Well, I just saw this movie earlier tonight with a friend. Having spent the past few months watching Season 1 together, we were hyped up about the film (although we had a few issues). We were heart-broken to learn that critics not only disliked the film, but DESPISED it as well. We really didn't understand how something that could look so beautiful in the trailers could be a bomb, not to mention Shamylan seemed to be really into it, and was putting a real budget behind the project. We went in to see it with an open mind, hoping that even if it was a flawed movie, it would be enjoyable it enough.
Boy, The Last Airbender is the definition of Bamboozled! 20 minutes in, my friend turned to me saying "Michael, I am going to kick your ass so hard for dragging me into this."
The worst part of the movie was the editing. It just jumped from place to place, at random and it always felt like there was something important missing. It really made a whole story incomprehensible and unbelievable. Not to mention there are plot-lines that won't make sense if you're not familiar with the series. The script...horrendous. They pointed out the obvious things, and so many things said seemed to be in contradiction to Aang's character. It's hard to describe, but I cannot think of any other bad movie I've seen with a script as childish as this one. And gawd, the bending! It takes too long to get an element going, and the choreography was TERRIBLE. How is it a cartoon can get the martial arts choreography of the Peking Opera, but the adaptation with millions of dollars can't do the same!? And I HATED it when Petz narrated important plot points, but nothing was shown! The acting...jeez, the firebenders with the exception of Mandvi were the only decent actors, but they have terrible material to work with that it's only okay at best.
Other things that bothered me:
The part of the movie that was supposed to be the adaptation of Haru's episode. Why would firebenders imprison earthbenders in a camp where the floor is made of EARTH!? And the earthbenders need to be REMINDED of that!?
Plus, with the change Night made in regards to the Firebenders needing a source of fire to bend, even if they were planning to neautralize the waterbenders, under those circumstances going against the water benders is just stupid; as soon as you dropped a torch, or launched a fireball, they would put it out! And there's only one fight between Aang and Zuko, the only bending you get is what you saw in the trailer, the rest is a ridiculous hand-to-hand combat sequence where Aang eventually tries to be a MMA fighter and get Zuko to tap out.
And finally, Shamylan ruined the ending. Did he not get the point of what happened in siege of the North? Zhao kills the moon spirit, causing the ocean spirit to possess Aang and destroy everything. Yue sacrifices herself to become the new moon spirit and restore balance. I won't tell you the ending for the movie, it's not worth it and utterly ridiculous.
As for the race issue...right now, I'm glad they picked white actors for the main roles, because the few people of color that did make it into this movie have to admit they took part in the worst summer movie of all time (I especially feel sorry for Dev Patel). Even if they have cast the characters correctly in terms of race, this would not be a better movie. That being said, when Hollywood adapts an anime, japanese video game or other media with asian influences and casts the lead roles as white...you know this is going to suck on every level. The only one that seemed to avoid this pitfall was, sadly, Mortal Kombat, and perhaps the upcoming Tekken movie (which still looks pretty bad).
Speaking of which, I was COMPLETELY thrown off by Monk Gyatso as a black dude. My friend, who is black, turned to me and whispered "HELL NAW!!" Call me racist if you must, claim that Gyatso's ethnicity was never specified. But I'm sure that dude was not the first thing you thought of when you pictured Gyatso as a real person. No big loss, I guess, considering just what a cluster**** this film as a whole was.
That being said, I still don't understand how they could have "trouble" finding Asian actors and not cast ethnic ones as the water benders when there are plenty around. How else do you think Last Samurai and Forbbiden Kingdom found enough ethnically correct actors for their story? Simple, they went overseas!
The only thing I enjoyed really were the sets and the few scenes we got of Appa and Momo. They were INCREDIBLE. But it's not nearly enough to reedeem this film as a rental. So, going by the Spill.com scale, I give this film Some Ol Bull****.
Speaking of which, Spill.com gave The Last Airbender a F*** YOU. I'll put the link to the audio review and list the most notable lines from the recording. Before you go off on movie critics, Leon, Cyrus and Carlye (who posted his review of the movie on Ain't It Cool News) are big fans of the show, and while Korey and Co-Host have only seen a couple of episodes, they did say it looked amazing.
