The Last Airbender Review

Sigh. I suppose it is good that I found a movie that accurately portrays a bad movie considering that was what we were supposed to be watching, but seeing something that could have had potential go down the drain in a fashion that was not entertaining only left me grumbling to myself about every nitpicky detail that went wrong. It does not help being a fan of the serious this movie is based on, but there are certainly plenty of points to address from the point of view of a fan and a more objective movie critic.

I suppose if there were to be themes addressed in this movie they would probably be individual versus society and good versus evil, simply because those themes are overarching in the original series. Themes are hardly developed in the film, aside from taking the core concept of the books and making them three dimensional, this live action film has no development. The antagonists that we are supposed to be given fade into the background to flashy fight scenes that are not even choreographed to look realistic. Aang is supposed to be struggling against society, but his consistent lack of emotion throughout the film throws away one of the only things the film could have had going for it…that they already took from a great piece of work. The themes flop, it was all a CGI and environmental camera shot party, and the overuse of those aspects emphasized the flaws they had in them as well.

Let’s compare this to the show. First of all, they took an entire season and crunched it down into under two hours. In the show, we have some major personality developments, and as we see characters growing, we begin to care about them. The movie rushes everything, and takes away any personality that was in the show. All the humor was sucked dry alongside the nonchalant attitude of Aang so that way they could keep the film moving at a brisk pace, and even if emotion was trying to be portrayed, the child actors in the movie fell short. Even though voice acting is quite different from acting, the superb performances from child actors in the show are crucial to how it works, and I could not see them being anyone else, which made me cringe all the more at the movie.

Continuity flaws are everywhere in this film. If it’s broken down scene by scene, there would probably be at least one in each scene. And, please, do not butcher the pronunciation of the protagonists’ names and key phrases of the universe and then say you want to trace it back to its Asian roots. I’m talking to you, Shyamalan. Especially if you then fail to stay true to the existing Asian martial arts that are actually used by each bending tribe in the show, which, I might add, Studio Mir spent time studying to animate proper technique and form. Instead it’s either flashy combinations of moves that derive from different styles, or straight up brawling that almost resembles a UFC match. Also, it would be cool if the Asian architecture influence would have been as strong as it was in the show too, which was not intended to be entirely Asian in the first place, but influenced by other cultures across four different nations.

With all the crucial information removed by M. Night Shyamalan or the writers, in addition to the choppy pacing and random scenes they attempted to add which, apparently, they shouldn’t have had time for, a lot of pieces of the movie did not line up, and even as someone with knowledge of the show I had to find myself using knowledge I knew from that, and stretching it to something that could almost work in the Avatar universe through inference. They did not have time to fit a whole book in one movie, and did not execute it well. It’s also kind of amusing that there’s no resolution at all and failure to introduce key characters due to the fact that they thought they would be getting at least two more movies. But, alas, if a rampant fan with a camcorder and any budget at all could easily make a more quality film, then I would not let the films continue either. This barely gets a 1 out of 5 elements from me: good thing I had a new episode of The Legend of Korra to watch after that monstrosity.