>>150329209
>Have we ever seen in the cartoon where something is created and then a bender does the moves after?
The movements in the cartoon are meant to be directing the element, hence why they used different martial arts as the basis for the four elements to represent the different philosophies of the Four Nations (Tai Chi for waterbending, Bagua for airbending, Northen Shaolin kung fu for firebending, and Hung Gao kung fu for earthbending, with Southern Praying Mantis Style uniquely for Toph to represent her self-developed blind earthbending). Iroh goes into the philosophies of the Four Nations in the episode Bitter Work.

In the movie M Night changed it so they do a bunch of movements to "pump up their chi" then the elements move around.
He also changed the pronunciations to supposedly be more "accurate" despite Aang and Sokka being made up names and thus their pronunciations being at the discretion of the cartoon creators, and "AH-va-tar" not being any more accurate to the original Sanksrit word than "A-vah-tar" is, it would be more like "ahv-TAAR-a". And they're speaking English, not Sanskrit, so the word is in fact, avatar. If they aren't doing the original derivation of other words, there's no need to do it for avatar.