Escape to the Movies: The Last Airbender

[IridRadiant]

Edit(1): Why does everyone get pissed at the director when a bad script goes the way of the Hindenburg, if the scripts sucks don't blame the director, blame the writers, you don't hear people hating David Slade because the recent Twilight movie sucks, you blame the writers for bad writing, the actors for bad acting, and so on. Also the director is not the ultimate authority as far as what does and doesn't get in a movie, the producers are! You only blame the director cause his/her name is the most convenient for you cause you're to lazy to actually find out who's responsible!

Edit(2): I mean the above statement as a general thing concerning movies, it doesn't pertain to only one director or film

In this case, MNS was director, writer, and a producer (I'm not entirely sure of the last). That's why everyone's ragging on him - his fingerprints are all over this movie.

 

[Soushi]

Wow... i was really hoping that MovieBob would tear this thing a new one. *Sigh* oh well, i guess now i will just have to go into a qualifying statement when i say "Hey, seen that movie, Avatar. Great isn't it!" "The new one?" "No, the blue one."
*Shakes fist in overdramatic villian fashion* damn you Avatar, you are not worthy of Avatar's great name!!!

 

[TaintedNails]

More like Escape From The Movies...... Huge disappointment especially for the fans!

 

[Alloflifedecays]

This movie was shit. I'm so ashamed that a franchise I love so much was turned into this terrible movie.

 

[starwarsgeek]

Chi is actually mentioned in the show, when Mako's Iroh was teaching Zuko "a move that Azula doesn't even know".

I completely fogot about that...I stand corrected.

 

[BRMXJzjsoawk321]

Yes, the acting was bad, the pacing was bad, so on and so on but for some reason I didn't go nerd rage over this.. Good review, I don't think it deserved such harsh criticism from others, it wasn't that terribly bad. :/ I hope that they do better with the next two movies, if they are even going to make them now. > <

 

[twaddle]

I take it that you have not watched Avatar The Last Airbender, MovieBob? You seem to qualify it as a series that was meant solely to distract bored kids, and while it certainly serves that purpose, it is much better series than you seem to give it credit for. I would go so far as to say that it is the best American cartoon series since Batman: The Animated Series, and perhaps the best cartoon series of the oughts decade.

It was not merely a cotton-candy-for-the-brain series meant for children, but a series meant for any audience: children and adults, boys and girls, men and women. If you have not seen it, I would encourage you to watch at least a few episodes. With its great pacing, superb storytelling, memorable and sympathetic characters, and excellent plot development, it is one of those rare series that works to please all audiences, and somehow succeeds to a spectacular degree.

The reason other critics have been so harsh with this film is because many went into the movie having seen the series. As a result, they were angered by how badly Shyamalan butchered the source material, especially when he had everything laid out for him on a silver platter. Anyway, I again encourage you to catch a few episodes of Avatar the last Airbender, if you have not already. At least then you can understand where the brutal backlash against this film is coming from.

the series is so good, for it's anime cartoon style, anime and otaku fans fully clasify ity as one of the america's first good anime series. I they have back story episodes if you want to catch up on the whole series with out actually watching the whole series. anyhow i's suprised he didn't metion the whole white washing thing and he judged the movie on it's own merits instead of what it was based on or it's past. You truely are a professional movie critic mr. bob. i applaud you.

 

[Something Amyss]

This review reads out as some one who really, REALLY, wants to like this movie, but professionally can't lie about what he saw.

The problem is, in the end, it looks like apologetics.

I'll probably Netflix this at some point. I'd only recently gotten into the show anyway, and needed nothing more than M Knight writing and directing this to make me balk at it. I won't prejudge the title, but everything MB says makes it sound like he should have eviscerated this movie.

 

[Ildecia]

i liked this movie. not only because i was a huge fan of the animated series; but because i nearly flipped a shit when i saw the trailers for it.

I'd give it a tentative "go for it!" because at times the 3D wasn't worth it; but the rest was totally awesome!

 

[Master_Fast]

I really liked the animated series. And I really wanted this to be good.
However, I've read reviews that are pretty much the same or worse than this. I didn't really want to see it because most of the reviews gave me the impression that I'd be disappointed. However, if I have to go see something this weekend, I'll go see this instead of the Twilight garbage people are flocking to.

