The Last Airbender

Until 2008, it was called white-washing or race-lifting. Then Hollywood’s most prominent ethnically-Indian director took a popular ethnically-diverse cartoon and cast a whole bunch of white people. Boycotts were threatened, and even the Godfather of movies, Roger Ebert, expressed his extreme disappointment. There was so much uproar about these ridiculous and unnecessary casting choices that the success of the movie was threatened before it even started filming. So M. Night Shyamalan relented and recast on of the roles with Dev Patel … as the bad guy. Despite intense damage control by Shyamalan and the studio, the movie bombed. We’re sure Hollywood has learned its lesson now and will never, ever do it again.