Christopher Nolan Tried Giving M. Night Shyamalan Advice for the Critically Panned ‘The Last Airbender’
Movie maker Christopher Nolan knew how it felt working on big-budget movies like The Dark Knight and Inception. Nolan tried imparting his own experiences to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender. But Nolan’s words of wisdom might not have done much to change the film’s fate.
What Christopher Nolan told M. Night Shyamalan about making ‘The Last Airbender’
Shyamalan was interested in adapting the famous Nickelodeon television series after becoming a fan. His daughter convinced the filmmaker to watch the show, but he avoided doing so for a year. His eventual fascination with Avatar The Last Airbender made him want to translate the series for the big screen.
“The ideas that the stories were about, where they were pretending this was a story for little kids, was getting really interesting and deep,” Shyamalan once told MovieWeb. “It was very well thought out. It dealt with religion, and important ideas and themes. I was like, ‘Wow!’ If I bring all of that to the forefront, this could be amazing.”
Admittedly, shooting The Last Airbender was a different animal than his previous movies. This was the first time Shyamalan would work on a project with such a high budget. The filmmakernunderestimated how challenging it would to develop the project.
“It’s so much more stress. I didn’t realize quite how much a toll this was all going to take. My normal cycle for movies is eighteen months and each part is separate,” he once told Vulture. “But with this movie, everything was overlapped. While I’m writing, we’re doing preproduction — looks, locations, costumes, CGI. And then preproduction, the amount of things that had to be decided made it more like production. And of course the production is insane.”
He received advice from another critically acclaimed filmmaker who had to quickly adapt to making blockbusters.
“I met Chris Nolan once, and he knew I was doing this, and he just said, ‘Pace yourself’ and it was a sweet thing for him to give me the advice. I fully understand what he’s talking about,” Shyamalan said.
How M. Night Shyamalan reacted to ‘The Last Airbender’ criticism
The Last Airbender ended up being one of Shyamalan’s most critically panned features. Even one of the film’s own stars apologized for the flick. In addition to its lackluster reviews, it also didn’t pull in that much money at the box office.
At the time, Shyamalan had already completed a rough draft of the franchise’s second film. But any plans for a sequel ended after the movie’s critical reception. When he first heard about some of the film’s criticisms, Shyamalan believed his vision simply didn’t mesh with other critics.
“It must be a language thing, in terms of a particular accent, a storytelling accent. I can only see it this certain way and I don’t know how to think in another language. I think these are exactly the visions that are in my head, so I don’t know how to adjust it without being me,” he said.
But Shyamalan didn’t regret making The Last Airbender. He theorized that audiences might not have appreciated the film due to its targeted demographic.
“It’s really weird because on the show the average age was, like, nine-years-old,” Shyamalan once told IGN. “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.”
M. Night Shyamalan convinced Christopher Nolan to go to Universal Studios
Many of Nolan’s films were released under the Warner Bros. brand. But the filmmaker and the studio had a bit of a falling out. This came when Nolan voiced his disapproval of Warner Bros’ handling of film releases during the pandemic. Afterwards, Nolan would join Universal Pictures, where he released his blockbuster hit Oppenheimer. Initially, Shyamalan was the person who convinced Nolan to make the move.
“I conveyed how much I feel about Universal’s commitment to original storytelling and the movie theaters,” Shyamalan told The Hollywood Reporter. “And in an age where everybody is trying to sell the narrative that original movies and movie theaters are dying out, I don’t believe that at all! Not even a little bit.”
