Box office The Last Airbender had grossed $131,772,187 in the United States, and $187,941,694 in other countries, making for a total of $319,713,881 worldwide. On its opening day in the United States,
The Last Airbender made $16,614,112, ranking fifth overall for Thursday openings, and placed second behind
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. For its opening three-day, Fourth of July weekend,
The Last Airbender accumulated a total of $40,325,019. The following Monday, it grossed $11,479,213. 54% of its total gross was from 3D presentations at 1,606 screens. On Thursday, July 1, 2010, its opening day, it debuted at #2 behind
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Opening internationally in 923 sites, the film grossed an estimated $9 million, $8 million of which was from 870 sites in
Russia, making it the number one film there. The film grossed $9.4 million from its second weekend in international markets. The film was the twentieth highest-grossing film of 2010, and is the fourth-highest-grossing film produced by Nickelodeon Movies, behind
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (2015),
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014), and
The Adventures of Tintin (2011).
Critical response The Last Airbender was panned by critics. On
Rotten Tomatoes, 5% of 191 reviews are positive, with an average rating of 2.9/10, making it the lowest-rated film produced by
Nickelodeon Movies and Shyamalan's worst-reviewed film to date. The site's critical consensus reads, "
The Last Airbender squanders its popular source material with incomprehensible plotting, horrible acting, and detached joyless direction." On
Metacritic, it has a
weighted average score of 20 out of 100, based on 33 reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average rating of "C" on an A+ to F scale. Liam Lacey of
The Globe and Mail stated the film had little chance to develop its characters and therefore suffered, with the overall storyline of the film becoming a run-on narrative. According to
Owen Gleiberman from
Entertainment Weekly, who gave the film a C, "
The Last Airbender keeps throwing things at you, but its final effect is, in every way, flat."
Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times gave the film half a star in his review, stating that it "bores and alienates its audiences," and notes the poor use of 3D among the film's faults. Keith Phipps of
The A.V. Club gave the film an F, criticizing the performances of the child actors, overuse of exposition, and shoehorned 3D special effects, calling it the worst summer blockbuster of 2010. Kirk Honeycutt of
The Hollywood Reporter said that the lack of correct casting caused the film to lose substantial credibility in regard to its source material, but did praise the casting and acting of Ringer as Aang. Peter Debruge of
Variety criticized the casting and the score, saying that the overall effect of each play into making the film a bore.
Rifftrax put the film at number 5 of The Top 10 Worst Movies of All Time, saying "We CAN state for the record that it is quite easy to detest this movie even if you've never seen a frame of the TV show." Charlie Jane Anders in the review by
io9 criticized "the personality-free hero, the nonsensical plot twists, the CG clutter, the bland romance, the new-age pablum", concluding that "Shyamalan's true achievement in this film is that he takes a thrilling cult TV series,
Avatar: The Last Airbender, and he systematically leeches all the personality and soul out of it – in order to create something generic enough to serve as a universal spoof of every epic, ever." Anders summarized the experience of watching the film by stating that, "Actually, my exact words when I walked out of this film were, 'Wow, this makes
Dragonball Evolution look like a masterpiece.'" Scott Bowles of
USA Today gave a generally favorable review, claiming that Shyamalan delivered on fight scenes and the film worked as a kid's film, although he also added that poor scriptwriting made some of the performances sound wooden. Another favorable review came from Stephanie Zacharek of MovieLine, who praised the way Shyamalan captures the art of action and human motion. David Roark of
Relevant Magazine accused other critics of having a bias against Shyamalan and gave the film a positive review, stating that its visuals and heart far outweighed the clunky plotting and "awful" dialogue.
