Jackson Rathbone and Nicola Peltz in The Last Airbender
By the time that M. Night Shyamalan decided to take charge of a live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender, he had already been on a record cold streak. Shyamalan blamed adults not “understanding” his movie, but the audience was unimpressed with his decision to whitewash the storyline with white actors, like Jackson Rathbone and Nicola Peltz, in Asian roles.