The Last Airbender

I remember watching this movie back when it first came out and I didn't think it was that bad. I just finished watching the cartoon series on Netflix and I figured I would re-watch this to wrap it all up. Now I wish I hadn't watched it. It's NOTHING like the show. I wonder if the people who worked on this movie even saw the show. Stay away from this movie. It's so bad that it actually hurts to watch it.

The Last Airbender (2010)

1/2 (out of 4)

After being freed from an iceberg, Aang (Noah Ringer), a long lost Avatar who is the only one able to bend the four elements, finds himself doing battle against the Fire Nation who who attempting to take over all three Nations (Air, Water, Earth). M. Night Shyamalan's THE LAST AIRBENDER is based on the very popular television show, which is something I've never seen so I pretty much walked into this not knowing what to expect from the story. I'll admit by the ten-minute mark I was pretty much lost in regards to the story and each passing minute I found myself growing even more confused. I then had to do something I never do, which was stop the movie and call someone familiar with the TV series and this film to try and find out what the heck was supposed to be going on. I painfully sat through the rest of the movie and afterwards I started to read other reviews and I was happy to see that I wasn't the only one who couldn't make any sense out of this material. I will say that I think Shyamalan has gotten some pretty bad beatings over his recent films, which I think were unfair but there's no doubt that he deserves the majority of the blame here, although I think a very strong argument could be made that those who hired him should be on fans hit list more than Shyamalan. The biggest fault of his was the screenplay, which simply doesn't make any sense as the story is always jumping from one place to another and none it ever seems connected. From what I've gathered he was jumping around so many parts of the show that unless you're familiar with it you weren't going to know what's going on here. Even worse are the actors who are all extremely bad and come off even worse when they have to say the bad dialogue. I don't like to attack child actors so I won't mention any of them by name but what were the producers thinking when they agreed to cast them? Surely there were more talented people out in Hollywood. The special effects are all poor, the action badly directed and even worse is that there's simply nothing here to care about. Some nice cinematography is about the only thing going for this turkey, which is every bit the misfire its reputation would have you believe.

I don't consider myself picky when it comes to movies. I usually find a thing or two that I like about a movie whether it's terrible or not. But this…I mean wow. As an avid fan of the show and someone who could easily sit and watch episodes over and over again, I tried to be fair and give it a chance. Obviously, no live-action film could come close to the magnificence of the cartoon, but there are ways to pull it off and at least do it justice. This movie has hardly any theatrical merit. It could be considered a Twilight of moviedom—minus the fanbase.

Let's start with the characters or, rather, the lack there-of. One of the things that made the cartoon so great was the incredibly complex and well thought-out characterization. Every single character had dimension and depth. As for the movie, not one of the characters even had a personality. They were cardboard cutouts of their animated selves with no drive or purpose. Katara, Sokka, and Aang had no chemistry and were hardly even together during the length of the film. There's absolutely no motivation for either Sokka or Katara to assist Aang and, had your average movie-goer never seen the show, they would have been wondering what on earth they were doing in the movie at all. I didn't get a father-and-son relationship between Zuko and Iroh, which is one of the most important relationships in the entire series, one that eventually changes Zuko for the better. I could hardly see Zuko doing anything for Iroh in the film other than order him around. Momo and Appa got virtually no screen time and every time I got a glimpse of Momo's face I kept thinking "Zaboomafoo." I won't complain about the way either were rendered, as I don't think it really mattered considering the fact that they played no role in the story, anyway. Overall I felt the casting was dreadful. Both Katara and Zuko were too young, in my opinion, but Katara's lack of age could have been compensated by portraying a strong-willed character…something that was never accomplished. None of the characters resembled their animated counterparts: Sokka wasn't sarcastically charming, Katara wasn't determined or motherly, and Aang lacked any and all of his lovable boyish-ness. Zhou was annoying, Iroh had no jolly, old-man qualities, and Fire Lord Ozai? There was absolutely nothing threatening about him at all. I didn't so much mind that he was in it in the first place, but couldn't they have at least made him unapproachable? I felt like I could have walked up and punched him in the face without any repercussions.

