The Last Airbender is a movie in which almost every character was miscast and whitewashed. Based on Avatar: The Last Airbender, the incredibly popular and brilliant Nickelodeon television series (whose title was used by a certain James Cameron flick), the film had the potential to be something truly great. Unfortunately, director M. Night Shyamalan and Paramount Pictures decided that the television show’s characters, clearly modeled on Asian peoples and cultures, would be portrayed by white actors (though the villains remained dark-skinned). Many saw this movie as a missed opportunity for Hollywood to give up-and-coming Asian or Asian-American actors a chance to break through. Unsurprisingly, the movie was a monumental failure.
"Airbender" was part of M. Night Shyamalan hellish movie phase: "Lady in the Water," "The Last Airbender," "The Happening" and "After Earth." Four of the worst movies released in the last decade or so. Those films greatly affected the latter part of his moviemaking career. They were big-budgeted bomb machines that ended up putting a negative mark on his reputation. Why would a studio ever trust him with a big project ever again? They haven't since "After Earth" and it seems to have sparked a fresh new creative freedom in the director with this year's succesful sleeper hit "Split," but the stench of "Airbender" will forever loom in his filmography.