Last Airbender Whitewashes Its Way to Worst Film Awards

The summer blockbuster picks up nominations for this year's biggest underachievers.

By Jamilah King Jan 24, 2011

We’ll admit to not being big fans of "Avatar: The Last Airbender," last summer’s big Hollywood blockbuster. In fact, a while back Hatty Lee rounded up just a handful of whitewashed Hollywood-produced blockbusters. But it looks like we weren’t the only ones who didn’t care much for it. The movie’s been nominated for a slew of Razzie Awards, which publicly shame the year’s worst films. From the looks of it, M. Night Shyamalan’a adaptation seems to be on pace to be an all-out loser by also racking up nominations for Worst Supporting Actor, Worst Director, Worst Eye-Gouging Use of 3D, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Sequel. Not to mention the entire cast being up for a Worst Screen Ensemble award. Check out the rest of this year’s nominees here.

The Razzies, short for "Golden Raspberry Award," are presented annually at a ceremony the day before the Academy Awards. The award itself typically costs about $5, and is made up of a golf ball-sized raspberry sitting atop a Super 8mm film reel that’s then spray painted in gold. (Oscars, for instance, are made out of gold-plated britannium and are worth about $500.) Notably, former president and actor Ronald Regan is one of only five people to win the Razzie Award for Worst Career Achievement. 

But the film’s real legacy may have been hinted at last week when our own Channing Kennedy wrote about Chris Nolan’s "airbending" of the next Batman movie. When your failure starts to become a verb, there’s probably little hope for redemption.