Die Legende von Aang

I don't consider myself picky when it comes to movies. I usually find a thing or two that I like about a movie whether it's terrible or not. But this…I mean wow. As an avid fan of the show and someone who could easily sit and watch episodes over and over again, I tried to be fair and give it a chance. Obviously, no live-action film could come close to the magnificence of the cartoon, but there are ways to pull it off and at least do it justice. This movie has hardly any theatrical merit. It could be considered a Twilight of moviedom—minus the fanbase.

Let's start with the characters or, rather, the lack there-of. One of the things that made the cartoon so great was the incredibly complex and well thought-out characterization. Every single character had dimension and depth. As for the movie, not one of the characters even had a personality. They were cardboard cutouts of their animated selves with no drive or purpose. Katara, Sokka, and Aang had no chemistry and were hardly even together during the length of the film. There's absolutely no motivation for either Sokka or Katara to assist Aang and, had your average movie-goer never seen the show, they would have been wondering what on earth they were doing in the movie at all. I didn't get a father-and-son relationship between Zuko and Iroh, which is one of the most important relationships in the entire series, one that eventually changes Zuko for the better. I could hardly see Zuko doing anything for Iroh in the film other than order him around. Momo and Appa got virtually no screen time and every time I got a glimpse of Momo's face I kept thinking "Zaboomafoo." I won't complain about the way either were rendered, as I don't think it really mattered considering the fact that they played no role in the story, anyway. Overall I felt the casting was dreadful. Both Katara and Zuko were too young, in my opinion, but Katara's lack of age could have been compensated by portraying a strong-willed character…something that was never accomplished. None of the characters resembled their animated counterparts: Sokka wasn't sarcastically charming, Katara wasn't determined or motherly, and Aang lacked any and all of his lovable boyish-ness. Zhou was annoying, Iroh had no jolly, old-man qualities, and Fire Lord Ozai? There was absolutely nothing threatening about him at all. I didn't so much mind that he was in it in the first place, but couldn't they have at least made him unapproachable? I felt like I could have walked up and punched him in the face without any repercussions.

The story was botched at best and felt like nothing but a string of events pieced together through basic transitions. It's one thing to stray from the original source for the sake of flow and continuity, but nothing about the story made sense unless you had seen the show, and even then, I was left confused and annoyed when things were switched around without any obvious reasoning. I understand that re-writing eight or nine hours' worth of material into a two-hour movie is a challenge for even the most skilled screenwriter, but it's been done before and could have been done here. My biggest disappointment was the fact that Sozin's comet, the most important aspect of the plot and the driving force for the Aang Gang to defeat the Firelord, was only briefly mentioned at the very end. The fact that this movie left out major plot points, key characters like King Bumi and the Kyoshi warriors, and jumbled around the order of various events is inexcusable. The source material was there; all that needed to be done was to use it and mold it properly. Rather than write the script, M. Night should have hired a screenwriter who actually knew what he was doing.

As for the effects, I can't say much. It's not one of the things I focus on in a movie, even for something that was meant to be heavily influenced by martial arts and elemental magic. I will say that the bending was hideous, and not because of the way the special effects were done. In the original cartoon, every movement corresponded with a reaction; in the film, it took five or ten motions for anything to even happen. Because of this, the bending didn't look natural in any way and came across as pitiful and useless. The fact that the fire benders couldn't shoot fire out of their hands made their bending look much less powerful than it should have been. Perhaps the thing that annoyed me the most was Katara's obvious lack of talent at water bending, a fact that gave the story no benefit and looked more like M. Night just never watched the show.

Since I don't like to totally crush something, I will say a few things I found salvageable about the film. For one thing, I thought the scenery and costumes were decent. They had the look of the show but without much character to them. I liked Yue, who looked a great deal like her character, perhaps the most of any of the actors. The way they did Aang's arrow was kind of cool with all of the detailing, but it could have been a little more visible. The only thing I can say I thought was a nice addition was Zuko's mentioning that his father said he was "like his mother." That was the one and only nice touch. More than anything the first twenty minutes of the film gave me a good laugh as it was clear that the entire movie would be a disaster.

Overall I am sincerely glad I didn't bother to pay money to see this movie and strongly encourage anyone else to avoid it. Spend your money elsewhere, such as purchasing or renting the first season of the show.

After waiting extremely eagerly for this movie, I sat in the theater and was extremely eager for it to END. Ear-oh? Oong? Soak-ah?! Could they have butchered the names anymore than they did? Worse, the entire movie felt like a string of clips put together for an hour and a half and not like a movie at all. All the major parts of the Book of Water were skimmed over, while things like the freeing of the earth nation village (while important) were given screen time that could have been given to major events like the southern air temple.

The actors were dismal, with the exception of Dev Patel as Zuko and to a lesser extent Shaun Toub as Iroh, who wasn't an accurate portrayal of Iroh visually but at least captured the character's wisdom much better than many of the other actors on board for the movie. He however failed to provide many of the aspects of Iroh that made him endearing in the series.

I will give that the northern water kingdom was gorgeous, but that's about all I have to say kindly about this movie.

If you love Avatar: The Last Airbender as the series, I recommend giving this movie a miss. It's heartbreaking how they butchered something that had such fantastic and barely needing change source material.

