#anti atla m. night shyamalan

[firelxdykatara]

Really? Bryke were supportive of M.Night until after his garbage fire movie was released and it got hate? Sources? Had no idea. I still don’t want canon Zutara in the Netflix LA bc I remember how Netflix fucked up Death Note. The ATLA LA should just get cancelled, I’m Asian and I know there is some racist and orientalist BAD writing in Avatar. I have no trust in white men to fix it.

it’s hard to dig up sources--the only interview i can seem to find is from well before production on the movie was seriously underway--because a lot of this was on the social media landscape of over ten years ago, but bryke were very publicly approving of the movie until after it came out and received such heavy fan backlash, at which point they backtracked completely and claimed that they’d hated it from the jump and had an awful time during production.

It’s possible that their perception of the past had changed, or that they were faking their enthusiasm the entire time, but it also wouldn’t be the first time they just straight up started lying to change the narrative and, in this case, make themselves seem better and less culpable for the disaster the movie turned out to be.

(If you’re curious, what I’m referring to is the fact that they deliberately and intentionally ship-baited a huge portion of their fandom, were not even sure until as far as late book 3 who katara would end up with [m night asked for a straight answer and they said they couldn’t give him one because they didn’t know; i believe that comes from a tweet of m night’s? but i can’t remember for sure], but then, as soon as the show was over, whipped around and said zutara shippers were delusional, there was nothing there, kataang was ‘in the DNA of the show’ and had been the set-in-stone endgame from the start. and then they pulled the whole book 4: air fiasco, but i’ve ranted plenty about that before.)

anyway, at this point, i really don’t trust bryke’s word any further than i could throw their egos.

all of that said, yeah, it’s entirely possible that the live action atla will just be bad. netflix has done extremely dodgy adaptations of things before. however, that is all dependent on who they actually have in the writers room. ideally, they will bring on new showrunners who are not white men, but i know that’s not necessarily likely. i, personally, am going to wait to judge until we have more information--if they start releasing casting information and possibly the people actually working on the project now, that will be far more telling of the potential quality of the show than the fact that bryke are no longer attached (which, again, i feel is generally a net positive).

[clementimetodie]

What I mean by this is literally everything having to do with the movie didn't make any sense.

Knowing M. Night's reputation, and the fact that most of us were kids when the show and movie were out, I'm assuming most atla fans aren't (or at least weren't) familiar with M. Night's work. I've seen almost everything he's produced since I was a kid, I'm a big fan, and I'm very familiar with the way he makes movies.

If you are as familiar with his work as I am, it would be really obvious how, from the get go, it was a really weird choice to have M. Night direct The Last Airbender. It would be like having a director proficient in action scifi movies try to make a good regency romance. It's a completely different genre with completely different pacing, storytelling, and even cinematography and editing.

But M. Night didn't just have to deal with one genre flip. He had to deal with at least 3. Animated to live action. Serial show to film. Thriller to fantasy adventure. And up until that point, he had never produced a movie with such a tremendous budget or the amount of CGI that was required for The Last Airbender. It was completely out of his purview.

Now iirc, M. Night approached Bryke because he was a big fan of the show. They still could have (and should have) told him no. But they took him on, likely aware of the kind of films he produces, and worked with him anyway.

On that note, it's fairly well established that there was originally supposed to be a Book 4 for the show, but Bryke decided to forego it for the movie. Why? Even M. Night argued with them on this. He was very much in favor of having a Book 4 and couldn't understand why they had to sacrifice it for the movie. He was also interested in the ending pairing, which Bryke insisted still hadn't been fleshed out yet.

In interviews with M. Night after The Last Airbender, he looks and sounds absolutely defeated. This was a huge loss for him, not only financially but also emotionally. No matter how you feel about his other movies, this one was objectively the worst. And if you're familiar with his other movies, you would know that he takes great care in their production, even the not so great ones. The Last Airbender was in a whole different category of bad compared to his other works.

My theory is that with all of the creative disagreements in the writing room, this was Bryke's last stand. They wanted a film so bad, that fans would accept any inconsistent writing in Season 3 (of which there was much) as well as accept the absence of a Book 4. Many others have analyzed Season 3 to great extent, showing the inconsistencies in character, storytelling, and pacing. But something I haven't seen talked about is how they didn't even have Aang actually finish earth bending, which he was still bad at, and that there were no more trips to the spirit world aside for the physical embodiment of deus ex machina. I believe Bryke wanted to finish the series their way by throwing M. Night under the bus so that Season 3 would look good in comparison.

So am I the only one who thinks that Bryke may have wanted a bad Avatar movie?