Perhaps it was just presumptuous of M. Night Shyamalan to promote his upcoming adaptation of the Avatar: The Last Airbender tv series at the end of The Happening on a little girl's backpack.
Around these parts, The Happening is one of the most laughably awkward movies ever made and it sure did no favors including the otherwise promising The Last Airbender film. I guess, since we were collectively watching the end of The Happening, we should have known that The Last Airbender would be a steaming pile. Yet, I watched it all the same.
I'd heard from several friends and colleagues (not in the 6-12 age range that the original cartoon targeted) that the Avatar series was excellent. I have thus seen about five episodes of the first season and can confirm that the animated tale of the titular last airbender is not only quite entertaining, but one of the most universally excellent animated series in recent times. It (and the movie, but we'll get to that later) centers around Aang, who has been literally frozen in time for a century discovering his role in the ongoing war between the Fire Nation and the other subsets of the human race. Aang is an airbender who can harness and control air with his skills. The Fire Nation can control fire and are apparently pissed at something and decide to exterminate the Airbenders and are waging war against the Water People and Earth People. Thus, Aang and his friends Katara and Sokka must fight the Fire Nation and some dethroned prince or something. I haven't gotten that far in the series and damn if the movie did anything to clarify.
I need to get a few things out of the way before the review can continue. M. Night sucks balls and should go back to filmmakers' school or wherever will no longer insult my sensibilities. And the cartoon (even only seeing maybe 1/20th of it) is far better than the movie. Allegedly, this was intended to be the first in a trilogy of films that cover the series' three seasons, each tackling Aang mastering one of the other elements. The movie failed (at least critically) so that may never happen. Upon watching the series (after the movies for the record), I was struck by how heartful and genuine it was. The series is not dark and brooding like the film, and in fact embraces the innocence of childhood as Aang is quickly thrust into an authoritative figure that he is not cut out for. All of that was lacking from the film but that is not all.
Sure, it is ambitious to try and condense a 22-episode season into a film. M. Night deserves accolades for that in theory at least. But just like watching every other episode of a TV series, you may get the gist but it is rather awkward and jarring. What took the 22 minute series premiere to cover, M. Night gets in less than seven minutes or so but with the side effect of stripping any redeeming character moments or mystery from it. The story is interesting (thus what got me watching the superior TV series) but as certain plot points are efficiently hit, I really lost track of why the hell I should care since I barely knew these characters or what they were up against. The fact that this movie had more voiceover than what I hear the original Blade Runner is like and characters that exist ONLY for exposition only cements that we are not watching a full story, only a condensed version of it.
This entire review won't be comparing the film to the series (but there's no contest, go watch the series NOW) so I will move on to things specific to the film. M. Night is no stranger around Movie Scum and I believe I mentioned once before that he should stick to directing. Scratch that … he should stick to producing or retiring. There are some things that I enjoyed about the film (namely the cinematography and the production design) but most everything else was lackluster at best. Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, and Jackson Rathbone as Aang, Katara, and Sokka respectively all turned in garbage acting. In fact, there was not one (1!) actor in the film that I could pick out as decent against their horrendous counterparts. Across the board, it is that bad.
Likewise, the special effects are not too spectacular considering this was a multi-million summer release which should have had all of Paramount and Nickelodeon's money behind it. Yet, some were okay, most were bad, and some were head-scratchingly abysmal which makes watching this film (not in 3D mind you) a headache in and of itself. The boats employed by the Fire Nation though were awesome and especially the design of the different worlds whether the ice-capped Water People world or the beautiful Earth People world (these were rather glossed over in the film) were impressive even if there were jettisoned for horrible storytelling at every angle.
I may not be the most attentive movie watcher, but I swear there was a girl in the final third of the film who merely showed up, seemed to be important, and then died in a triumphant matter (oops, spoiler!) without the chance for me to even catch her name. And thus, the main failure point of the movie (not counting the horrid acting) is that the story is literally 480 minutes of story truncated into a feature film with no regard to the playful nature or even attempting to scratch the depth of the source material.
That said, The Last Airbender is not a crap category type of film. It is beautifully shot but simply incompetently directed in every other regard. It might be worth seeing just what the "hype" is about but it does not contain the awfulness as some of the other films we've reviewed.
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