DA: Noah Ringer, who plays Aang in the film, is a relatively new actor and he’s pretty young. What was it like acting with him?
JR: Well, it’s an amazing experience to be acting with child actors. It’s interesting. They have a certain sense to them that is just completely natural. And as an actor, it’s your job to wear what they tell you to wear, say what they tell you to say and stand where they tell you to stand, but at the end of the day you can’t lie, and kids have a real hard time lying. If a kid knocks a baseball through a window, you ask him if he did it, you know when he lies about it; it’s pretty transparent. So it’s pretty amazing to be able to work with a younger actor who doesn’t really have that capability that we all get jaded with when we grow up to lie. So it’s very natural, and you know it kind of brought me to a certain place naturally as well within all the scenes that we worked on together. And it was just — it was amazing just to watch him grow as an actor and as a performer over the course of the film.

DA: The film is based on the Nickelodeon cartoon series so it skews to younger audiences. Why should college students spend their money to see this film?
JR: Well, it’s one of those things. A lot of my college friends were watching “The Last Airbender” whenever it was on Nickelodeon, and I mean, a lot of my college friends also liked it.
And it was one of their favorite shows when they were little because it was on a younger adult or children’s programming television station, but at the end of the day it’s a story and subject matter that appeals to everyone. It’s about being a hero and discovering yourself and it’s almost like a coming-of-age story set in this amped-up action world. And it’s one of those things  ... like I’ve always loved kung fu movies and I’ve always loved action films, and the idea of manipulating the elements. And that’s just something that’s kind of been there throughout all time, the mankind dependency on the elements and the ability to kind of work with them or work against them and what that means.

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