Wow.
First, for those of you who know what's coming, let me just confirm what you've probably read elsewhere by now. This movie is bad. Really bad. It fails at nearly everything it tries to do, and it tries a lot. It's a poor adaptation of widely praised animated material, it's a lackluster and boring children's movie, and it's a weakly structured and terribly scripted film altogether. The dialogue is awful, the plot is rushed and contrived, and the acting is terrible. If you were thinking of spending money on this movie, my advice is; Don't.
Good, got that out of the way? Great. Well if not, I'm gonna write a lot about this anyway, because I like to make people's eyes bleed from text.
"The Last Airbender" was based on some truly rich source material. The film is exclusively centered around the first chapter, or "Book" of the series, titled "Water", in which the boy prodigy is discovered, his destiny as savior of the world is revealed, and friendships are forged, enemies faced, and personal demons conquered. The first Book is a tale of discovery, where friends and enemies learn much about themselves and each other, personally, spiritually, and emotionally. They learn about the tasks in front of them, and for the first time start to realize the enormity and complexity of just what they've gotten themselves into. The first Book dealt with issues of growth, maturity, greed, friendship, spirituality, and loss, and through it all had fun doing it.
Too bad the movie didn't.
Right from the outset M. Night Shyamalan shows a deep ignorance and disregard for the source material, deliberately mispronouncing names and titles that are distinctly heard throughout the series, and ignoring the various traits that gave each character in the series their unique personalities. Traits like Sokka's high-energized goofiness and natural curiosity, or Katara's stubborn, good natured insistence, or Aang's penchant for fun and silliness. These things and others are what contributed to the show's popularity, and are swept aside by Shyamalan and replaced with his interpretation of them, presumably because he believed it would work better. That kind of arrogance shows a deep disrespect for the fans of the material, and for the material itself.
It's as if Jon Favreau (director of "Iron Man") decided Iron Man would look better in hot pink, and Tony Stark would be better portrayed as a high school nerd who pronounced it "Tinny Stirk" and had no sense of humor. While it might look better to him, he can't be surprised when the legions of fans disagree.
Even if you were unfamiliar with the animated series and went into this movie with no prior knowledge of what it was based on, there's very little to like. The movie doesn't flow so much as jerk from one scene to another, often with little explanation for why. With the exception of Dev Patel (Prince Zuko), the actors are all phoning it in, something which should've been addressed by the director and clearly wasn't. Most of the lines in this film are delivered with the same emotion you'd order a pizza with, which might not be so bad since the dialogue sounds so cheap and corny anyways. I'd swear this was amateur hour if I didn't know the director had already done 5 other major budget films.
The only thing I found to like in this film were the special effects which do look excellent, and for that I have to give Mr. Shyamalan credit. But the impressive whiz bang of CGI doesn't make up for this film's numerous flaws. The entire movie feels rushed, as if Shyamalan skimmed over the first book, selected a few key or favorite events from it, and resolved to squeeze it all into 90 minutes, which was clearly not long enough for the level of story this film is trying to replicate. The script sounds like it was written by the lowest bidder over the course of a weekend, and the acting looks like it was guided by a high school film student.
Why? This wasn't some independent film made by a bunch of college students on a shoe string. Paramount Pictures allocated 150 million dollars for the adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Compared to film costs, CGI, sound engineering, transportation, motion capture, set design, and the plethora of other expenses a Hollywood film accrues, scripting was easily the cheapest thing on the budget, so there was absolutely no reason not to have it done right. For 150 million dollars (which by the way, is just 50 million shy for the budget of all three Lord of the Rings movies) there's no reason for the fans, or Paramount, not to demand better, and certainly no reason for M. Night Shyamalan not to deliver.
I've heard the argument that "it's supposed to be a children's movie, you can't be so critical considering the audience it's aimed at." Fine. But no one's ever going to accuse The Neverending Story or Labyrinth of having Oscar-level acting and dialogue, yet those movies continue to hold a dear place in most of our memories, because they were fun, and because even with being aimed at children, the directors managed to remember the basic tenets of story telling and film making.
The simple truth is that M. Night Shyamalan was the wrong person to put in charge of this project. With some luck, and a lot of support from fans, maybe another movie studio will take another chance in a few years with a new adaptation, similar to what was done with The Hulk after Marvel was unhappy with "The Eric Bana Experience". If they do, let's hope they learn from Paramount's mistake, and screen their director, script, and actors a lot more carefully.
Other film studios, pay heed. Disregard your fans at your own peril.
