Amanda Bell of the Twilight Examiner sat down with Jackson Rathbone for a little chat, discussing topics ranging from his role in Twilight, to his upcoming role as Sokka in The Last Airbender.
“I’ve been training in various styles of Kung Fu since December, and I love it! It connects the body and mind in a way a textbook could never achieve . . . I can kill from 10 feet away with a spear . . . Purty sweeeeeetttt . . .”
MTV with another scoop on The Last Airbender, this time sitting down with Dev Patel, recently cast as the Fire Nation’s banished Prince Zuko.
“It’s based on a Nickelodeon cartoon,” explained Patel, who replaced Jesse McCartney earlier this week as the character of Zuko, the 16-year-old exiled prince of Fire Nation who is eager to regain his honor. “There’s this character called Avatar [played by Noah Ringer] who can harness all these powers in a slightly different world, and they have different nations like the Firebenders — who can form fire and use it to their abilities — and there are Waterbenders and Earthbenders,” Patel explained.
“[Aang the Avatar] is the Airbender — he can harness air and all the other ones as well,” he added. “He’s a special being, and I’m part of that.”
“I play a character called Zuko who is the Prince of the Fire Nation, and it’s good because it’s a dark role. I’m not playing the hero, whereas in ‘Slumdog’ it was real character acting and performance-oriented. This is [as well], but it’s much more physical, with martial arts. I’m learning on the job, so this is a great new experience for me.”
When asked about the Jesse McCartney situation…
“I didn’t,” Patel said enthusiastically when asked whether he had “kicked out” the “Leavin’ ” singer. “I came on very late, so I didn’t hear about the Jesse McCartney thing. In all honesty, I swear.”
Once again, MTV caught up with one of the stars of The Last Airbender; this time they spoke with the live action Prince Zuko, Jesse McCartney.
First he touched upon the whitewashing controversy, his training, how he first discovered Avatar, and his meeting with director M. Night Shyamalan…
“I heard a lot about this online,” McCartney said, referring to fans’ criticism. “There’s a lot of hard-core fans out there [who] probably know more about it … I’m still learning. This is M. Night’s vision and this is what he wants. To all the fans, I can tell you I’m putting my best foot forward.”
“I’ve been in kung-fu training for the last month and half-learning all the moves. I’m looking forward to it.”
“I heard about the series from my little brother who’s an avid ‘Avatar’ fan,” he explained. “I heard about the project, and that Night was directing it. He flew me out to Philly to read with him. I worked with him a lot on the character. He called me on my phone and was like, ‘I want you to play this character.’ And we took it from there.”
He then spoke on co-star Jackson Rathbone…
“He was there for the reading and he and I have been in training together. We’re flying in a few weeks to start production and then to Greenland to start filming. He’s a super nice guy. We’ve been getting along great.”
Again, more generic talk about the film from one of its stars. Hopefully as we get closer to filming, we’ll begin to get some info with a little more meat.
MTV spoke with Jackson Rathbone about The Last Airbender in a new interview.
On the audition…
“It was great. They flew us all out to Philly,” Rathbone remembered of his audition. “I got to meet the other castmembers that they hired on. I got to read with them, even. It was a blast. It was a great chance to get a free trip to Philly and get a chance to meet M. Night. He’s an incredibly nice guy, and I think we hit it off pretty well, and now I get to play Sokka.”
On Avatar: The Last Airbender…
“It’s a fantastic show,” Rathbone said of the Nickelodeon animated series. “I’ve always loved that kind of deep, mythical fantasy. It’s got a lot about the four elements: water, fire, earth, wind. It’s just really cool. It’s a really interesting series and such a cool character. I’ve always liked the show, and I thought it would be fun.
On his hopes…
“For me, it’s a great chance to show my range a little bit more,” Rathbone added, comparing Sokka to his “Twilight” character. “It’s a chance to do something a little funnier. Something less serious than Jasper.”
On the whitewash controversy…
“I think it’s one of those things where I pull my hair up, shave the sides, and I definitely need a tan,” he said of the transformation he’ll go through to look more like Sokka. “It’s one of those things where, hopefully, the audience will suspend disbelief a little bit.”
On M. Night Shyamalan…
“I think ‘Airbender’ has a lot of suspenseful twists as a TV show, but I think it’s something he’s really looking forward to, for expanding his own horizons,” Rathbone said. “He has kids. How many films has he made that his kids would be able to watch? So I think it’s really great that he’s making a family film. I have a sister; it’s exciting to make a film that my whole family can enjoy.”
For the full article and to view a video interview with Jackson Rathbone, click the link above.
Jackson Rathbone was selected by MTV as one of its Male Rookies of 2009 in Pop Culture, and sounds very keen on beginning his martial arts training for The Last Airbender!
“It’s just an action-packed, epic film,” he said of M. Night Shyamalan’s “Airbender.” “I’m starting to do martial-arts training, which is going to be so much fun. It’s such a mythical world. We get to go to Asia, go film abroad.”
Congratulations Sokka!
MTV Movies Blog spoke with ‘Last Airbender’ director M. Night Shyamalan to discuss the spirituality, family, and the sequels of the live action Avatar franchise.
“I wrote the first [movie], which I’m just finishing and polishing up – that’s what I was doing this morning,” grinned M. Night Shyamalan this week when we caught up with him to talk about “The Last Airbender,” his upcoming film based on the hugely-successful Nickelodeon series “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”
While making a film for a younger audience is a big change for the man behind such thrillers as “The Sixth Sense” and “The Happening,” he told us that the gig is a great chance to stretch some new muscles. “What’s great about doing something like that is that let’s say your instinct is to distill me down into three characteristics: thrillers, scary, twist. Let’s just say, ‘Oh, that’s what he does,’” Shyamalan explained. “Then when they come see ‘Last Airbender’ – which has none of those three things in there – and yet, you’ll be able to tell in 30 seconds that I directed it. Now you’ll have to go, ‘Wait, I realize there are other things that define him. [Things] I knew, but was never really acknowledging them on the same level as these other characteristics.’”
According to the Indian-born, Philly-raised writer/director, his “Avatar” is far from kid’s stuff; in fact, there’s plenty of adult themes to capture the attention of fans of all ages.
“The spirituality, the centering on relationships and family, on inherent optimism. Things like that, you’ll see,” he explained of the series, which tells the story of Aang, a 112-year-old monk who appears to be 12 years old, and can control the elements. “It seems like an odd fit [for me], but when you see the movie, literally, it’s full of Buddhist philosophy, it has all this stuff. All the elemental stuff that really lends itself to…almost a Hindu kind of connotations; there’s a lot of Hinduism in it. So suddenly you’ll see those kind of things in the [future] movies, and I think it’ll reflect really well and make the relationship more accurate and more complex, which will be a great thing.”
And yes, you read that last quote correctly. Although Shyamalan has held off on re-visiting hits like “Sixth Sense” and “Unbreakable,” he is eager to break into the sequel business with future “Avatar” flicks.
“I’m supposed to write the second one this Fall when we’re prepping,” he said, noting that the first “Avatar” will hit theaters in July 2010. “I don’t want it to feel like ‘Oh, the first one made a lot of money, let’s make another one.’ It’s not that at all. This is a story told over three movies. A very clear, Shakespearean story that’s told over three movies. And for me, that’s when a franchise works the best, like ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ It’s when it’s all plotted out in advance [that sequels work], and this is the clarity of what we’re doing.”
