So Lii and I watched the Last Airbender last night, knowing it would be bad but not knowing the true terror it would really hold.
The movie is, simply a trainwreck from start to finish. The script is where the pain and trauma starts, covering only a few key episodes of the first season, and it can't even do that right! For instance, the Earthbending internment camp in the show was a coal and metal mine, designed so that the Earthbenders would have little of their element to work with. In this, it's just a pit. Surrounded by Earth. And they never bothered trying to fight back until Aang showed up.
Then again, considering how badly the Firebenders have been nerfed I suppose that making everyone else eat paint chips is the only way to make them a genuine threat. Rather than generating their own flames, aside from master Firebenders, they are forced to work with pre-existing sources of fire. And this is WITHOUT taking into account that Admiral Zhao is played by Assif Mandvi of the Daily Show, utterly ruining any danger he might present.
Then there's the freaking Race Lift going on. Rather than stick with a strategy of casting actors who can act and look the part, Shyamalan went the bold yet ultimately stupid route of making them all white (Except for those naughty Firebenders who all look Middle Eastern now) and unable to convey any other emotion than dull unfeeling. I mean, for the love of God why'd he do something like this?!? He's a fan of the show, he should know about this!
The Bending is also ridiculously long and drawn out, making it feel more like the actors are doing lengthy and tedious exercise motions than actual bending based on actual martial arts. I mean, if he had bothered to have the motions have a much more realistic and briefer feel to them maybe he could have squeezed more time into actually making stuff happen in the movie... if he didn't piss all that away with exposition instead.
Which leads me to the exposition. This is one of the more rage-inducing tendencies the movie has. It exposits. It exposits like there's no tomorrow and anything that could have simply been shown through subtext and a little effort is instead simply outright telling us. "My brother and Princess Yui quickly grew to become friends," and next thing you know they're walking around and chatting it up like there's no tomorrow. In the words of Yahtzee Croshaw, "You're supposed to weave exposition into the narrative!" and this movie doesn't even bother trying. It'll just stop the action whenever it pleases to tell us something that could have been done in a more appropriate manner.
The movie is also, believe it or not, too short. The movie is a compilation movie, condensing a number of episodes of a and for a minute I'd like to compare it to a *good* compilation, the Mobile Suit Gundam's compilation movies. Each of these movies clocked in at at least two hours worth of footage, some recycled and some new. The movies are also gripping and took a decent and innovative show and gave it the kind of shine that caused it to go on to become a cultural icon of Japan. The animation for its era is extremely polished (especially in the last movie which was almost entirely made of new footage), the voice actors could convey genuine emotion and even though I was watching a movie about giant robots shooting at each other it did not feel stupid.
This movie feels stupid. The actors in it don't even deserve the title of "actor" (except for Assif who gets a free pass because he's a funny guy) and it's quite clear that Shyamalan doesn't deserve the title of being a director.
For a list of the differences between the series and the movie, please refer to this blog:
http://www.racebending.com/v3/general/the-...cartoon-series/EDIT:
In the spirit of the original series, I give you this video I just found:
This post has been edited by MorriganAensland: Jul 10 2010, 4:45 PM
The Last Airbender, Shyamalan's latest travesty
Jul 10 2010, 4:33 PM
(not to mention that they weren't even bending, it was really making weird movements! xD)
