Avatar: The Last Airbender director Giancarlo Volpe reveals that the popular show had to add the subtitle The Last Airbender due to James Cameron’s Avatar. Though they bear likeness to each other in their name, the sci-fi action movie and the Nickelodeon animated series could not be more different. Avatar: The Last Airbender’s main run was from 2005-2008, well before Cameron’s Avatar was even hit theaters to box office history. Both Avatar and Avatar: The Last Airbender were wildly successful in their own right, with the former receiving four sequels including the soon-to-be-released Avatar: The Way of Water, and the latter spawning the in-universe spinoff series Avatar: The Legend of Korra.
Volpe recently took to Twitter to reveal that Avatar: The Last Airbender would have had a different title if Cameron’s film had not gotten in the way. The series alum wrote that he and the Avatar: The Last Airbender team originally wanted to name their show Avatar. When they posed this in 2004, however, they found out that Cameron already had the rights to make a film called Avatar. Check out Volpe’s post below:
Why Avatar: The Last Airbender Is A Better Title
Volpe’s quip about Avatar: The Way of Water provides an amusing spin on his post. Not only did Cameron swoop in to take Avatar: The Last Airbender’s name before they even knew it, but with Avatar: The Way of Water, the director draws upon one of the main parts of Aang’s elemental magic: water. Due to Avatar: The Last Airbender’s elemental focus, Cameron's movie could have conceivably been a title for a follow-up to the Nickelodeon series. Romping once more in Avatar: The Last Airbender’s stomping ground was likely not Cameron’s intention, yet nonetheless it is funny to imagine a world where Cameron is secretly screwing things up for future iterations of the animated franchise.
This comment also, however, brings attention to the importance of Avatar: The Last Airbender’s subtitle to the content of the show. Though Nickelodeon ultimately ceded the single-word Avatar title to Cameron’s sci-fi epic, the show actually landed on a title more relevant to its content. Being an Avatar is central to Aang’s goals and identity within the show, but just as crucial to the series’ vision is the play with the elements: the work with fire, the shifting of earth, the movement of water, and the titular bending of air. That is to say, Avatar: The Last Airbender may have lost out on their original title for the show, but that copyright challenge caused a greater creative push towards a title more reflective of the show as a whole.
The Confusion Between Avatar and Avatar: The Last Airbender
Even with Avatar: The Last Airbender’s title, the similarity between the names of the two works has undoubtedly caused confusion over the years. After Avatar’s smashing success in 2009, images of Aang, Appa, and Katara were no longer the first conjured in the general public’s minds when one expressed a liking for Avatar. Instead, one expressing a love for “Avatar” may have been met with “do you mean Avatar: The Last Airbender or Avatar, the blue people?” Further confusion still was created once M. Night Shyamalan’s significantly-less-revered film version of Avatar: The Last Airbender was released in 2010, the year after Cameron’s Avatar. This confusion may continue, for soon enough, not only will Cameron continue work on his three Avatar movie sequels, but there is also an Avatar: The Last Airbender live-action series in the works at Netflix and three animated movies in development at Paramount.
Source: Giancarlo Volpe/Twitter
