With that many producers heading up a movie, visions will get compromised, moreso than the animated series with only Mike and Bryan producing. Sam Mercer may have watched enough of the show, but he definitely became influenced by Miyazaki when he later produced Snow White and the Huntsman.

This also means, ripping off Princess Mononoke’s finale by having Koizilla in a Miyazaki-inspired movie like The Last Airbender would have strained their working relationship with Miyazaki himself. Frank Marshall and Kathleeen Kennedy are probably only casual fans, but they signed up as producers as they are huge fans of Hayao Miyazaki, having exclusively produced English-language versions of his movies at reduced fees. M.Night became a fan much later in the year after he watched the show with his kids during Halloween. Scott Aversano is a huge fan: he is the Nick exec who first pushed for an ATLA movie in early 2006 after Book One was aired, though Nick turned down his proposal. Yes, M.Night is also one of the producers but he still has a fiduciary duty to deliberate and make decisions with the other six producers, most of them HAVE “ bothered to watch the show“. Legally, the producers are the head of the movie production, not the director, who must align his vision to theirs. They clearly never bothered to watch the show.” The producers, who are actually in charge of at least 80% of production including casting….

Night really was the only one who knew the show and what he was doing. Personally, I loved the movie despite its flaws, but blaming M.Night for everything is as ludicrous as crediting him for everything. The movie was perceived as a failure, so M.Night was blamed for everything “wrong” in the movie to the point of irrationality, including the lousy visual effects (rendered by ILM and supervised by Star Wars producers Kennedy/Marshall), the shaky camera work (shoot by Lord of the Rings cinematographer Andrew Lesnie), the horrid costumes (designed by Harry Potter’s and The Hunger Games’ Judianna Makovsky), the cheap production sets (designed by The Hunger Games’ Philip Messina), the sloppy editing (done by James Cameron’s frequent collaborator Conrad Buff IV) AND the unbearable music (composed by James Newton Howard himself). As the saying goes, “ success has many fathers, but a failure an orphan“.

James cameron avatar the last airbender 2