Le dernier maître de l'air

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.

"The Last Airbender", directed by M. Night Shyamalan is tortuously lethargic, uninvited, abysmal, and uniformly atrocious (in every aspect). And that's me being nice! Based on Nickelodeon's beloved animated series (to which I am only vaguely familiar and thus can't compare) is set i a world in which the population is divided amid the four elements (Earth, Wind, Water and Fire) and some skilled practitioners whom can "bend" these elements to their will. Since the elements are naturally at odds with each other, an overall controller is needed to maintain order among the kingdom. This role is played by the Avatar, who can manipulate all the elements and thus can keep balance and peace amongst the tribes. Only problem is this Avatar has gone missing for 100 hundred years. "The Last Airbender" follows a brother and sister from the Water Tribe, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) and Katara (Nicola Peltz), who discover a 12-year-old monk-child from the Air tribe frozen in a block of ice and his gigantic furry steed (that resembles the luck dragon in "The Never Ending Story").His name is Aang (Noah Ringer), and he, of course is the missing Avatar. Now freed, he finds his home air tribe are all dead and the rest of the world in turmoil. All at the hands of the tyranny of the dreaded Fire Nation. Aang, who never wanted to be the Avatar in the first place (thus why he ran away) must step up, lead a resistance and bring peace back to the Kingdom. However, he must first learn how to control the elements other than air (was imprisoned by an ice storm before he could train). The Fire nation led by Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis) wants none of this of course and seeks to capture and subdue Aang (they would just kill him but he'd just get reincarnated). Rounding out the plot is Ozai's son, Prince Zuko (Dev Patel), living in exile with his uncle Iroh (Shaun Toub), who also wants to capture Aang and bring him back to his father to win his honor back. Sound like a lot? It is, but surprisingly not as convoluted as it sounds. The scope of the plot, which attempts at mysticism, politics, religion and a whole obvious Jesus angle isn't the problem. Its how the story is told that makes it unbearable. It throws a lot at you with no effect. It fails definition and lacks resonance. Everything is rushed. Characters and story elements are given no development. Take the Fire Nation for example. We are told they are scourge of the once unified kingdom but we arn't shown this. They travel the globe in their ominous, menacing, iron ships and have a mightier than though attitude but all in all nothing that establishes their evil-ness; albeit a later incident with a glowing pond guppy. Because of this we have nothing at stake, no reason to root for the good guys to triumph. Another example would be a big part of Aang's journey. Which involves him letting go of his anger towards the genocide of his people (a scene depicting said genocide would have helped sell the fire nation's douchey-ness) but we never see him get angry enough to make "letting go" have meaning. Void-ness of emotional moments are what really plague this film. I would blame this on the script but the performances are what make it not work. Every actor in this film (minus Shaun Toub) delivers dialogue as if they were reading it for the very first time. Not one thing anyone says carries any weight, none of it resonates emotionally. To say the actors suffer from wooden acting would be insult an to wood. It seem Shyamalan seemed much more interested in the visuals than the narrative (or the dialogue, which is shoddy at best). M. Night manages a few striking images, most of them involving otherworldly landscapes and ornate set design. There are strong special effects and action sequences which are fluid and vivid. Particularly with the fights involving element- manipulation. Winds gusts slamming people around like rag dolls, earth barricades, globs or walls of water and so on are eye popping. The effects are top notch. The hand-to-hand, Kung-Fu fight sequences are well choreographed as well, but a bit too extraneous. Should also mention that this movie is available in 3D and lets just say it's a wasted element (pun intended), an unnecessary afterthought. It wrecks whatever visual grace that might have been (and will give you a massive headache). Though, relatively successful in cinematic aspects Shyamalan, overall fails to capture the sense of adventure. There is a signs of a beautiful journey but it ultimately falls flat. Underwhelming and joyless Avatar: The Last Airbender is sure the be the final nail in the coffin of M. Night Shymalans stunted career. M. Night Shyamalan: Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool me four times? "The Sixth Sense" was clearly a fluke.

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.

I remember watching this movie back when it first came out and I didn't think it was that bad. I just finished watching the cartoon series on Netflix and I figured I would re-watch this to wrap it all up. Now I wish I hadn't watched it. It's NOTHING like the show. I wonder if the people who worked on this movie even saw the show. Stay away from this movie. It's so bad that it actually hurts to watch it.