The Last Airbender (Blu-Ray/DVD Combo + Digital Copy)

 

 

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There are good adaptations. There are bad adaptations. And there are adaptations that rip asunder the source material and gleefully devour its corpse.

This is one of the last category.

I might have been able to still enjoy "The Last Airbender" if it had merely had special effects, a horrible script and actors with the charisma of a plank. But director M. Night Shyamalan gets EVERYTHING ELSE wrong too, from the character motivations to bending.

Southern Water Tribe girl Katara and her brother Sokka stumble across a glowing glacier, and find a young Airbender boy inside. Since all the other Airbenders are dead, Katara figures out that Aang is the Avatar -- the master of all four elements, and the only person in the world who can defeat the powerful Fire Nation.

However, the Fire Nation has already found him, in the form of the disgraced Prince Zuko (Dev Patel). Aang, Sokka and Katara set out on a perilous voyage to the North Pole to find a waterbending master. But the malevolent Admiral Zhao -- Zuko's nemesis -- is approaching the North Pole with the Fire Nation navy, with a plan that may destroy them all.

M. Night Shyamalan had a golden opportunity with "The Last Airbender" -- the original cartoon was intelligent, funny, complex and filled with brilliant martial-arts and strong philosophical overtones. So instead he decided to make a movie with NONE of that -- a witless, humorless, simplistic stumbling behemoth of a film.

The culture, the characters, the climactic battle, the bending, the acting, the action sequences, and even the pronunciation of the names... EVERYTHING IS WRONG. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. But if I listed everything wrong with the movie, this review would be the size of a novel.

Even from an objective perspective, this movie is a disaster. Shyamalan clearly has no idea how to write an action movie, blasting through incoherent fight scenes in one long pan. The story feels painfully repetitive (how many times is Aang going to be captured?!) and the script is horrendously pompous, humorless and rushed ("We have to show them that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs" -- WHAT? You're not trying to SAVE THE WORLD?).

Also, there are gaping plot holes that a three-year-old can spot. So the Fire Nation imprisons Earthbenders, who manipulate rocks and soil... in a friggin' MINE. And the pseudo-Buddhist Aang apparently has no problem with COLD-BLOODEDLY KILLING HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE. Was Shyamalan mocking us with how bad he could make this, or did he just not care?

I will give Dev Patel credit -- even though his Zuko's main source of angst seems to be a mild case of eczema, he does put a lot of passion and intensity into the role.

Sadly, the same cannot be said of the other actors. Aang is wooden and mopey, Katara is weepy and inept, and Sokka comes across as a ticking time bomb. Even the talented Shaun Toub plays the horrendously-written role of Iroh with an air of boredom -- he always looks like he's thinking, "Okay, when do I get paid?" Only Aasif Mandvi seems to be having fun chewing the scenery.

M. Night Shyamalan managed something truly impressive in "The Last Airbender" -- he managed to take a funny, well-written, intelligent series and suck out all the humor, cleverness and likability from it.

As an avid and strong fan of the TV series I was both shocked and disappointed at the lack of effort that was put into this adaption. All the characters in the film were not even close to portray the TV series. The names were spoken incorrectly, there was no character development, the interactions between the characters was minimal, and the emotions of the outcomes were minor at best.

The positive remarks on this film is that the effects were decent at best. However the bending was ruined with the way M. Night Shyamalan portrayed it. The story plot felt sped up, moving the Protagonist and his companions across the world but does not explain half of the reasons how or why they were in certain areas.

The only character that showed a slight decent representation was Zuko. I admit if one who is not aware or has watched the TV series would have enjoyed the film at best, but it should have more effort put into it.

In conclusion I feel this movie was a poor addition to M. Night Shyamalan's film repertoire.

First I'll address things that I would have hated about this movie were I not a fan of the Avatar: The Last Airbender series and just some random person watching this as a regular movie. Even if this were an original movie, it would be awful.

The acting is terrible. Really terrible. There's many parts where I had to pause the movie and just say to myself, 'Really?'. There's a moment where Katara says, 'Aang, we have to go.' Which, first off was obvious and didn't need to be stated but secondly her delivery was just so stiff and it didn't have any of the urgency that would have made it a semi-tolerable line.

As previously mentioned the writing is very iffy.

There's really no character development through the entire movie. They try to get in Aang overcoming his guilt, but Aang never actually does. He just has the problem, then he doesn't anymore by the time the movie is over. There's no real character progression to that point. You don't see his journey, you don't see him actually go through the process. It's just he has the problem, he's told he has the problem. Then he just kind of decides that it's over and bam it's over.

The special effects are okay, but they're so slow that it's just tedious and there's not much of it so as a mindless action movie it's a not good either.

The worst part is that the bending is so slow. In the series [yeah I know, comparing] it's so quick and it's amazing to watch. The battles flow naturally. In this movie the bending is so slow that it's ridiculous, I could walk up and slap the characters before they even get their bending really going. So even for an action movie it's bad.

I'd go on and on about how many inaccuracies and how much butchering of the series this movie does... but it's all been said before and any fan that's seen this movie already knows what's wrong with it. A lot.

Don't let curiosity get you to watch this, you will just end up angry and annoyed.

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3.0 out of 5 stars the rush of a story
The problem I have with this Movie is not that they changed the pronunciation or appearance of characters. Read more

Published 14 months ago by C. Kokura

4.0 out of 5 stars Not as bad as all that
I had seen a couple of episodes before watching the movie, and now I'm watching through the whole series on Netflix. Read more

Published 16 months ago by atwojay

1.0 out of 5 stars Absolute Garbage
I am a huge fan of the TV series and I can not wait for the next series to come out.
I was excited about this movie coming out.
And then I saw it. Read more

Published 17 months ago by Jeff

4.0 out of 5 stars You can't compare this to the series...
I haven't seen the animated series, however, I can't get over the fact that everyone who has seen it is basing their opinions on that. Read more

Published 18 months ago by Valerie

1.0 out of 5 stars M. Night strikes again, ruining Emmy winning show
Absolutely terrible movie. Acting was completely emotionless with the characters revealing no real motivation. Read more

Published 18 months ago by TDUB

3.0 out of 5 stars A good movie for kids, not really for adults
This is a fantasy movie and so you always need to have that 'grain of salt' handy. Once again, the fate of the world is in the hands of teenagers and children:-) I was... Read more

Published 19 months ago by Jag Sulla

5.0 out of 5 stars Good family movie
This movie follows Aang, the last in a long line of Air Nomads (those who can 'bend,' or manipulate, the air to do their bidding). Read more

Published 20 months ago by M. Cooper

2.0 out of 5 stars horrid,in every way imaginable,though the ending was intriguing
(i have not seen the animated series this movie is based on,so i can't compare the two)this has to be one of the most awful films i have sen in the theatre in quite some time in... Read more

Published 22 months ago by falcon

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