tellytubby101 | Movie Review: The Last Airbender

Final Rating: 4.5 out of 10.

Quick Summary: Movie adaptation of the popular cartoon, Avatar: The Last Airbender. When the world is set out of balance with fire overpowering the other elements, it's up to the young Avatar, master of all forces, to reset the way of things.

This movie made me so damned angry. As an adaption, it fails in practically every sense of the word. I want to rage at M. Night Shyamalan for writing such a deplorable script and directing the scenes so haphazardly. I don't doubt that if you didn't walk intyo the theatres with a fair idea of the plot, you'd be lost from the outset. Vital scenes were left out or cut short, lines badly delivered - forced and not smooth. Casting was off, race definitely playing a role in it - and not in a good way.

Let me order my ranting thoughts into clear cut sections:

i. Adaptation
Right, so the movie is meant to do a fair representation of Nickelodeon's cartoon, right? Well, it isn't. They should not say it is. I felt that they did a poor effort, especially considering the time and effort placed in making the film. Plot points were choppily presented, and the idea of bending was twisted. Fire benders can create fire out of thin air; in the movie, they are dependant on existing flames. When it showed imprisoned earth benders, they were imprisoned on land with dirt beneath their feet. Seriously, massive plot fail. The start consisted of a terrible Star Wars like rolling text and voiceover. If only the voiceovers stoppped there. In their effort to include all of season one of the cartoon, they ended up trying too hard and leaving too much out.

ii. Screenplay
Grr. Just grr. Sokka is meant to the 'sarcasm-and-meat' guy, the idea guy, the funny guy; but he showed none of that. Katara was shown as more annoying and her continued voiceovers of scenes irked me to no end. Iroh is meant to be the tea-loving, inner-peace uncle of the prince, but he was ruined. Argh. I could go on and on and on. One line from the 'Blue Spirit' episode I found very important was when Aang (lead protagonist) was meant to tell Prince Zuko, his "arch enemy" as such, that he thought they could've been friends. It's meant to be very moving and show a huge shift in the power play / relationship between them. But no. It deserved less than two seconds. But at least he finished his line. One of the princess' lines literally cut off half-way in a random bit of editing fail.

iii. Casting/Acting
The water tribes should be tanned in colour, but all of them are white as snow - which oddly switched the white fire nation to that of an Indian cast. The reasing was "it was hard to find children of the right ethnicity" but I call that bullshit, since they simply seemed to swap the colours of the good and bad guys - racist undertones, perhaps? None of the leads looked like they should, and not only that, but none of them seemed physically possible in pronouncing names and titles right. Words like "Avatar" and "Aang" had wrongly emphasised vowels and were irksome to continue hearing. The original cartoon was made in America, so I have no idea what their excuse in mispronounciation is. Seriously, take half-an-hour, watch one episode of and you can feel their fail. Also, the acting was flat, the chemistry was practically non-existant. Is this a burden of child actors, or simply shit casting? I dunno.

iv. Scenes
So badly cut and pasted together, I wanted to cry. Choppily done, as if they couldn't decide what moments to use or what. The moments of "connection" between Aang and Katara, so beautifully done in the cartoon, were ruined in the movie. It felt more like she was preaching to him of his greatness. The whole random additional "bowing" scenes - didn't like them, for all the meaning it supposed to have held. Off track, but the journey to learn water bending was meant to be this huge struggle and it looked like they mastered it in days. *Mutters under breath*.

v. Visuals
The only redeeming part of the movie was the visuals. I liked how they used the graphics to beautifully show all the bending of the elements, water especially worthy of notice. The fight scenes (hand-to-hand combat, the sword-fights, the huge battles) were all worthy of commendation and praise. The correographing, planning and execution worked well as any dance. As for the physical surroundings themselves, they were amazingly done. Temples, buildings, citels and whatnot seemed to have a lot of thought put into it. The costumes, too were reasonably good, though Aang's henna tattoos irked me when I wanted to see the blue. Now what I didn't like. The Avatar State was so weak. A wave. He's meant to tranform into a monster of the ocean and the moon and destroy ships and battalions of soldiers. No, instead he does that wave that hurts no one and simply scares the bad guys away. *Sigh*. Spirit world looked like a blurry 90's drug-trip scene with fuzzy edges. Nice. *Eyeroll*.

... you know what? I could add so much more, but I'll stop there. There's only so much I can rant while I'm trying to watch the television. *Still seething*.

All-in-all, this movie was pretty to look at, but everything else sucked. A lot. Watch the cartoon, not the movie.