I’m always curious as to what M.Night Shyamalan’s going to do next. You can’t help but wonder what’s up his sleeves this time.
More importantly, is he going to have a brilliant twist ending or not.
The Master of Suspense is not going to see dead people, or save a village or witness signs for his next project, as a matter of fact, it will be a whole nother ball game.
Are you familiar with the cartoon or card game called AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER??
Apparently, my friend recognizes it.
Despite the fact that it has the look and feel of a Japanese animation, it’s not considered Anime because it’s American made.
It aired on Nickelodeon in 2005.
It takes place in a fantasy world, home to humans, fantastic animals, and supernatural spirits. Human civilization is divided into four nations: the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Air Nomads, and the Fire Nation. Within each nation exists an order called “Benders” who have the ability to manipulate their native element. These Bending arts combine a certain style of martial arts and elemental mysticism. The Bending types are Waterbending, Earthbending, Firebending, and Airbending. (Damn, that’s a lot of “bending” in one sentence).
M. Night Shyamalan spoke to Empire Magazine recently about his plan of adapting the series into Movie Trilogy.
That’s right! He must be quite the fan cause he’s set to make three movies of this thing.
Here’s what he said…
“The actual plot is in a place where there are four tribes of people. And these people each have people within their tribe that have mastery over one element: water, earth, fire or air. They all live in a balance and harmony and once every generation there is born an individual who can bend – that is manipulate – all four of those elements and thereby keep a balance between all. They are kind of a Buddha figure to some extent.
The story is about how, in this particular time, this avatar is born into the airbenders and disappears. Then all hell breaks loose and the fire nation basically commits genocide and eradicates the air tribe in the hopes of killing the avatar and taking over control of everything. This child then re-emerges, which is the beginning of our story.
He reappears having been frozen in the ice — there is a whole story about how that happens — a hundred years later and this world is all f*cked up and he is the last airbender, but he doesn’t want this job. He’s forced into the position of putting the world back together again. It actually has a lot of Shakespearean overtones to it. There’s lots of family angst, and fathers denying sons in different storylines.”
“Obviously [there will be] some breathtaking visual effects. Just imagine if you saw a little girl bending water out of a glass into the air as an extension of her own personal discipline. It’s three movies about the hero learning three elements. Live action.”
Ya know… I’ve always respected M.Night Shyamalan’s work because even when some of his movies were too showy and the twist endings were a bit on the ridiculous side, at least he wrote his stuff… his own original.
And now, his doing adaptation like this… a children cartoon… I don’t know, man!
I probably should give him the benefit of the doubt, but I strongly suggest he should just stick with what he knows best.
Shymalan will shoot the film on stages in Philadelphia, as well as locations including Greenland.
Production is expected to begin as early as June 2008.
Questions:
With this project, the upcoming Speed Racer, the planning to make Akira the movie. Do you like how America’s Hollywood keeps making movies based on Japanese creation or style? Or do you think they should stop because they won’t do justice to the original stories.
