Avatar: The Last Airbender Had To Change Its Name To Avoid A Certain James Cameron Movie
They say not to judge a book by its cover, but what about its title? Because if you grew up outside of the United States, you probably grew up knowing certain famous movies by totally different titles. Sometimes, you get a literal translation of a movie title, but in other instances, movie and TV titles get changed to ridiculously different names, at times for the dumbest reasons. An example of this is 2012's "The Avengers," which got changed to "Avengers Assemble" in the United Kingdom for fear that audiences would confuse the Marvel superhero movie with the 1960s spy TV series of the same name.
However, there are titles that have been changed for seemingly no reason at all, like "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" being titled "Burger Rain" in Spanish because apparently people outside the U.S. never watch a weather report. Then there's "Home Alone" getting retitled as "My Poor Little Angel" in Spanish and "Mom, I Missed the Plane" in French, because the idea of a kid home alone wasn't insightful enough in explaining the plot of the film.
Indeed, title changes around the world are a mysterious thing, and like many mysteries in life, it's best not to think about them too much. Take the hugely popular animated series "Avatar: The Last Airbender," which was known in several other countries as "Avatar: The Legend of Aang" (probably since airbender isn't really a word, and it would be hard to translate that without the context of the show). No matter where the show aired or what it was called, it was always accompanied by a subtitle, and the reason is all because of one James Francis Cameron.
A tale of two Avatars
As the story goes, Cameron started working on "Avatar" way back in 1994, writing an 80-page treatment that year and announcing his plan to direct the film right after "Titanic" in 1996. Of course, the movie did not come out in the '90s, mostly because the technology to bring the Na'vi to life via motion capture just wasn't up to par with what Cameron envisioned for his magnum opus.
Still, even if the movie took so long to make, Cameron never gave up on his plan, nor did he give up on the title "Avatar" — and presumably his dream of illustrating that title with the papyrus font. This meant that any other project would be unable to use "Avatar" in the same way Cameron was going to, including a cartoon about a young bald boy with an arrow tattoo on his forehead.
So when Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino started working on their fantasy epic cartoon, they had to add the subtitle "The Last Airbender" to the show. Likewise, when M. Night Shyamalan made his atrocious live-action adaptation, it was simply titled "The Last Airbender." The title change was a piece of trivia long rumored by fans of the Nickelodeon show, but we hadn't had proper confirmation until now.
Giancarlo Volpe, who directed some of the most beloved episodes of "Avatar: The Last Airbender," including "The Firebending Masters," "The Ember Island Players" and the infamous "The Great Divide," took to Twitter to finally confirm that Cameron influenced the title change. "Now the sequel is called 'The Way of Water.' If part 3 is called 'The Firebending Masters' we riot," Volpe joked.
"Avatar: The Way of Water" hits theaters on December 16, 2022. The first "Avatar: The Last Airbender" theatrical animated movie premieres October 10, 2025.