The Audio Review (Uncut and Uncensored)
Intro: Someone needs to bend a foot up M. Night's ass.
Korey: Man, it looked like M. Night Shamylan took the wind out of y'all, cause you look depressed!
Cyrus: This is based on an entire TV show, made of 3 seasons, and what this movie is here is essentially the cliff-notes of Avatar The Last Airbender
Co-Host: They needed a Book One Script!
Cyrus: Compared even to Night's other films, this is TERRIBLE
Korey: When M. Night can't do a twist, he doesn't know what to do!
Cyrus: This is the first Night film that really wasn't an M. Night Film
Co-Host: This was sold to me in the trailer as an action film, and this had to have been the dullest action film I've seen since Missing in Action 2
Leon: They have no passion, so you have no sense of urgency
Cyrus: The kid that played the Avatar, TOTALLY reminded me of Jake Lyod
Cyrus: So he runs away, and for reasons the film DOES NOT EXPLAIN, he goes Captain America
Cyrus: He's the last guy who can do the wind element, so eventually, he has to go do some f***n'
Korey: We're saving that for the second movie, which WILL SURELY GET MADE!
Leon: It seems to be going "Look, this is for the fans, and they know how it happens" but at the same time they're like "We need to educate the masses on the Avatar universe", and it can't make up its mind, pissing off both groups
Co-Host: This was a movie for dummies
Co-Host: I was expecting that kid to put on some make-up and a dress, and become one of those Geisha girls, because it looks like they're doing geisha moves back and forth
Co-Host: The sad thing is that there was plenty for M Night to reference in terms of fight scenes. They were completely boring, wheras you look at the cartoon, it makes you go "WOW! This would be totally awesome is someone did this on film!"
Korey: Not if it's M Night Shamylan!
Leon: You know what he contributed to this the most? He replaced white actors with what should have Asian actors, and a lot of Indian actors
Cyrus: You look at the soldiers, and you see these 14 year old kids, and you go "WHY ARE YOU...!?"
Cyrus: You look around the blue tribe, you go "Oh yeah, they're eskimos! They're in the arctic, and that's what they are! But they do nothing but stand there. However, the two main characters from this tribe are AS WHITE AS THEY CAN BE
Co-Host: Talk about making a film that does not want to offend anyone, but does it anyway by making it multicultural!!
Korey: You know, I'd like to see them have replaced one of the actors with Snoop Dog!! He'd have been like "I'm controlling Earth and Fire..."(makes sniffing noise)
Korey: You know, they should have brought in the Avatars from James Cameron's Avatar, have them walk and have everyone go "Where the f*** did they come from!?"
Cyrus: Did anyone notice that M. Night didn't do a cameo here? Even HE didn't want to be in this movie!
Korey: He probably did, he just said "CUT THAT S*** OUT, I DON'T WANT TO BE SEEN IN THIS!"
Leon: A big thing that's missing from this show is the humor. In the seires, you had Sokka, who is the comic relief...but he's an effective comic relief. When he needs to be a warrior, he can be, and you watch him grow into a warrior, and his jokes are geniunely funny. And this version has no humor whatsoever in this movie
Cyrus: There are no characters in this film!
Co-Host: (Reffering to Zuko) He was the only one who seemed to be a character in this movie, because they focus on him so much, but they constatnly remind you OVER AND OVER what happened to him...
Co-Host: This is probably one of the worst edited movies I've seen in a while; I don't know if M. Night shot too much, but it just seemed like they were missing scenes blatantly. There were things the characters were saying that didn't seem to make sense in the context of where the story was headed, cause it looked like you were missing entire scenes.
Korey: Which begs the question, is there anything positive about this film?
Cyrus: An hour into this, I was thinking "There's got to be SOMETHING I like about it!" and I can't think of anything. In fact, thinking about it has changed my view, because even the 3D is TERRIBLE!
Korey: That's a damn shame when the 3D in the movie can't match the cartoon!
Co-Host: The climax looked pretty, but it was just a rip-off from the director's cut of "The Abyss"
Korey: So, should I get some mugs serving a round of Bull****?
