Wait....Didn't this entire flick ooze bad acting? Why'd they have to whittle it to a couple scenes? I do seem to recall some Texas child that had his debut in this one though, can't be all bad-As I recall he seldom opened his mouth and stole what little of the show there was to redeem...

Who keeps giving this guy money?

The latter part of this could easily be attributed to a shitty script. I think the whole film probably could (don't know, avoided it intentionally).
Did Shyamalan write the screenplay? I don't actually know. I do like the first Airbender show though (part of why I avoided the film).
Shyamalan was one of my favorite filmmakers, just for his vision, even when the film itself failed. I could appreciate his intent all the way through The Lady In The Water, but the nosedive of actual quality up to that point put me off of any more of his films. I can only appreciate initial vision to a point.
I've been eager to see After Earth, even if it sucks. I'm mildly interested in this film, but only for morbid reasons. Any time you dismiss source material, it makes you a shithead in my view (fuck you Peter Jackson).

The story: Shamalan wrote the screenplay after his kids liked the cartoon. However, he decided to make a helluva lot of cuts to the movie to make it more cinematic. He completely neglected a TON of things that made the original great, especially the comedy.

The also tried to change race/element rolls, so instead of traditional Chinese, the firebenders were Indian, which also pissed a lot of people off, because one thing he could have done RIGHT was cast Dante Basco (Rufio, from hook, and the original voice actor of prince zuko) as his respective character.

The names were also mucked up, (Ahh-ng instead of Aang, Soakah instead of Sock-ah) and the overall tone of the movie was god, freaking awful.

It was a double whammy, he made the storyline of a kids cartoon even dumber than it already was (sorry people who love the show, but it is a kids show, they're not meant to make total sense.) and in doing so alienated any parents that went to see the movie with their kids.

And because he changed the storyline so much, he caused fans of the show to hate the movie because of its.. well, bad-ness.

Overall, I end with a quote.

By @artician

"Who keeps giving this guy money?"

Wow, that's really bad. We didn't get that far - my wife and I walked out of the theater after 15 minutes of horribleness.

The mispronunciation of the names, along with the horrible acting and scripting, made this movie utterly offensive to me. M Night Shamalamadingdong is dead to me.