THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE KILL IT WITH FIRE
Quick note on my rating system?
*/5. So Bad Its Good- If I give a movie a "*," that means a special little turd. Its a movie that is so bad that its hilarious (even if the directors didn't mean to make it that way). These movies are great for sharing with friends and tearing it apart. Ex. The Room, Care Bears Movie II: A New Generation, Mac and Me.
1/5 Kill It With Fire, If I give a film a rating of "1" it means the movie isn't just bad. It is barely a movie or so offensive that to even uses a single sensory organ to witness it would be an insult to the heavens. If I give a movie a 1, avoid it at all costs. The film is pure garbage. Kill it with fire. Ex. Shrek The Third, Punisher: Warzone, 10,000 B.C.
2/5. Bad, A movie that lands itself in the bad category means that, while a failure, is not a complete failure. The movie might have some entertainment value, like a good character/scene, but as a whole it fails or is offensive. Ex. Wolverine Origins, Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace, Hancock.
3/5. Okay, The movie was neither bad nor great. Its probably worth at least once viewing and maybe more if it really catches your fancy. This is probably the easiest rating to give a movie. ex. Night at the Museum, Simpsons Movie, Prince of Persia.
4/5. Great, These are the movie I recommend you check out at least once before you die or it you're just bored. These are the movies that really deserve attention and help elevate film as art and entertainment. ex. Iron Man, How to Train Your Dragon, The 40-Year Old Virgin.
5/5. Favorite, These movies are instant classics....or at least in my book. I reserve 5/5s for movies that I HAVE to own and watch and share with everyone. At some point this year, I'll probably make a list for my top 100 films. Wink. ex. Big Trouble in Little China, Brazil, The Royal Tenenbaums.
The Last Airbender. The Death of a Decade.
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| Kung Power: Enter the Fist is infinitely superior. |
To quote one of my favorite movies of all time this movie requires a new word to describe how bad it is. M. Night Shyamalan is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for his films. Like badwrong, or badong. Yes, The Last Airbender is badong. From this moment, I will stand for the opposite of this movie: gnodab. (Courtesy of me destroying a quote from Kung Pow: Enter the Fist) The Last Airbender is based on a Nickelodeon animated show that mixes fantasy, mysticism, Asian philosophy, action and comedy into a package that is one of the best animated shows produced by the United States, for children, in the last decade. What M. Night Shamylan and Nickelodeon Pictures gives us is one of the worst big budget flops in the last decade. With a budget over $150, 000, 000 and an advertising budget of $130, 000, 000, this movie needed to be one of the biggest films of the decade. A movie of such epicly terribly proportions only deserves a review of equally epically bad proportions. Here we go into a full review of this terrible crapfest.
WARNING! If you already know the movie or have watched the first season of The Last Airbender this paragraph is mostly going to ramble on about stuff that you already know!
First, a little synopsis with an explanation of why just the storyline alone shows the weakness of the film to get us started. M. Night Shamylang’s The Last Airbender follows the tale of a young hero, Aang, a young successor to a long line of Avatars (kung-fu action jesuses), who has to save the world from an evil Fire empire from taking over the world by conquering the elements of Air, Fire, Earth, and Water. That is the most basic synopsis of the movie. Let me give you a rundown of how confusing a more detailed synopsis would go. Two siblings of the water tribe, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), a young warrior and his sister Katara (Nicola Peltz), a water bender accidentally find a boy frozen in a ball of ice. Within minutes they discover he is an airbender, who can enter the spirit world, rides a flying bison and then a ship of firebenders show up and take the boy, Aang (Noah Ringer) away. It is soon discovered by a weird test given by the firebending prince Zuko (Dev Patel) and his uncle Iroh (Shaun Toub) that Aang is the avatar, a world savior responsible maintaining a balance in the world, who went missing 100 years ago, allowing the fire empire to take conquer much of the world. Aang escapes with the help of Sokka and Katara on the back of his sky bison, Appa, and make their way to the air temple. Aang discovers everyone he loves is long done and the airbenders were wiped out by the firebenders. Meanwhile, we introduce the movies big bad, Admiral Zhao (Aasif Mandvi, The Daily Show), who gets permission from the firelord to capture the Avatar and convinces him that Zuko is actually a traitor. Aang and his friends are then captured by firebenders, on purpose, to discover where they have been imprisoning earthbenders in a dirt filled prison camp before convincing them to free themselves. Then, there is a montage as they travel toward the Northern Water Tribe so Aang can learn waterbending. Meanwhile, we discover that Zuko was banished by his father for speaking out of turn and has scared him physically/emotionally. Then, Aang is captured by Zhao and is quickly freed by a mysterious stranger, the Blue Spirit, who turns out to be Zuko in disguise. Aang leaves Zuko and makes it to the northern water tribe where Aang learns waterbending tricks and Sokka falls in love with the princess. The fire nation shows up to attack, capture Aang and kill the water spirit to stop the waterbenders. They succeed in killing the water spirit which only makes it angry and allows Aang to turn against them, the princess to sacrifice her life to resurrect the water spirit and Aang to defeat Zuko but show mercy. Zhao is defeated by four random water benders and then everyone, defeated firebenders bow to Aang as he accepts his responsibility as the Avatar. This is a lot of plot to fit in an hour and a half. It was so difficult that the movie has to resort to several tricks to fold this plot (which is a condensed version of the first season of the show, 7 hours worth of content) into a feature film.
