The Last Airbender (the movie)

The Last Airbender (2010)


Director: M. Night Shyamalamadingdong
Writer: M. Night Shyamalamadingdong
Starring: Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Aasif Mandvi

Synopsis
piece of garbage that should have never been made. see synopsis of the series, print it out and then wipe your butt with it.

MOste
This is another poor movie.  I'm not nearly as emotionally invested in this story as Leila is, so I won't spend nearly as much time as she did.  Having seen one or two episodes, I have a little experience with the show and I can say definitively that the show is better than the movie.  The story was extremely simple but it still made no sense.  It was explained more than once and each time it was explained stupidly.  Multiple sets of triple exposition served to either frustrate the viewer or muddy the story.

The poor acting in this movie can be blamed totally on the casting.  With the exception of two supporting actors who (because they were the strongest members of the cast) seemed to be principals rather than supplements, these people were little kids playing at grownup acting.  It seems like Ang, who should have been the star (as he does represent the title of the film) was cast because he can blink but there's no blinking magic.

Everything else was equally stupid.  Shyamalan usually has some sort of style but this movie was entirely bland.  The editing didn't do anything to make anything clear, and the production was terrible.  I couldn't tell if they were standing on styrofoam sets or bluescreen, but it didn't matter because it would have been just as stupid either way.

I want to take this movie out and buy it a nice dinner.  I want to flirt with it and bat my eyes and arouse it.  Then I want to skip foreplay, fuck it poorly, and ejaculate prematurely.  I want to leave it utterly unsatisfied.

(Late edit which is important because it really helps my point:) Regarding the direction, I did have opportunity to see most of the last episode of the show.  During the final battle, there were shots taken from numerous angles.  This was mostly a martial arts piece, with some magical fire bolts etc.  Usually this would be a lot of first person and close shots, with the camera just outside the "ring" of the action.  But this little, self-aware, kids' cartoon had wide shots and birds-eye shots and interesting angles which showed the scope of the battle and the collateral damage.  You might see this in some other movies or shows, but it was done quite well in this little kids show.  Nothing in the movie even approached the level of craft or art or skill in that ten minute animated action sequence.  Nothing in this big-budget, better-and-fancier, summer blockbuster came close to a few (hopefully) hand-drawn cels made animated by a mid-level piece of software in the basic cable cartoon show of which it was supposed to be an improvement.


The Woman
if you can't tell from my description i hated this piece of cinema. everyone involved in this movie made a series of terrible choices to lead them anywhere near this movie. this is the first movie where the writing was shit, the directing was shit, the acting was shit, the editing was shit, the effects were shit, the music was shit, the costumes were shit.....i had "bad" written down, but i thought that might be too good for what this travesty was. i mean even star wars (episodes 1,2, &3), at least had some of these things going for it. this was 'cut-throat island' bad. if i hadn't watched the series i would have been completely lost. it reminded me of a bunch of children playing pretend in the backyard, where everything is danger, danger, DANGER! there are certain rules that must be followed when making a movie. basic story rules apply. you have to have ups and downs. action sequences, and character development. fast pace, slow paced. i think i learned this in elementary school. stories have a climax, and that is towards the end of the book. everything must build to this. if someone were to graph it in a line graph, it would look like a mountain. this looked like a prairie if you were towards the magma depth in the earth. the acting was outrageously bad. it made the twilight movies/ acting look like oscar winning masterpieces. it was very chaotic with no character development in a trillion mile radius. this is totally surprising to me because usually shyamalamadingdong is usually all about character. relationships, backstory, emotion. this had none of these. this was also the focus of the series as well. aang begins as a little kid joking and laughing, and ends with aang as a mature avatar realizing his responsibilities to mankind. aang didn't even come off as the main character in this garbage. what!?!

it also really bugged me that all the names were mispronounced in the movie. it's not like the series were books and they were written down and open for interpretation on pronunciation, they were spoken...alot...in sixty 24- 47 minute episodes. grrrrr. when you make a movie of a series you have to cut things out. this seemed like he tried to stick everything in. his choices were really strange or non-existent. it also seemed really vain to me to make the fire nation eastern indian. the show is obviously all asian, with asian philosophies running rampant, and to put your (the writer, director, and producer) ethnicity as the powerful invading nation? it's comes off a little suspect. especially since it was very mashed. indians with names like 'zhao' wearing kimonos......hmmmmm. if you're gonna make a change like that you gotta go all the way dipshit. put them in traditionally indian garb.

oh, i also want to complain about sokka's hair. it looked like he was from seattle in 1993. samurai topknot transformed into grunge band. he is also the comedic relief  and self proclaimed 'plan guy' in the show. in this, it was hard to find a personality at all. there is much more in my brain, but i'm tired of thinking about this deplorable garbage. it's a movie made entirely of throw away lines and subtitles showing you where, geographically, the robots calling themselves characters are located.

look. i knew it was gonna suck, but i didn't think it would be a black hole of suckiness killing all of the universe in it's massive sucking power. i can warn you not to see it, but i know some of you will not heed my advice, and i just want to say in advance I TOLD YOU SO.