the creators of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, they said they elected to pretend that the live-action film didn't exist. When asked if he'd been surprised by the response, Shyamalan said that he was.

M. Night Shyamalan Said No 'They've Been Dead All Along' Twist for Wayward Pines

“I go out and 10-year-olds are like, 'That's my favorite show! I love that movie!' Parents come up to me and go, 'They've watched The Last Airbender 74 times!' Those kids, it's for them.

"It's really weird because on the show the average age was, like, nine-years-old," the director said. "My child was nine-years-old. So you could make it one of two ways. You could make it for that same audience, which is what I did -- for nine and 10-year-olds -- or you could do the Transformers version and have Megan Fox. I didn't do that. That would have felt like, 'Well, I'm going to make a movie about a kids show that my 10-year-old is watching and not make it for her. I make it for my guy friends.' That felt like a betrayal of the innocence of the piece. In retrospect, is it too young to go out -- it's like what your intention is versus what they want it to be. Clearly, 10-year-olds -- I go out and 10-year-olds are like, 'That's my favorite show! I love that movie!' Parents come up to me and go, 'They've watched The Last Airbender 74 times!' Those kids, it's for them. It was for them, to talk about mysticism and Eastern philosophies through a 10-year-old's vernacular. So, you know, these are business propositions, which have very little interest to me, of like, 'Hey, the business proposition is to get Megan Fox to be...' You know, 'You should age it 'til it's that.' That wasn't the source material, you know what I mean? Whereas, also, like a Transformers, it's really fascinating, because it's valid for Transformers. You know why it's valid? Because it's the little boys that were playing with them are grown up now. They're the ones who wanted to see Megan Fox. That's absolutely appropriate, you know what I mean?"

That movie gave me pentapox.

I would like to offer my counter argument

For the ones who don't know what earthbending is supposed to look like:

Watched the first eisode of Wayward Pines, unintentionally hilarious. It's suppose to be a big hidden mystery, but almost every person he interacts with tells him something is up.

At one point the thing was so predictable that when he was driving out of town I looked over to my brother and said it would rip off Mouth Of Madness and loop.

So this is Naruto by white people or something?

Lol this is much better than naruto. Kishi wishes his manga was good as the avatar.

Although this is indeed a pseudo anime (Americanime?) I have to say it's one of the best series of the genre that I have seen, especially the first series.

Can't say I'm impress he's defending his actions making The Last Airbenber. It did make back it's money and while the film was a failure to the fans, it was still consider a financial success. That said, he got me good with the hype it receive before it was release and once I went into theaters and watch halfway through the movie, I really wanted to walk out badly but then again, if I had done that, I had wasted my $10 movie ticket so I just sit down and watch my dear show turn into a live action joke.

Such a dumb excuse. The show was great because it was not only entertaining for kids, but could be enjoyed by adults as well. Hidden in that ”kids" show was some absolutely FANTASTIC characterization brought around by solid writing. There are some great lessons and themes to be found throughout the series and it is all made better by the amazing animation that truely brought the action scenes to life.

The movie literally lacked all of that. Shamalayn didn't give two shits about doing the show right if you ask me. If he did he may have put some fucking effort and bringing the characters to life in PROPER fashion (with the little I saw I had trouble figuring out which characters were which) and done the bending right. Why on earth they tried bringing fights as fantastical as the ones in the Avatar series to life via practical effects is beyond me. I much prefer practical special effects, but CGI exists for a damn reason.

Of course the idea of doing a movie based on the series let alone a live action one was dumb to begin with. Way too much happens in the series to try and cram it into even a shorter movie series, even taking out filler.

@Motokid6: The poster above you explained it quite well in my opinion.

@Motokid6: I think your great benefit, as you said yourself, was not being exposed to the source material beforehand. It's like ice cream...if you go to a huge ice cream store where you can choose from 50 flavours and then an ice cream store opens in your neighborhood but only sells vanilla you think "yeah, vanilla is ok, but where's the rest?". But if your first experience with ice cream is the store that only sells vanilla and THEN you visit the 50 flavour store you'll be saying "Vanilla was good; are you telling me that there's MORE?? That's AWESOME!!"

@Motokid6: Even though I don't really like GoT all that much it is probably one of the very, very, very few shows that I enjoy more than the books. To me the books are too bloated and full of useless stuff.

@Motokid6: My point was that having read the books first I am glad not to have to suffer through the clutter with the show where if I had seen the show first I probably couldn't get through the books. In any case, I wasn't trying to discuss the merits of GoT or ASOIAF; just saying that while the "shows before books" approach is normally the correct one, it can fail sometimes.

You are dead to me.

Re: Avatar movie, it was one of the worst things I had seen in a long time. Plus, why do they always have to get a white kid to play roles like Ang or Goku? What the hell?

-Byshop

@Byshop: Also heavily disliked Breaking Bad and Witcher. Go ahead, burn my photo.

I think we can all agree that Last Airbender did a better job [worst really] then Dragon Ball Evolution wouldn't you say?