Cyrus: I'm already turning to the dark side, I'm like "NOOOOOO!!!!". You know what, no. This is not just Some Ol' Bull****. This is a F*** YOU. This is a F*** You to the studio, a F*** you to M. Night, this is a F*** You to everyone involved in this project. You took something that was really cool, and you just DESTROYED it.
Leon: Damn, I was just going to give it Some Ol' Bull****. I'm not angry about it, I mean, this is kind of what I expected when it got announced. I mean, you don't make a movie on a cartoon that ended two to three years ago, that's just idiotic, that's just a money-grab.
Co-Host: Wow. I'm like you, Korey. I only saw a couple of episodes of the show, but I thought "Wow, this is BADASS!" But this movie took out the soul and everything else that was interesting about the cartoon show, even from those sole 2 I saw, they just stripped it away. The editing was awful, the characters were terrible, and honestly I didn't care. After watching this film, I could care less about their Book 2 and Book 3. As far as I'm concerned, they can keep those books. In fact, I was waiting for Adam Sandler to show up with his own clan, the fart-benders.
Just to make sure we get input from everyone on spill, here's the review from Carlyle, aka Massawyrm, on Ain't it Cool News, who often likes quite a few movies that have been panned critically (Pirates of the Caribbean and The Matrix being the best examples)
MASSAWYRM calls THE LAST AIRBENDER a crapbending mess
Hola all. Massawyrm here.
If you were to ask me at the beginning of the week which film I would watch twice if forced to at gunpoint, the notion of choosing a TWILIGHT film over an M. Night Shyamalan translation of a beloved animation series would have been the laughable one at the bottom of the list. I fully went into this week believing that even if M. Night failed, he wouldn’t have failed so miserably as to make ECLIPSE look like the better choice. But that’s exactly what he did. This is a catastrophic failure – a film that has sparked furious debate between critics as to whether this is the worst movie of the year or only the worst of the summer. Me? I’ve seen worse this year. But not much worse.
The principle crime here is that the film is just boring. Truly, unspeakably boring. While there are a myriad of things wrong here – both for fan and neophyte alike to be bothered by – its chief problem is that Shyamalan weaves a nearly two hour tale that completely and utterly fails to spark the slightest bit of your interest. The characters are hollow, the story mostly incomprehensible, and all of the film’s flavor is in its set decoration which ranges from stunningly beautiful to cheap and prefabricated, with very little in-between.
Many of our younger readers there – ranging between 12 and 17 years old – have for several years harassed me for not having watched the original show. And much like I was with FIREFLY before it, I was hesitant, because it looked too much like a number of other properties the fanbase loved that I simply didn’t connect with. But after much browbeating, my wife and I sat down to take in the series and found ourselves blown away. It started a bit slow – a bit kiddish as I had initially feared, it being written for 7-12 year olds and all – but within a few episodes we were hooked. And by the time the second season began, we were madly in love.
The source material is brilliant. It is something our geek generation has thus far mostly ignored, which needs to be rectified. It is everything we love about fantasy and Eastern mysticism, written by and for American geeks…and their kids. It has all the character depth and sweeping storylines of LotR, crafted perfectly into a single, continuous, fully realized storyline, spread over three distinct seasons. One need only watch the Kurosawa/Leone inspired Samurai-western episode (Season 2, Episode 7) to understand what this series is capable of and where it’s going. (It’s fairly stand alone, give a try on Netflix – best 23 minutes of your day today, I promise.) Fans love this series with all their heart – and rightly so. It is their Robotech, a series written with adults in mind, but marketed to kids.
And the fans are going to be howling mad at this film. Shyamalan gets everything but the look of it wrong. EVERYTHING. Not a single personality translates from the show to the film. Ang the Avatar is a 12 year old boy. Sure, he has the weight of humanity on his shoulders and a burden far too great for any one man to bear, but he’s still a kid. He has fun. He smiles and laughs. In fact in the early parts of the series, he refuses to take his responsibility seriously and instead spans the world, chasing exotic monsters to ride (against their will.) He’s the inventor of an air-sphere moped technique that he loves to scoot around on. He is a joyful boy given a job he’s not ready for – and the show is entirely about watching that boy slowly begin to understand what it is to be a man and what he needs to sacrifice to save his fellow man from destruction from the wrath of the Fire Lord.