Before we get into M. Night Shamrock’s methods he used to create this megaton of a movie dump, I would like to give a little background and analysis as to why M. Night Shenron decided to direct this movie. M. Night’s children were big fans of the show and, after his daughter dressed up like Katara for Halloween, he claims to have started watching it with them. Meanwhile, Nickelodeon realized they had a hot commodity in this show that could be converted into a franchise as big as Star Wars or Transformers, with all the toys, t-shirts, special edition DVDs, posters, lunchboxes and other crap that they could sell to make their most profitable venture of all time. M. Knight was attached to the film and said that he would, in fact, make this series into HIS STAR WARS. Those are pretty big words coming from one of the most prolific (for better or worst) directors of the last decade. The man basically made a promise he would never keep, that he would go into this with the gusto of George Lucas (this film is worse than Phantom Menace if you want to know how bad it is) and with the budget of a big blockbuster. But as I tear into this movie over the next few paragraphs two things will become evident, either he is a terrible director, or at the very least not good enough to build and adapt a fantasy world to screen and/or he didn’t even try a little because this movie fails as a film in every respect.
Now, that we’ve gotten into a synopsis and why M. Nom Shamanom was supposed to be doing, let’s tear into what methods he used to compact this all into a palatable runtime. I would like to state that the shortest Star Wars movie is a New Hope and runs at about 125 minutes, while this film runs at about 103 minutes. So, why is it so short? Laziness mostly. The methods M. Noob uses break every rule of filming. First, I will start with the least egregious and work my way up. First, he cuts down time by turning flashbacks into soundless but narrated power point presentations that zip from point to point in the story. This does show and tell but not in a way with any weight. Every scene in this movie lacks emotional content and the character development in this movie is piss poor. There is some character development for Prince Zuko but as for the rest of the characters little changes. Much like the Phantom Menace, the characters in this movie are static and flat. I challenge anyone who watched the film to describe Aang without talking about what he looks like or what his job is in the movie. *crickets* I am gonna compare this to Star Wars because M. Nosferatu Shymalan put it out there. Luke Skywalker begins the story of a New Hope as a some-what obnoxious and frustrated teenage boy who by the end has found a religion, friends, confidence and through pain has matured greatly. Aang is a piece of bread soaked in water. Now for the final entrée in M. Gang Puck’s bag of tricks to shorten this movie, he actually breaks the biggest rule in storytelling. “Show don’t tell”.
“Show don’t tell,” is pretty much the most important element in storytelling. When Darth Vader makes his first appearance in a New Hope, we can immediately tell he is a bad guy because of the visual cues of his costume and his actions. In this movie, M. Nocht prefers to have Katara narrate that stuff is happening in between scenes, tell us what happened and worst of all, M. Night chooses to avoid any moment he could show us something cool. For example, Appa, the sky bison, should’ve been an incredible set piece to show off the effects of the movie and give us a feeling that we’re in a fantastic world. Instead we seem him do three things in the whole. He sleeps, he flies and he roars. But most of the time this happens he is obscured or not held upon. A great opportunity wasted was the time he roars during the end battle. Rather than show him knocking firebenders aside with his tail or headbutting them, we cut away. Where this really gets egregious is that this movie has more scene transitions than Revenge of the Sith and M. Night Shizzle chooses to use them to avoid filming action scenes. A great example is right before Aang is captured by Zhao. Aang is ambushed in a temple when he is surrounded by about 50 bowmen. In the show, Aang would’ve tried to escape by jumping and running at the speed of the wind before being captured by a net. Instead, we immediately transition to him in chains. It is this terrible transitioning that makes this a terrible movie. They attempt to do a lot in a short time and do so poorly. I watched this movie with a friend, who had never seen the series, and he had trouble following the plot or the action.