@korvus: I can see that in both. Those are chemistry games/shows. Breaking Bad I loved, but it's not one of those things I would "unreservedly recommend to everyone I know" because it got so damned dark. Witcher, also, is a very particular kind of RPG and not necessarily one that I would describe as appealing to everyone.

-Byshop

@Byshop: I actually quite enjoyed both at the beginning...it was the way it diluted further on that lost me; think it's the problem I have with GoT and a few other wildly loved series.

@korvus: Breaking bad had a pretty massive tonal shift from the start of the series to the end. What started out as a dark comedy just got dark by like the second season. The WGA strike cut the first season short and I wonder if we would have gotten a very different show had that not happened.

-Byshop

@Byshop: For me the dark parts were great, made it interesting...the chemistry professor turned badass, exploding buildings and instilling fear on everybody for no reason were not...Super-Heisenberg felt completely fake to me. I would have rather them keeping it small instead of going into a "Mr. nobody goes on a power trip to rule the world" route. But this is all irrelevant to the thread XD

Bad excuse. Just because something is targeted to a certain age doesn't mean it has to be dumb.

Look at toy story. It's written for kids but is entertaining for adults as well.

I just mean Walt completely losing his moral compass by the last two seasons and going from a sympathetic character to completely irideemable.

-Byshop

I don't like the show and I still hate the movie as much as the fans do. That movie was a waste of time. I watched it with a friend who is an Avatar fan and wanted to strangle him for making me sit through it, lol. The only thing that stopped me is that he thought it was a waste of time and hated it as well.

No, it's just a god-awful movie with none of the charm and spirit of the show. You can make something for kids and have it also be a good movie.

After having to sit through the movie himself, he would have probably let you...

Well, if he truly means what he says about directing it for the teeny-bopper portion of the fanbase, then I can get behind that, to a certain extent. 1. He could've still made it much cooler than what I've heard regarding their bending skills. 2. How do you just disregard a considerably large (is that the case here?) portion of the fanbase because he had his son in mind? lmao >.>

I adore the Avatar universe, yet I still haven't watched this.

Maybe I'll get a bottle of vodka and give this a go.

Why would you want to ruin the enjoyment of a good bottle of vodka?

The vodka may make the experience tolerable.

@sammyjenkis898: Get two bottles. Trust me.

@korvus: Good plan. Then he'll black out, forget it, and be spared the process of repressing it.

Some people also defend Hitler.

Shylamadingdong is such a hack.

I never saw it. I was told by the guy who introduced me to the series that it was absolutely awful.

M Night Shamalamalyamanamalamaman needs to shut up and go away.

@Gamerno6666: Hey...even Uwe Boll has been known to defend his garbage. Sometimes with brute physicality.

That's my problem with this thread. Avatar, as a concept, is dumb. It's truly a dumb kids show. Even watching it as a kid, all I remember is the poor animation, the awkwardly delivered V/O and character interactions, the lack of humor, and how laughably unoriginal the show's plot was. It's like they were trying too hard to make it seem like many other popular Japanese anime shows. The characters were clearly cutouts and amalgamations of the usual anime-archtypes.

Of curse, I didn't watch the whole show. I did catch a few episodes while I was younger (and the show was first debuting). I'm often wondering if people who worship this show even inhabit the same planet as me. I love cartoons. I even love bad cartoons. But Avatar unfortunately isn't one of those "it's so bad it's good" shows, it's just a really bland show. Everyone pointing out how dumb the movie just makes me laugh - from what I've seen the show itself couldn't have been any more moronic if it had tried. Nations aligning with elements and element manipulation itself really an incredibly weak concept for an "epic" type of show. It sounds like something an 11 year old came up with (and I even found it unbearably lazy even at 11).

With DBZ, Naruto, and those types of shows - I don't like them, but I can see why some people do. The Avatar kids show is just one of those things I'll never understand. Just the idea that fans of this show thought a silly kids show would have made an awesome movie is funny to me. It's even funnier that people go out of their way to hate something that was clearly never going to be good in the first place. As if M. Night Shyalamlan robbed these people from what would have been a good Avatar movie (lol).

Can someone explain to me what this show could offer to someone, for example, who just watched Deadwood and The Wire?

This movie makes me have to specify to what "The Last Airbender" I'm referring to when I tell my friends to watch it. And everytime I have to insist that despite there being that one movie which is absolute crap, the show really is amazing.

From the sound of it, you probably need two bottles.

Ah yes it all makes sense now!

Kids love horrendous acting, shitty editing, bloated exposition, and embarrassing martial arts choreography. No wonder he made it that way.

"You could make it for that same audience, which is what I did -- for nine and 10-year-olds -- or you could do the Transformers version and have Megan Fox."

The first Transformer film was one of the best movies of the time and Megan Fox played no part in the enjoyment. M Night is just an idiot.

@KHAndAnime: If the show was really that bad and fans still managed to hate the movie I think that speaks volumes on how badly Shyamalan can screw up.