Avatar: The Last Airbender was a deep series enjoyed by many fans. Though it was meant to be a children’s show, the martial arts action, well written humor, and compelling characters made the show enjoyable to all ages. Now, M. Night Shyamalan is helming The Last Airbender, the big screen adaptation of the Avatar series. The Last Airbender is just a two hour movie and Avatar: The Last Airbender was a three season series, so we know that M. Night isn’t going to be able to get to everything. However, when we looked at the IMDB page for the movie, we saw that some of our favorite characters (even if they were minor) won’t even be showing up. Maybe this is because the movie will probably only address book one of the three season series, however, with fans paranoid about the quality of M. Night’s interpretation, we may never see the sequels that would introduce these fan favorites. So here are our top 20 Avatar: The Last Airbender characters we wish were in the movie, but aren’t.

10. Chong and the Traveling Hippies

There has never been a man more famous for singing bad songs … well, perhaps the guys in Nickelback, but aside from them there hasn’t been a man more famous for singing bad songs than Chong. This guy was more famous for his demeanor than his musical abilities. A hippie to the core, he sings about love, life, and death, but in actuality we really just want to see him in M. Night’s interpretation so that we might see Sokka on cactus juice again. “Drink cactus juice! It’ll quench ya! Nothing’s quenchier! It’s the quenchiest!” Sure we know those two episodes didn’t coincide, but you know Chong was on the stuff.

9. Combustion Man

Now this is one awesome villain! This guy uses a special type of fire-bending that makes things explode with his mind. Mind bullets OK! He fires literal mind bullets! We never figure out his real name or where he comes from, or why he is working for Azula and hunting down the Avatar as if his life depended on it, but we don’t care. All we know is that we want to see mind bullets exploding on the big screen. Hey M. Night! Do you need an excuse to make your movie 3-D? Combustion Man is it!

8. Long Feng and the Dai Li

Speaking of villains, Long Feng and the Dai Li wrote the book on being backstabbing assholes. These guys were basically the shadow government of the Earth Kingdom. They manipulated king Kuei at every turn until Long Feng eventually sells out the whole kingdom to Azula. Of course Azula, being the biggest bitch in the Avatar world, stabs Long Feng in the back and takes the Dai Li from him, but until then Long Feng is your basic curly mustached royal advisor villain. They are all elite earth-benders too! Each and everyone one of them is tough enough to make and bend crystal. You certainly don’t want to fuck with this group of elite guards, assassins, and martial artists. Of course, Aang and the Avatar crew often do, but you don’t want to.

7. The Swampbenders

Much along the lines of the Sandbenders, the Swampbenders were a specific tribe with a very special skill. They understood that you could bend the water in plants and mud to take the appearance of a Swamp-Thing-like monster. They also could bend the murky waters of the swamp to further their canoes, make the trees and vines move to set up traps, and they may in fact have been the inventors of the powerful water whip ability. Even better than their martial arts prowess is their personality. Sure, maybe they are a backwater hillbilly stereotype, but they are a hilarious backwater hillbilly stereotype.

6. The Boulder!

The Boulder! is a wrestling champion. The Boulder! fights with the power of the earth itself. The Boulder! speaks in the third person and has an exclamation point in his name. Nothing can stop The Boulder! The Boulder! was one of the best recurring characters that Avatar ever had. Don’t disrespect The Boulder! or else The Boulder! will bring pain and misery to M. Night Shyamalan and all those around him. Our pick for The Boulder!? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson obviously.

5. Bumi

Say what you want but Bumi is the best earth-bender in the series. While Bumi was encased in a coffin of metal designed to shut off all of his earth-bending abilities, he still managed to control the earth around him with nothing more than his chin. Bumi is stone-cold crazy in every sense of the word. Imagine your old Alzheimer’s inflicted grandpa with the power to cause earthquakes powerful enough to swallow cities and a body rivaling the musculature of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Fabio combined. Also, he is a member of the Order of the White Lotus, and that was one of the most awesome plot hooks that never got explored in the series. Bumi for President, M. Night!

4. Jet and His Crew

Jet managed to be one of the most skilled fighters in Avatar and he couldn’t even bend. His weapons of choice were two twin tiger hook swords, and he used them with great ability. Half the time he was slicing up his opponents, while the other half of the time he was using them to swing Indiana Jones style through the tree tops. He lives through wars, brainwashing, and downright torture, but he actually makes his mark on the series by being one of the only characters who outright dies. It was gutsy for Nickelodeon to kill off a fan favorite character, but it hit us all hard and made him nearly immortal in our minds.

3. Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee

It’s damn near criminal that these three characters weren’t cast in M. Night’s adaptation. Azula was the primary villain for most of the series, and Mai and Ty Lee were romantic interests for Zuko and Sokka respectively. Between Azula’s ability to bend blue fire and lightning, Ty Lee’s ability to shut off bending through calculated martial arts strikes (and her unnatural flexibility) and Mai’s weapons prowess, they created a force (a sexy one) to be reckoned with. If M. Night doesn’t end up casting Azula, well someone here is going to end up electrocuted.

2. Toph

I’d like to alter my previous statement. If it’s criminal to exclude Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee from M. Night’s The Last Airbender, then excluding Toph is the equivalent of franchise homicide. She is a main character goddammit! Sure maybe the rampant blind jokes aren’t exactly PC enough for today’s movie audiences but come on! She’s the toughest blind chick in existence. She’s an integral part of the series. If M. Night doesn’t have it in him to include her, then the movie franchise is over before it starts.

1. The Cabbage Vendor

My cabbages! What have you done to my cabbages! M. Night, this is simple. You need a guy, a cabbage cart, and some cabbages, and you need to repeatedly destroy all three of them. This was the best in-joke in Avatar. Pass it up, and fans will angry, and you don’t want to provoke the rage of cabbage.

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