The world of Avatar: The Last Airbender centers around bending - the ability to manipulate one of the four elements. Aang, the titular Avatar, is the only one able to master all four types of bending and is thus charged with bringing balance to the world. While the original Avatar: The Last Airbender series featured animated bending, the cast and crew of the upcoming Netflix adaptation had to re-imagine the art of bending within a live-action setting.

The Best War Games recently attended a press conference for Avatar: The Last Airbender during which the cast discussed "Bending Boot Camp," an intensive training experience where they studied the different forms of bending. The cast spoke about how martial arts influenced the poses and movements of bending, what it was like performing bending on camera, and the fantastic work done by the production's stunt crew.

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By J Brodie Shirey

Bending Boot Camp Was Exhausting, But Rewarding

Gordon Cormier loved Bending Boot Camp - and joyfully expressed that he bet his character, Aang, would have loved it as well. As a naturally high-energy person, Cormier took to the repetition of poses and forms. He especially loved getting to do wire work, which was used to make Aang look like he was flying and gliding with his airbending powers. As the Air Nomads were wiped out by the Fire Nation and Aang is the sole remaining airbender in the world, Cormier and the production crew worked together to make airbending a visually interesting discipline that immediately stood out from the other three types of bending.

Another actor who greatly enjoyed Bending Boot Camp was Ken Leung, who plays the antagonistic Commander Zhao of the Fire Nation. Leung admitted that he initially struggled to master bending, as he was unable to see the final result until well after each scene was filmed. However, throughout Bending Boot Camp, Leung said that he came to love Zhao's firebending and described the process as a mix of "concentrated energy" and "choreographed motion."

Firebending Was Particularly Difficult To Master

Firebending is arguably the bending discipline that gets the most focus in Season 1 of Avatar, as many firebending characters appear as part of the Fire Nation's army. In addition to the aforementioned Zhao, Fire Lord Ozai, his brother Iroh, and his children Zuko and Azula are all firebenders. Because of this, the crew focused heavily on the precision and intensity associated with firebending, the most militaristic of the bending arts. Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, who plays Iroh, discussed the process of learning and performing firebending:

It was an intensive 2-3 week process of recording each session on an iPhone and watching it back. I had to learn how to move and breathe properly. I had to stretch, which isn't so easy for me anymore. In your brain, you think you look really good, and then you watch the playback, and it's not so good.

Lee joked that Dallas Liu, as Prince Zuko, did most of the "heavy lifting" in the firebending action scenes the pair shared. He described Liu, who was inspired to pursue martial arts by watching the original Avatar show as a child, as a prodigy who took to firebending immediately. Ozai's actor, Daniel Dae Kim, agreed with Lee that firebending was difficult but ultimately satisfying to master.

Kim explained that the crew was very careful and thorough when choreographing each firebending scene. They were always considering the size and shape of each burst of fire, what form it would take - ray, ball, or something else - and its exact path of travel. Kim and Lee both credited the production and stunt crews as the primary reason that the bending in Netflix's Avatar series looks so impressive and is so faithful to its original animated incarnation.

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