The animated series has great action with kinetic fighting, various martial art styles and choreography. The movie chooses to have its fights take about 15 seconds at max before ending and involve as little movement as possible. Furthermore, the special effects are pretty lame, especially those involving water effects. In the end, not much can be said about the action except that instead of showing cool fight scenes we are instead giving either poorly choreographed wrestling matches between Aang and Zuko or showing confusing and poorly CGd battle scenes. I don’t have much more to say about the action in this movie besides the fact that is boring. The last thing I suppose I should note about the animation is that not only do they underuse Appa in this film; they also underuse Momo, Aang’s pet flying lemur monkey, who only shows up in about three shots. But where this movie really messes up is how it takes a beautiful thing and turns it into a Hollywood mess.
Before I get into a rant about how this film takes the original content and turns it into an unwatchable mess, I would like to talk about the most controversial part of this film. It is whitewashed. In the television show, it is made fairly clear that characters are of eastern Asian, and in the case of the water benders Inuit, race. The only character I think they could’ve gotten away with portraying as Caucasian is possibly Aang. Now, M. Night took that and interpreted it very differently than what the fans thought the movie should be. The air benders are a mix of races, with Aang’s mentor actually being black rather than Asian like in the show. The earth benders are Asian and we are shown a tribe of African-looking people on their continent. The water tribe is a mix of white people and Inuits. Where the film takes a huge departure from the series is the odd and somewhat biased choice of M. Nazi deciding the fire nation should be South Asian (Indian, Pakistani) and all of a dark complexion. In the film, all of the good main characters are white (super white). Aang, Sokka and Katara are all very white looking, while the bad guys are of a dark complexion. This is Hollywood at its worst. Zuko and Zhao are South Asian, while in the series the firebenders were very pale and tended to look more Japanese/Korean than anything else. This might be palatable if the casting was done well but it is easy to say that almost everyone is miscast. The only actors who seem to match their roles are Dev Patel, who appears to give a shit and Noah Ringer, who isn’t a great actor but really just needed a decently written character. The biggest miscasts are Uncle Iroh, who in the series is fat and affable in the first season, but her is thin, quiet and very obviously wise, and even worse is Zhao. Admiral Zhao is an intimidating figure in the first season, a little blustering and pigheaded but angry and dangerous. So who do they cast? Aasif Mandvi, a comedian from the daily show, who doesn’t look scary, sound intimidating and is actually shorter than Prince Zuko (who is supposed to be about 15-16). I don’t know what M. Night Sham was thinking but these choices alone couldn’t ruin the movie for the fans. Let’s discuss how he takes the original content and makes the worst franchise bomb since Highlander 2: The Quickening.
After watching this film it becomes obvious that the director made choices specifically to spite the fans or because he wasn’t actually a fan. You decide. The first choice that M. Nitro Shazam made was to throw out everything about the original that didn’t meet his tastes. M. Naan is Indian and took it upon himself to change the pronunciation of every character’s name into the way a South Asian dialect might pronounce it. Sokka, pronounced “Sahka” in the show is pronounced “Soka” in the movie and Aang goes from “Ayng” to “Aahng”. This doesn’t seem like a big deal but imagine if someone made a movie based on Dragon Ball Z and pronounced “Gohahn” as “Gohaan” or “Vehjeetah” as “Vehgeeda” and you can see how annoying this becomes for the fans.
The next choice was to remove any comic relief or levity from the franchise. This seen worst in the characters of Aang, Sokka and Iroh. Sokka in the series is a bumbling smart guy who wants to be a leader/hero but is still awkward. This is played for laughs but the couple of times that something happens to him in the movies, the comedy comes off flatter than an empty whoopy cushion. Where M. Noche ruins the film in his decision to remove levity is where he makes Aang into a blander character than Neo from the Matrix. Let that sink in for a moment. I can wait. In the series, Aang is a prankster and has a tendency to show off and act childishly. He contradicts that by showing maturity in his wisdom and his philosophy. On the surface, he is Peter Pan, a silly little sprite who flies around and uses trickery to overcome his enemies. In the movie, Noah Ringer deadpans the character and uses sheer force to win every conflict. This takes away any of the likeable traits of the characters and turns him into a boring, boring, and really fricking boring character. Pretty much everyone in this movie gives an odd performance and is too serious. If you want your film to be Star Wars, we should feel like when it’s just the friends they are having fun and dire moments will be more impactful when they happen.