The Last Airbender (2010)

1/2 (out of 4)

After being freed from an iceberg, Aang (Noah Ringer), a long lost Avatar who is the only one able to bend the four elements, finds himself doing battle against the Fire Nation who who attempting to take over all three Nations (Air, Water, Earth). M. Night Shyamalan's THE LAST AIRBENDER is based on the very popular television show, which is something I've never seen so I pretty much walked into this not knowing what to expect from the story. I'll admit by the ten-minute mark I was pretty much lost in regards to the story and each passing minute I found myself growing even more confused. I then had to do something I never do, which was stop the movie and call someone familiar with the TV series and this film to try and find out what the heck was supposed to be going on. I painfully sat through the rest of the movie and afterwards I started to read other reviews and I was happy to see that I wasn't the only one who couldn't make any sense out of this material. I will say that I think Shyamalan has gotten some pretty bad beatings over his recent films, which I think were unfair but there's no doubt that he deserves the majority of the blame here, although I think a very strong argument could be made that those who hired him should be on fans hit list more than Shyamalan. The biggest fault of his was the screenplay, which simply doesn't make any sense as the story is always jumping from one place to another and none it ever seems connected. From what I've gathered he was jumping around so many parts of the show that unless you're familiar with it you weren't going to know what's going on here. Even worse are the actors who are all extremely bad and come off even worse when they have to say the bad dialogue. I don't like to attack child actors so I won't mention any of them by name but what were the producers thinking when they agreed to cast them? Surely there were more talented people out in Hollywood. The special effects are all poor, the action badly directed and even worse is that there's simply nothing here to care about. Some nice cinematography is about the only thing going for this turkey, which is every bit the misfire its reputation would have you believe.

The world is divided into four kingdoms with each being able to control (bend) an element to their will. These benders (stop tittering at the back) are held in balance by the influence of the Avatar, a being who can control all elements as well as being a link to the spirit world. It has been 100 years since this Avatar vanished and in this time the various benders (stop it) have all been in conflict. The wars have been led by the flaming benders (seriously, stop it) who control fire and wiped out the air benders because they knew the Avatar was one of their number. With the air benders gone and the Avatar nowhere to be found, the benders are all under the thumb of the fire nation, with bending outlawed (like it used to be in the Isle of Man). When sibling waterbenders Katara and Sokka discover a child frozen below the waters near their town they rescue him only to quickly learn he is the Avatar. They join him in his quest to learn to be bend the other elements and also free the kingdoms from the tyranny of the fire nation.

I've not watched the original series so in a way I came to this film free of the built-in criticism of those who love the series and were always going to be upset by a poor copy. Normally this would mean that a poor version might still be a good film but obviously in this case I did come with the knowledge that it had been universally slated by critics and mostly ignored by audiences. So basically I had no preconceptions of how the film should look or be but at the same time my expectations were low due to all the criticism I had heard. So I guess it is understandable that I come out of the film saying "c'mon – it's not THAT bad" because it is not the crime against humanity that some have suggested. The effects are pretty decent and as a result some of the sequences are decent if only on a technical level. And. And. Well, I guess I'm done providing the critical balance here, so onto the parts of the film that are not the "pretty good" effects.

Sadly this "rest of the film" is the vast majority of the two hour running time and it is pretty poor. Maybe the plot has potential but from the evidence of this it is a terrible heavy mess of mythology and nonsense that might have struggled to works in the hands of someone really able. M. Night Shyamalan is not an able person – he is someone who appears to have had a couple of good ideas (Sixth Sense and Unbreakable), a couple of so-so films and then a growing collections of stinkers, in which camp this film belongs. In the hands of Shyamalan it is overly worthy, clunky, self-important and just a big bore full of gas. It is no surprise that within this frame he has written dialogue that is equally pompous with lots of terribly stiff lines which are almost a pain to listen to. As director he fails his cast. The adults seem to have enough about them to at least have presence but the younger cast members seem totally lost in terms of what they are doing and are painfully stiff and have no presence. As a director of action he is lacking as well; OK he handles the effects well but the fights lack tension and excitement and just seem silly most of the time. To those that say that the action sequences were cool then I would suggest you check out the countless martial arts films that do them better, with actual excitement and impressive director and choreography – because those on display here are a poor copy of the genre.

Overall, it comes to something when the best that one can say about a film is that it is not the abomination that he majority say it is. However this is not me saying it is good; because I'm not; because it's not; not at all. It is clunky, stiff, self-important and lacks any sense of adventure, fun, character or charm – it is frankly a bore. I could care less if Shyamalan has upset fans of the original series with his version – he could have done that and still presented the rest of us with a decent film – but he hasn't He can get shirty with journalists who ask him about the downward trajectory of his career but ultimately he is doing nothing to suggest it is headed any other direction – The Last Airbender is not the worst film ever made, but it certainly another in the growing pile of stinkers that has his Shyamalan's name attached to them.

I watched this reluctantly for the first time recently to see if it was bad as I had heard and I was wrong, it was even worse than I could have imagined. I was unable to even finish the movie. I wish I could rate it lower. I understand that adaptations are difficult to reflect in the same light as the original content but the direction style, casting, writing, acting, and animation of this movie was lazy, disrespectful, and devalued the core ideals of the series. The movie proves painful to watch. I grew up watching the series and still now as an adult I am still constantly in awe of how wonderful of a show it is. So I wholeheartedly recommend to forget you even laid eyes on this movie and go watch the series in all it's glory.