First, for those of you who know what's coming, let me just confirm what you've probably read elsewhere by now. This movie is bad. Really bad. It fails at nearly everything it tries to do, and it tries a lot. It's a poor adaptation of widely praised animated material, it's a lackluster and boring children's movie, and it's a weakly structured and terribly scripted film altogether. The dialogue is awful, the plot is rushed and contrived, and the acting is terrible. If you were thinking of spending money on this movie, my advice is; Don't.
Good, got that out of the way? Great. Well if not, I'm gonna write a lot about this anyway, because I like to make people's eyes bleed from text.
"The Last Airbender" was based on some truly rich source material. The film is exclusively centered around the first chapter, or "Book" of the series, titled "Water", in which the boy prodigy is discovered, his destiny as savior of the world is revealed, and friendships are forged, enemies faced, and personal demons conquered. The first Book is a tale of discovery, where friends and enemies learn much about themselves and each other, personally, spiritually, and emotionally. They learn about the tasks in front of them, and for the first time start to realize the enormity and complexity of just what they've gotten themselves into. The first Book dealt with issues of growth, maturity, greed, friendship, spirituality, and loss, and through it all had fun doing it.
Too bad the movie didn't.
Right from the outset M. Night Shyamalan shows a deep ignorance and disregard for the source material, deliberately mispronouncing names and titles that are distinctly heard throughout the series, and ignoring the various traits that gave each character in the series their unique personalities. Traits like Sokka's high-energized goofiness and natural curiosity, or Katara's stubborn, good natured insistence, or Aang's penchant for fun and silliness. These things and others are what contributed to the show's popularity, and are swept aside by Shyamalan and replaced with his interpretation of them, presumably because he believed it would work better. That kind of arrogance shows a deep disrespect for the fans of the material, and for the material itself.
It's as if Jon Favreau (director of "Iron Man") decided Iron Man would look better in hot pink, and Tony Stark would be better portrayed as a high school nerd who pronounced it "Tinny Stirk" and had no sense of humor. While it might look better to him, he can't be surprised when the legions of fans disagree.
Even if you were unfamiliar with the animated series and went into this movie with no prior knowledge of what it was based on, there's very little to like. The movie doesn't flow so much as jerk from one scene to another, often with little explanation for why. With the exception of Dev Patel (Prince Zuko), the actors are all phoning it in, something which should've been addressed by the director and clearly wasn't. Most of the lines in this film are delivered with the same emotion you'd order a pizza with, which might not be so bad since the dialogue sounds so cheap and corny anyways. I'd swear this was amateur hour if I didn't know the director had already done 5 other major budget films.
The only thing I found to like in this film were the special effects which do look excellent, and for that I have to give Mr. Shyamalan credit. But the impressive whiz bang of CGI doesn't make up for this film's numerous flaws. The entire movie feels rushed, as if Shyamalan skimmed over the first book, selected a few key or favorite events from it, and resolved to squeeze it all into 90 minutes, which was clearly not long enough for the level of story this film is trying to replicate. The script sounds like it was written by the lowest bidder over the course of a weekend, and the acting looks like it was guided by a high school film student.
Why? This wasn't some independent film made by a bunch of college students on a shoe string. Paramount Pictures allocated 150 million dollars for the adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Compared to film costs, CGI, sound engineering, transportation, motion capture, set design, and the plethora of other expenses a Hollywood film accrues, scripting was easily the cheapest thing on the budget, so there was absolutely no reason not to have it done right. For 150 million dollars (which by the way, is just 50 million shy for the budget of all three Lord of the Rings movies) there's no reason for the fans, or Paramount, not to demand better, and certainly no reason for M. Night Shyamalan not to deliver.
I've heard the argument that "it's supposed to be a children's movie, you can't be so critical considering the audience it's aimed at." Fine. But no one's ever going to accuse The Neverending Story or Labyrinth of having Oscar-level acting and dialogue, yet those movies continue to hold a dear place in most of our memories, because they were fun, and because even with being aimed at children, the directors managed to remember the basic tenets of story telling and film making.
The simple truth is that M. Night Shyamalan was the wrong person to put in charge of this project. With some luck, and a lot of support from fans, maybe another movie studio will take another chance in a few years with a new adaptation, similar to what was done with The Hulk after Marvel was unhappy with "The Eric Bana Experience". If they do, let's hope they learn from Paramount's mistake, and screen their director, script, and actors a lot more carefully.
Other film studios, pay heed. Disregard your fans at your own peril.