Now, in this paragraph I am going to discuss everything they changed for the film before I get into my next paragraph, which will cover a scene that encapsulates everything wrong with this film, and the conclusive wrap-up. The first changes are a removal of characters, places and scenes that in the series made it fun to watch. It is forgivable to leave something out of the film to shorten it. What’s terrible is that a character they cut out from the film shows up on the move posters, Suki, Sokka’s first kiss and a member of the Kyoshi warriors. To be honest, Suki does not become vital to the story until the third season but when you show a character on the posters and cut her from the movie…that’s a pretty bad sign. What’s weirder than all they chose to leave out was what they added. Specifically, revealing the firelord not once but twice. In the animated series, he isn’t revealed into far later in the series. Imagine if the Emperor was shown talking to Darth Vader in a New Hope. That would’ve ruined the enigma of this powerful character that should’ve been built up by his subordinate’s actions and everyone’s general trepidation at his mere mention. Other things that should’ve made it into this film include King Bumi, The Spirit World, Avatar Roku, and the biggest waste, Aang turning into the giant amphibious water spirit and that being what defeats Zhao. In the show, it’s his own arrogance of destroying a natural spirit that spells his doom rather than four random no names. What’s even worse than what they added or left out is what they did give us. The film gives us dozens of scenes that are short, lack build up, are poorly written, choreographed, performed and are on the whole boring or confusing. The scene that threw me for a loop and established how terrible this was going to be was the Earth Bender prison breakout scene.
In the series, during episode 6, Imprisoned, Katara gets a crush on an Earth Bender but accidentally gets him captured by the fire nation soldiers and taken to a prison camp. The prison camp is set on a metal rig in the ocean. In the series it established that earth benders cannot bend metal(or at least that it is a very difficult technique to do so). The firebenders trap their earth bending prisoners on a metal rig in the middle of the sea so they have no weapons to use against their captors. It is simple and logical. In the episode, Katara’s naiveté and bravery convince the Earth Benders to fight back and Aang manages to steal coal from the docked shops at the platform for the prisoners to bend in escape with. In the film, this scene is turned into a dumber scene than the first scene of the Phantom Menace (Dioxin! (Takes deep breath of poison gas)). In the film, Aang and his friends allow themselves to be captured. The prison camp is on dirt, next to a cliff and filled with EARTH BENDERS. Dirt and rocks are weapons to earthbenders. This movie expects us to believe that Aang has to give a stirring speech to remind the earth benders, that, holy crap, there is weapons all around them!? Katara acts like an idiot and headbutts a firebender. The firebenders then attack with their fire, which in the movie they have to have a source like burning coals to produce, while in the series they can create it with their ki or life force much in the way that other benders use their life force to make rocks move, move water or move air molecules, fire benders can heat up things around them and in their body. In the movie, forcing them to have such a ridiculous restriction as needing a source of fire puts them at a huge disadvantage and makes them far less intimidating. The earth benders defeat the fire benders and are freed. As a reward they give Aang and Katara a water bending scroll. Which doesn’t make sense. In the series, Katara steals the scroll from pirates and uses it in secret because she is jealous at how quickly Aang is learning firebending. In the movie, the water bending scroll is of no consequence to anything!
If the fans of AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER can take any solace from this film’s total leaching of the charm of a cult animated series is that it’s over. As of now, there are no rumors or reports of any sequel being in the works, after M. Night Shazam ruined the first film in what he had hoped to make his Star Wars trilogy. If you’ve never watched the series, I highly recommend it, it is only three seasons long and my only warning is to give it a chance to warm up because the first season lacks direction that the latter two seasons take for granted. In the end, there is really no one to blame for this film’s terrible existence more than M. Night SHAMALAMDAMADINGDONG!
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| "The Next Spielberg." |
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| No problems here? Right? |
FINAL SCORE? 1/5
