For Asian Faces, M. Night Shyamalan Comes to Virginia

McCartney jumped ship last month -- "scheduling conflicts with his music tour" -- and was replaced by "Slumdog Millionaire" star Dev Patel, a Brit of Indian heritage.

The fan base kept simmering. The switch of just one cast member "reeks of tokenism," wrote the proprietor of aang-aint-white.livejournal.com. Online news stories and blogs have been clogged with comments accusing the production of dismissing the series's Asian aesthetics.

Three weeks ago, the prominent Los Angeles-based theater organization East West Players wrote a letter to an "Airbender" producer to express dismay over the casting call for the four principal roles (which sought actors of "Caucasian or any other ethnicity"). The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) wrote a similar letter lamenting the loss of a "historic opportunity to give Asian American actors a chance to shine in a big-budget film franchise."

"As far as I know, three of the four leads are still white," says MANAA's founding president, Guy Aoki, over the weekend. "And the Dev Patel character starts off being a bad guy. The three white people are heroes. It's confusing to us. They're supposed to be leading a band of Asian- or Inuit-looking people."

Aoki says he talked with Paramount's VP of communications, who said she would relay concerns to Shyamalan, but the studio has issued no response. Paramount declined to comment for this article and declined on behalf of Shyamalan.

"When you take a beloved story that has a fan base, you'll never be able to make everyone happy," says Ricketts, the casting director, who was not involved with the casting of principal roles. "There's been some talk that we're casting authentic Asians as a response to the backlash, which is totally wrong because our world is multi-ethnic and the 'Avatar' world will be multi-ethnic.'"

In January, someone in the Web movement designed T-shirts to sell online. One shirt reads, across the chest, "Asian People: Heroes not Extras."

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Back in the multi-purpose room of the River Place apartments, a couple dozen Mongolian Americans trickle in, get their photos taken, fill out blue information cards.

"What's my 'special skills'?" asks Chinguun Ganbold, 7, pen in hand.

"Hmm, 'playing video games,' " says his mother, Fairfax resident Oyun-Erdene Bold, on hand to translate during the open call. After an hour, Bold mentions that it's Tsagaan Sar, the Mongolian lunar new year, and much of the community is setting up for the festival at the Wilson School, which is also home to the Mongolian School of the National Capital Area on Saturdays.

So the crew relocates down the street around noon. They set up camp in a classroom -- point-and-shoot camera, blue information cards, culturally ambiguous costumes -- just as school lets out.