M. Night thinks instead that Ang is a mirthless, scared little boy with his mouth agape at the world around him, lacking emotion apart from fear. He has no joy, there is nothing aloof about him – in fact, M. Night never mentions one of the most important points of Ang’s storyline: that he is hopelessly in love with his travelling companion Kitara. Kitara is equally as bland. Soka is more of an angry, awkward teenage boy than the comic relief of the group. Even the villains are off base. Iro is more councilor and less brilliant Zen master. Zuko is more whiny than he is bitter and angry. And Aasif Mondvi as Commander Jao is simply ridiculous and not at all menacing. Worst of all, Cliff Curtis (a wonderful, underappreciated actor) gets the thankless role of playing the Fire Lord himself…who appears on screen repeatedly.
For those of you unfamiliar with the show, that would be like readapting STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE and writing several scenes of Vader conferring with the Emperor to speed up exposition, while simultaneously casting the Daily Show’s John Oliver as Darth Vader. Fans’ heads will explode at the 20 different things wrong with each of these scenes (before they even begin wondering how the hell this guy is travelling from one side of the globe to the other on a steamship in a matter of hours.)
While I am with most of my fellow critics - both fan or unacquainted with the series – in hating this film, I am a bit upset with a number of critics taking aim at the actors in this film. While I’m not in love with all the acting choices here, the piss-poor performances are equally dismal across the board, and it is *not* the actor’s faults. They give the same, hollow, dead-eyed, thousand yard stare that M. Night Shyamalan elicits from all of his actors. In THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE we thought it was brilliant. But comparing Osment’s turn in SIXTH SENSE to the performance of Ang here, you find the very same elements and acting tricks. They are identical. It isn’t the cast who fails this film, it is Shyamalan’s complete inability to direct actors outside of his very narrow type of film. These kids never had a chance put under the direction of this guy and they seem to be bearing the brunt on the performance front.
But I am with those in agreeing that casting a comedian as the film’s foil was a bad choice. Jao needed someone like a Ken Watanabe or a, ahem, Cliff Curtis; someone who can evoke a genuine menace.
Finally, M. Night pulled a full on Zack Snyder and decided that he had a better idea for the ending of the film and radically changed what happens, but more importantly what it all means. The end of season 1 is a crazed, clusterkitten of awesomeness that will drop your jaw and make you beg to see it in live action 3-D. Shyamalan neuters that ending entirely, rewriting both it and Ang’s progression as a character. It’ll piss you off if you’ve seen the show, because you know just how crazy awesome it was supposed to be and you can also suspect that this means M. Night has very different plans for Ang’s character arc than is, you know, in the kittening show.
The one thing that THE LAST AIRBENDER gets right at all is the look of the world. The costumes, sets and characters are all beautifully realized. It’s almost as if Shyamalan watched the show with the volume off. I say almost, because the film is the show – that is if you took many of the most unimportant parts of the show and jammed them together into a loose storyline. Series one of the show (encapsulated here) is 20 episodes of 23 minute shows – roughly 7 and a half hours, with a number of filler episodes, gags and stories that didn’t need to be told to complete the story. This could have easily been done as a three hour epic that didn’t need to change a single thing about the series and would have kicked some serious ass. Instead it is a less-than-two-hour highlight reel, directed as if it were the High School play version of the show.
Worthless, mind numbing and a complete mess from minute one, this is a film best avoided based upon a show that you owe it to yourself as a geek to sit down and enjoy. The seasons are being rereleased on DVD in nice boxed sets and are available to stream on Netflix right this very minute. Do yourself a favor and watch those while skipping this.
Until next time friends,
Massawyrm
So, thank you Shamylan, for raping what is perhaps the greatest animated series and modern mythology ever made and pissing all over it, and no less when I may be spending a good part of my life overseas in two months. Fond memories indeed...
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