Over the years, fans have voiced countless complaints about "The Last Airbender," and it's not hard to see why. From its whitewashed cast to the lack of humor in its script — a staple of the cartoon –, the film presents a fundamental misunderstanding of the characters and world it's attempting to adapt. That's perhaps no better exemplified than when "The Last Airbender" put the spotlight on Earthbenders in a sequence that those familiar with their animated counterparts can only describe as head-scratching.
As pointed out by Redditor RickySmith2005, "The Last Airbender" makes it seem as though it takes a group of Earthbenders performing a ritualistic dance to lift a relatively small rock — something the likes of Toph Beifong (Jessie Flower) could've done quickly and more efficiently on the TV show. Among the many comments jokingly stating that there's no live-action "Avatar" movie at all, several voiced their disappointment in the scene, citing how underwhelming it was to see what the film had reduced Earthbenders to.
At the same time, not all "Last Airbender" viewers are so quick to give this moment flak. Penney Sound on YouTube went ahead and broke the scene down, explaining that the dancing group was responsible for the creation of a rock wall seconds earlier and that a single Earthbender tossed the smaller projectile rock on their own. This analysis may be right, but with the way this scene played out, it's easy to see where the confusion came from in the first place. At any rate, we can only hope that Netflix's "Avatar" interpretation handles details like this much better.