 

[Myphon69]

The movie was bad, simple as that, the big thing that had me going was, in the 1980's they could put a giant marshmallow man walking through downtown new york and destroying buildings but MNS couldn't put a giant water monster walking through a CG city in 2010. I could have forgiven MNS for everything else he did to the movie if only he had gotten the last battle down right.

 

[Lord_Ascendant]

I was wondering how M Night Shyamylan (its spelled wrong, get over it) would fare condensing a 5+ season animation into 2 1/2 hours so I suppose the result was not as good as it COULD be but nevertheless.....

 

[fizzie94]

To tell the truth, in my opinion, this movie was shown to be a screw up as soon as they could not pronounce the main character's name.

 

[CharlesA]

It's actually a pretty fucking awful movie all around. Badly written, badly directed and horribly acted.

Actually it's mostly a film about interpretative dance.

"Hey I stole this thing from the library?
-The library?
-Yeah, I stole this thing from the library from the library!
-Oh my god! The library!
-Yeah, it was in the library!
-So, what does it do?
-Well, it was in the library and I got it out of the library."

 

[Goldhawk777]

I saw this movie yesterday, and I thought there was soooo much more wrong with it than just what he mentions. The script was TERRIBLE! and the acting was probably the worst I've seen in a movie recently! Yes, it was pretty and I thought the story was interesting, but its just hard to watch bad actors spouting worse lines. Painful to watch and thats all I have to say.

Also, Bob forgot to mention that the characters misstated the names countless times. Heck, it almost seemed like a rough draft of the real movie. Yes, I am critical since I did not follow the Animated series, but I understand how "Anime" was supposed to go. I went to see the Airbender at midnight, (B/c the girlfriend is a HUGGE fan) She outright hated it. I laughed so hard, I almost pissed myself, because just to have some water be manipulated, you have to do 3 minutes of stretches before something happens. Geeze! I would have gone back home, made a sandwich, appeared back on the scene, eaten the sandwich, cleaned out the barrel of my gun, loaded my gun, then wipe the crumbs from my mouth before shooting ANY of the Benders in the film. Bending manipulation took TOOOOOO LOOOONNNNGG!! A die-hard fan in the audience actually yelled in the theater, "It's Aang Goddammit!" after they had mispronounced it as Aug, for half the film. Also, to end the film, the audience showed their appreciation by throwing their 3d glasses at the screen and booing.

 

[RJ Dalton]

"It's a hell of a lot better than Eclipse."

. . .

Way to raise the bar there MovieBob.

 

[Waif]

I still want to watch the movie, it looks visually interesting at least. Though if the narrative really is all about explaining things. Then I'm afraid I might find myself bored, speaking as a person who already has a grasp of the concepts therein. I'll still watch it, I just hope that it does keep me entertained.

 

[Riven Armor]

Even that racebending.com site has nothing to confirm that the creators meant for their characters to be of a certain race. In fact, they specifically mention wanting to ask them what they thought about the whole situation when the creators were out signing autographs, but didn't.

No, they didn't, because they respected the focus of the event. Somebody else asked.

Benton spoke with Mike and Bryan briefly. He commended them for the accuracy and diligent research that obviously went into the cartoon and asked about how they felt about the controversy surrounding the feature. If I recall correctly, Bryan responded that if it had been his film, things might have been done differently, but that since it was not his movie, he didn?t have any control or say in how the movie got made.

http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/racebending-com-staffers-meet-avatar-the-last-airbender-creators-at-signing/

This is obviously a dodge with a talking point. His thoughts could be any number of things. However,

The creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender have said nothing publicly about the casting other than Bryan Konietzko?s declaration on his MySpace, where he wrote: ?I have NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CASTING WHATSOEVER for the feature film.? Other people who have worked on the show, including a director, artists, and cultural consultants, have publicly expressed disappointment about the casting.

http://www.racebending.com/v3/faq/#tla

If that sounds like an approving remark to anybody, whoever you are, you need to get out more.

