This has broken on UGO.com in the last twenty-four hours. M.Night had a roundtable with online journalists and webmasters from some of the major fansites where they talked about everything...including the racebending issue. Most of it will be released in a video next week. However, much has been summarized in bullet points. (Copied from the site).
http://www.ugo.com/movies/m-night-shyamalan-the-last-airbender-and-blueberry-muffins
- The Last Airbender is very much the first in a planned trilogy. Night compares it to Lord of the Rings in that it is all one story not, "more adventures" with your favorite characters. The three films will mirror the three seasons of the series, with some tweaks.
- Night plans to direct all three, but before the second one he wants to bang out a smaller-budgeted thriller.
- The thriller is *not* Unbreakable 2, though he still hopes one day to get to that. And he knows Bruce Willis feels the same way.
- Momo is absolutely in the movie. Night still hopes to find a moment where Momo does something really important and somehow saves the day, but for the first one he's in there "just for fun."
- That said, our expectations for the amount of comedy in the films has been managed. Night warns that "what works in the show won't always work in the film" and some of the broad comedy has been cut. Prepare yourselves now - there will be no cabbage salesman in the film. The fate of Penguin Sledding remains inconclusive. (You can parse the reply when you see the video.)
- During one enthusiastic moment discussing the CG effects, the phrase "Master Pakku using water like nun-chucks" was used. Everyone in the room responded, "Coooooool."
- Night hopes the CG in The Last Airbender will be unique in that there isn't as much quick-cutting as in commonly seen in CG-heavy films. Go back and look at his other films and you will see a lot of long takes. This means the CG is going to have to be really top notch, because it can't be hidden away with cutting.
- The writing in the film (in, say, the Waterbending Scroll or Aang's "Wanted" poster) will not be Chinese calligraphy as in the show, but an Asian-inspired pictorial language created just for this movie.
- Perhaps most importantly, Night eloquently and deliberately addressed the so-called "racebending" issue, dealing with what some feel is a specific effort on his part to bleach the Asian origins of the film. It would be hard to summarize his response in a bullet point, so wait for the video next week on that one.
- The last person in the Shyamalan house to fall in love with Avatar: The Last Airbender was M. Night himself. In what can only be called an origin story, you'll hear how Night came to this project through the lobbying of his parents, wife and, most importantly, children.
http://www.ugo.com/movies/m-night-shyamalan-the-last-airbender-and-blueberry-muffins
