Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel gets to show his dark side as Zuko.

A few minutes later, we stopped and talk to Messina, who has been working on the film in pre-production development with the director since November of 2007. Even with two large warehouses filled with sets and satellite locations near the Delaware River that also house massively constructed villages (including the biggest set constructed on the east coast), Messina admitted that Airbender is still a huge CGI undertaking.

"There are a lot of visual effects in this movie," Messina offered. "We aren't going to parts of Asia so we are relying on visual effects to complete that for us. But the mandate has been to build as much as possible and have the actors be on some sort of real environment and try to keep the greenscreen in the background. On stage it's difficult to do that because you are always extending but as long as the actor's feel there is some real environment around them, I think that's where Night's comfort zone is."

The vfx are being created by Industrial Light & Magic (supervised by Pablo Helman) and Messina said they are already collaborating closely to create a unified design aesthetic with the practical. "I'm going to work with them after the film is over and get the roughs of the concept work to them so I can complete the world. So much is going to be left to visual effects and it's important to complete that world conceptually with them. They know that I have been thinking about all of this much more than they have and for much longer so they are using my ideas pretty consistently."

The other piece to the creative puzzle is M. Night. Known for creating films that are based on character and grounded in reality (despite their many sci-fi or fantastical themes), vfx have never dominated any of the director's previous works. Although The Last Airbender represents his first major CG film, he suggested that he is quickly adapting to the use of high-tech in his process.

"I'm not the most techie guy in the world, so if I can keep coming from character, I can keep it grounded," Shyamalan chuckled. "When we saw the cartoon, the mythology was so well thought out and had Buddhism, martial arts and CGI, but the kind that is character-based and that's coming from emotions. So I could tell ILM…and speak in terms of character point of view and be effective in that way."

Shyamalan admitted that he's already into the cut of the film so he can provide ILM plates to start their daunting work. "I usually don't touch editing until I am done shooting. But with a movie of this scale with the level of CGI, they need nine months to do a particular shot of waterbending. So I'm already editing to hand over the shots."

The first glimpse of what is to come with those vfx debuted with The Last Airbender teaser trailer on June 23rd. Showing an epic water scene with warships blasting flaming missiles at Aang's cliffside monastery, the director said that's just a taste of what audiences can expect. "The teaser we worked on forever. I shot it and it was my idea. We did it all ourselves as first unit and it was our big effort to come out and make a big splash." The Last Airbender opens July 1, 2010.

Tara Bennett is an East Coast-based writer whose articles have appeared in publications such as SCI FI Magazine, SFX and Lost Magazine. She is the author of the books 300: The Art of the Film and 24: The Official Companion Guide: Seasons 1-6.