So cite multiple sources that say specifically what the races of these characters are supposed to be, and I don't mean what cultures their world was influenced by (which is all that has been said, influenced) because I can promise you, race was never mentioned in that influence.

One staff member has confirmed that Aang was based on a Chinese-American, specifically, his son.

Sifu confirms that the character of Aang was modeled after his Chinese-American son.

Now I?m hearing people are so surprised that a Caucasian kid was cast as the Asian lead? SHOCKING NEWS!! Kinda like the Kung Fu TV Series when David Carradine beat out Bruce Lee for the lead. I mean goodness we all know David Carradine was by far superior in the martial arts compared to Bruce Lee, go figure.
- Sifu Kisu, martial arts consultant, Avatar: The Last Airbender

Others have confirmed that more characters were based on actual Asian people. Note that in both excerpts, the sources of inspiration have not been MIXED RACE people, as you falsely asserted, but Asians as far as the information reveals:

Dao Le, Animatic Editor of the Avatar: The Last Airbender original animated series, speaks out:

It?s been a huge disappointment to hear about the casting for Avatar?s live-action movie. The show was heavily influenced by Asian culture, some of the characters were even modeled after Asian members of the crew.

But now, with the pre-dominantly white cast, it feels like all the Asian/Eastern influences, origins, what have you, were just a backdrop for these characters.

[...] I always believed they were Asian, or even mixed Asian. And that belief added a little extra pride in working on such a great show. The appreciation Mike & Bryan had for Asian culture, the interest it generated in the fans, gave me greater appreciation for my own culture.?
-Dao Le, Animatic Editor for Avatar: The Last Airbender

More:

Racebending.com comes into the possession of a few pages from the Avatar: The Last Airbender?s ?Intellectual Property Bible,? the guiding document members of the animated series? production used to create the show. The Bible reiterates that the world of Avatar was always intended to be representative of the cultures of the Pacific Rim.

This is an ancient, fantastical Asian environment, primarily Chinese.?
- The A:TLA IP Bible

http://www.racebending.com/v3/background/the-last-airbender-timeline/

Like the specifics that are listed with the art and other cultural influences, show me multiple sites that have information that says what race these characters are supposed to be, that were confirmed to have been spoken by the creators.

You rightly distinguish between race and ethnicity, but why? It clearly doesn't help your argument. Race is determined by physiology, and part of that physiology is skin color and facial features. Katara and Sokka are both dark brown (along with their relatives, and all Water Tribe members), and no painful rhetorical contortion will change that.

You seem bent on justifying an obviously Asian world in which the only powerful, meaningful protagonists are white people. This is ridiculous. Lord of the Rings is a clearly European world, which is why Ian McKellen and Christopher Lee were cast as venerable white men instead of, say, Indian counterparts. That would have made absolutely no sense. There is a good reason why no person of color is among the central cast in LOTR.

Even going by the argument that skin color should be of no consequence, the movie violates its own principle. For some reason, only the characters of importance in the Water Tribe village are white. EVERYONE ELSE IS BROWN, and not only that, but cast from Greenland - where Inuits compose much of the population. This is insulting.

Bottom line: it is redundant to point out that Caucasians have the right to their own white-cast fantasy movie. Nobody gives them any grief for this. It would just be nice if certain myopic people didn't see fit to invade an Asian fantasy movie that should be cast with ASIAN people.

 

[AroLombardi]

As fair as the review was, I can't possibly see it myself. The cast just seems much to unfit for the characters their modeling after. Namely Aang. In the show, he's a young, energetic and optimistic kid who can get serious when needs be. But movie Aang just looks very, VERY pissy, and his voice is just an ear-sore to me. As for Katara and Sokka, their faces aren't that nice either. And further, I never quite liked Shyamalans movies. They never quite appealed to me. So those two together, plus my pessimism about the show to movie transition is always a fail (In my mind), makes me really against seeing it.

 

[Phillip Mourik]

I am currently re-watching the series and it seems like every episode is very important to the plot and I wonder how they can get this across in this movie? This movie wont come out in cinemas til september here (unless they "straight-to-DVD" it) and I'm kinda looking forward but go in understanding that its not going to be the same (which in a way is good, if it was EXACTLY the same as the series then whats the point in seeing it?)