M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, the first live-action adaptation of beloved animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, noticeably changed the pronunciations of several characters’ names in an attempt to make the movie more authentic. Avatar debuted on Nickelodeon in 2005 and ran for three seasons. In that relatively short span of time, Avatar amassed a large fan base that continued to grow even after the show reached its completion in 2008. Avatar‘s fantastical world-building and well-developed characters made it seem like the perfect basis for a live-action movie. There were hopes that The Last Airbender could properly adapt Avatar and give it the movie it deserved, but that is far from what happened.
The Last Airbender was criticized by fans and critics alike almost from the moment it was released in 2010. To this day, it is still considered one of the worst movies ever made. The Last Airbender is filled with questionable decisions, like cramming an entire television season into a less-than-two-hour movie. Fans were displeased with how Avatar’s unique bending styles were translated for live-action, as well as the removal of several valuable pieces of character development. Overall, there are a lot of things that went wrong with The Last Airbender, but one major change from the show seems especially strange: the pronunciations of certain characters’ names.
In The Last Airbender, Aang is pronounced like “ah-ng”, Sokka like “so-ka”, and Iroh like “ee-roh”. At first glance, it feels like this was just a major oversight from Shyamalan and further proof that he didn’t understand the source material. However, it turns out Shyamalan made these decisions consciously because he wanted to honor the Asian pronunciation of these names. After all, the world of Avatar is based in Asian culture. As Shyamalan said in a 2010 interview with Wired:
“For me, the whole point of making the adaptation was to ground it deeper in reality. So I pronounced the names as Asians would. It’s just impossible to pronounce Aang the way it is used in the series. It’s incorrect! I can’t do it. So I just pronounced it correctly.”
While this is certainly an admirable (if confusing for fans of Avatar) change, Shyamalan’s apparent desire to honor the Asian roots of the show was negated by The Last Airbender‘s casting decisions. While several members of the Fire Nation are played by actors of color like Dev Patel (Prince Zuko) and Shaun Toub (Uncle Iroh), the main trio of Sokka, Aang, and Katara are all played by white actors. Even when The Last Airbender was first released, this stirred up controversy. Shyamalan tried to defend this by pointing to the Asian actors that were included within the film, but it was still a major misstep to have the titular character be played by a white performer – no matter how authentically Aang’s name was pronounced.
With Avatar once again getting the live-action treatment through Netflix’s upcoming series, fans are curious to see if the mistakes made with The Last Airbender will now be rectified. Very few updates regarding this series have emerged since its initial announcement, but it seems fair to assume Netflix will cast actors of color. Whether the live-action will choose to adopt the proper Asian pronunciations remains to be seen. However, Avatar’s original creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, are working on the Netflix series, which could mean they’ll opt to keep the names as they used them on the show. Either way, it’s safe to say The Last Airbender‘s change got some very mixed reactions from fans, regardless of Shyamalan’s intentions.