The story was botched at best and felt like nothing but a string of events pieced together through basic transitions. It's one thing to stray from the original source for the sake of flow and continuity, but nothing about the story made sense unless you had seen the show, and even then, I was left confused and annoyed when things were switched around without any obvious reasoning. I understand that re-writing eight or nine hours' worth of material into a two-hour movie is a challenge for even the most skilled screenwriter, but it's been done before and could have been done here. My biggest disappointment was the fact that Sozin's comet, the most important aspect of the plot and the driving force for the Aang Gang to defeat the Firelord, was only briefly mentioned at the very end. The fact that this movie left out major plot points, key characters like King Bumi and the Kyoshi warriors, and jumbled around the order of various events is inexcusable. The source material was there; all that needed to be done was to use it and mold it properly. Rather than write the script, M. Night should have hired a screenwriter who actually knew what he was doing.

As for the effects, I can't say much. It's not one of the things I focus on in a movie, even for something that was meant to be heavily influenced by martial arts and elemental magic. I will say that the bending was hideous, and not because of the way the special effects were done. In the original cartoon, every movement corresponded with a reaction; in the film, it took five or ten motions for anything to even happen. Because of this, the bending didn't look natural in any way and came across as pitiful and useless. The fact that the fire benders couldn't shoot fire out of their hands made their bending look much less powerful than it should have been. Perhaps the thing that annoyed me the most was Katara's obvious lack of talent at water bending, a fact that gave the story no benefit and looked more like M. Night just never watched the show.

Since I don't like to totally crush something, I will say a few things I found salvageable about the film. For one thing, I thought the scenery and costumes were decent. They had the look of the show but without much character to them. I liked Yue, who looked a great deal like her character, perhaps the most of any of the actors. The way they did Aang's arrow was kind of cool with all of the detailing, but it could have been a little more visible. The only thing I can say I thought was a nice addition was Zuko's mentioning that his father said he was "like his mother." That was the one and only nice touch. More than anything the first twenty minutes of the film gave me a good laugh as it was clear that the entire movie would be a disaster.

Overall I am sincerely glad I didn't bother to pay money to see this movie and strongly encourage anyone else to avoid it. Spend your money elsewhere, such as purchasing or renting the first season of the show.

After waiting extremely eagerly for this movie, I sat in the theater and was extremely eager for it to END. Ear-oh? Oong? Soak-ah?! Could they have butchered the names anymore than they did? Worse, the entire movie felt like a string of clips put together for an hour and a half and not like a movie at all. All the major parts of the Book of Water were skimmed over, while things like the freeing of the earth nation village (while important) were given screen time that could have been given to major events like the southern air temple.

The actors were dismal, with the exception of Dev Patel as Zuko and to a lesser extent Shaun Toub as Iroh, who wasn't an accurate portrayal of Iroh visually but at least captured the character's wisdom much better than many of the other actors on board for the movie. He however failed to provide many of the aspects of Iroh that made him endearing in the series.

I will give that the northern water kingdom was gorgeous, but that's about all I have to say kindly about this movie.

If you love Avatar: The Last Airbender as the series, I recommend giving this movie a miss. It's heartbreaking how they butchered something that had such fantastic and barely needing change source material.

Shyamalan takes a stunningly sophisticated cartoon and reduces it to one of the most insultingly dumb films I've seen in years. From the script to the visuals, the directing, the acting, there is absolutely nothing that did well, either as an adaptation or as a film in its own right.

Characters who were once powerful and spitfire (Katara) or entertainingly sarcastic (Sokka) are now bland and exist solely for the purpose of exposition. In fact, the entire film comes off as exposition, far too much of the dialog serving as "by the way" explanations, never allowing the plot or characters to really take form. The scenes seem episodic and unconnected, and the film never comfortably establishes its universe, always retreading with an "as you know" or "aren't you that guy who..." to establish (often unnecessary) continuity.

The style, too, is disappointing, capturing none of the magic of the series. Most noticeable was the "bending"--while the series took its martial arts seriously, carefully aligning real-world arts with elements and making the benders' movements coincide with those of their elements, the film gives us characters flailing in generic martial arts forms for a few minutes, only to effect one splash, boulder, or blast of fire. In the series, every movement had a meaning; in the film, only about one in ten does.

Many fans of the series who were angry at the "whitewashing" of the cast hoped that it had at least resulted in the best actors for the parts. However, the acting was at best uninspired, and at worst painfully awkward, though part of this can be attributed to a truly atrocious script. Dialog is stilted and unnatural, certain phrases are repeated needlessly throughout ("great library," anyone?), and in all the only chance the script stands of being remembered is through memetic appreciation of its unintentional, awkward hilarity.

Not even the collective will of a devoted fanbase wanting so much for this film to be good could make it even remotely watchable.