Few movies have gotten as much backlash over the years as M. Night Shyamalan’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Set in a world where certain people can manipulate one of the four elements, only one, known as Avatar, can manipulate all, serving as a bridge between the physical and spiritual world and maintaining the balance between nations.
Avatar: The Last Airbender has been praised by critics and viewers over the years thanks to its characters, humor, cultural references, and the themes addressed in it, which weren’t seen often in cartoons aimed at a young audience. However, in 2010, Avatar made the jump to the big screen thanks to M. Night Shyamalan, with the intention of turning it into a trilogy, with each movie based on each season of the show, and it was one of the biggest failures of the decade. The Last Airbender is widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made, with most criticism going towards its whitewashed cast and the story, and not even the cast have good things to say about it, as is the case of Dev Patel.
Right after starring in Danny Boyle’s 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.
Aside from that, Patel has shared that starring in The Last Airbender taught him a big lesson about Hollywood. Speaking to his performance in The Last Airbender, he “saw a stranger on the screen”. Perhaps the pressure to make another big movie after the success of Slumdog Millionaire was too much that Patel took the role of Prince Zuko even if he wasn’t entirely sure of it, but the experience – while not a good one – surely taught him to choose his projects more carefully and listen to his instinct.
The following year, Patel starred in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and has since appeared in a variety of movies, as are Chappie, Lion, and most recently The Last Airbender is one of those movies that the audience might not forgive in the future as it didn’t do justice to the beloved cartoon and the whitewashing of the cast is one of its biggest flaws, but Dev Patel learned from that experience and has chosen his projects better ever since, separating himself from that failure.
