THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE KILL IT WITH FIRE
This is a movie review based on the Instant Netflix version of the film,
The Last Airbender.
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.
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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
I love Dungeons and Dragons. I have been playing, more or less, once a
week for over two years and I don't ever plan to stop playing. Most of
the times I've played Dungeons and Dragons, I have been the Dungeon
Master. For those who don't know, a Dungeon Master is the guy who is in
charge of telling the story, determining what monsters and characters
the other players come across and, in essence, is the god of the world
the players explore. As an author, it gives me a chance to flex my
creative muscles.
io9- 10 BIGGEST MISSED OPPORTUNITIES IN SCI-FI 