Peter Bradshaw of
The Guardian noted an unfortunate linguistic problem that reduced British viewers to "a state of nervous collapse" due to laughter. In
British English, 'bent' is a slang term for gay, with 'bender' meaning a gay man, giving an entirely different meaning to lines such as, "I could tell at once that you were a bender." Bradshaw commented that the response from the audience to such lines was "deafeningly immature" and would "inevitably be repeated in every cinema in the land showing
The Last Airbender." Bradshaw expressed his amazement that Shyamalan has managed to make a film worse than
Lady in the Water or
The Happening. Kirk Honneycut of
The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Shyamalan, who never has mounted an epic film before, gets only passing grades. Huge sets and unit work from Greenland to New Zealand all look strangely underlit. One wonders whether the projector blew a light bulb. The movie was foolishly converted to 3D after principal photography, but if anything, this conversion is worse than
Clash of the Titans." A
Collider.com review says: "I'm calling it:
The Last Airbender is the worst movie of 2010. It's too disturbing to consider that there could be something even more hideous out there."
Crew responses Shyamalan initially argued that his style and art-form of storytelling resulted in the negative reviews of the film and compared it to asking a painter to change to a different style: "I bring as much integrity to the table as humanly possible. It must be a language thing, in terms of a particular accent, a storytelling accent. I can only see it this certain way and I don't know how to think in another language. I think these are exactly the visions that are in my head, so I don't know how to adjust it without being me." When Shyamalan gave the Ashok C. Sani Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence lecture at
NYU's Stern School of Business on April 16, 2019, he revealed that he regretted accepting the directing position on the film, stating: There has always been this inexorable pull to join the group, a constant seduction in the form of whatever you want to tally, in the form of money, or safety, ease, not getting criticized. I did these movies, and I rightfully got crushed, because they rightfully said, 'You don't believe in yourself, you don't believe in your own voice, and you don't believe in your values.Shyamalan would go on to begin financing his own projects as a result. When Aasif Mandvi was asked about the film during a 2015 Q&A on Reddit, he said
Airbender was one the most awesome experiences I have ever had making a movie. I'm very glad i got to play that role and got to work with those people. No regrets! I think the film received an unfair level of criticism and that was partly because of a negative attitude and a thirst for blood towards M. Night. I'm not saying it was the greatest movie in the world but it somehow got singled out more than it deserved.In a 2020 interview with Bustle,
Giancarlo Volpe, who was a director on the original animated series, saidI thought the set design was great. I also think that CG Appa and Momo look great. If you squinted, it looked like the show. But where they sort of went wrong was that the characters and casting weren't really right. I thought that was unfortunate. I've said this multiple times: if there was ever any doubt that
Avatar took place in sort of a mythical Asia or mythical China... it absolutely did. Don't let anyone tell you differently. And to cast it differently was an odd choice. I also think that they were trying to squeeze in 20 episodes [of plot] in a two-hour block, and what they really needed to do was simplify the story, which is hard to do. The fans can always watch the show again if they miss a particular story. They didn't have to squeeze everything into a two-hour movie, in my opinion.
Dev Patel expressed regret and dislike for his role and his experience with the film. At a 2016 actor's roundtable with
The Hollywood Reporter while promoting his film
Lion during Oscar contender season, Patel said, I don't know what I would like to play, but I know what I'm afraid of playing: those big studio movies. After
Slumdog, I did a film that was not well received at all. The budget of
Slumdog was like the budget of the craft services of this movie. [...] I completely felt overwhelmed by the experience. I felt like I wasn't being heard. That was really scary for me, and that's really when I learned the power of no, the idea of saying no. Listen to that instinct you get when you read those words for the first time.He described his performance as Prince Zuko as being as though he "saw a stranger on the screen that I couldn't relate to." In a question-and-answer session on Reddit with
Dante Basco, the original voice of Prince Zuko, when he was asked what he thought of the
Last Airbender film, he responded by saying that the show's creators, Konietzko and DiMartino, told him not to see it.
Accolades The Last Airbender received nine nominations at the
31st Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Picture. The film went on to sweep the
Razzies with five awards: Worst Picture, Worst Director (Shyamalan), Worst Screenplay (Shyamalan), Worst Supporting Actor (
Jackson Rathbone), and a special award, "Worst Eye-Gouging Mis-Use of 3D." ==Cancelled sequel==