The Last Airbender review

Alright! So today I'm taking a look at the adaptation of Avatar: the Last Airbender known only as the Last Airbender. They left out the Avatar so as to not confuse it with the 2009 Avatar. And sorry to give you so many older movie reviews, but, should it help, I should've been reviewing Wonder Woman 1984, Top Gun: Maverick, and Eternals.

Now, if you've been reading my blog for the past couple of months, you might remember how much I love the Avatar series. It's by far the greatest television series and one of the greatest things to come out of the entertainment industry, ever.  So to have one of the worst films of all time based on it? Doubly disappointing. 

So, the first issue with the movie we should discuss is the casting. Obviously it was a bad choice to cast white kids as Asian characters. And it was a mistake to make all of the heroes white and all of the villains brown, backwards from the show. And it was a double mistake to cast terrible actors as very complex characters. And when I mean terrible, I mean terrible. Like, kids from Transformers and Twilight (Which are not known for their good acting). 

Okay, let's get a couple of facts out of the way though: M. Night Shyamalan, the director of some of my favorite movies, also directed/wrote/produced this one. For someone Time called the next Spielberg, this was not very Spielberg-y.

These white people are playing Inuits. How would you feel if someone cast a black dude as Superman?

Second fact: This movie has been talked to death on YouTube. It doesn't take a genius to look at this and say, "Wow. That's a bad movie." Anyone can do that. What I can do is explain how it's a bad movie. How we ended up with this... thing. 

And they script does not give them any favors at all, with some of the most cringe worthy generic dialogue ever put to film, plus lazy narration. But you can make bad dialogue funny (Like the Star Wars Prequels) when done right. This is not done right in any way. This is bad. The line readings are basically the equivalent of a fifth grade play. And their facial expressions are either completely monotone or the opposite of what the scene is calling for.

This is supposed to be Ong accepting his role as the Avatar to a bowing crowd.
What is your face, dude?

It's really bad. 

And, the special effects are bad. Like, terrible. Like, awful. Characters like Appa and Momo are terrifying, the correlation between the bending and the CGI fire or water is awful, the actual movement of the elements are bad, and the effects when Ong enters the Avatar state? Doubly so.

Also, what was so wrong with a giant blue arrow on Aang's forehead? Why did they have to change it to strange tattoos for Ong? That was one of the many, many, bad design choices. 

They only say "Yip Yip" once. And they never say the name of Momo.

Another bad choice was for the bending, or "Air karate." The animated show had a ton of work put into it's fight scenes and choreography. Every one of the four nations had it's own style of fighting. The movie? Slow, poorly edited, boring fights with a lack of bending. It's mostly just fistfights. Which is weird when the fighters have the ability to bend air. 

And what was the point of making all of the firebenders having to have fire around them to bend? Why was it only Iroh who could bend with his Chi? And why was it so disappointing when he did?

What was the point of this? It wasn't even cool!

Another bad choice for the movie was the idea. Why would you take a 22 episode long television show with complex mythology and character development in it, and decide to try and shove it into an hour and a half movie? No time was left for fan-favorite characters who are important in later seasons (Avatar Roku, Suki, Jet), no time was left to explain nearly anything, and no time was left for all of the lively characters to have personalities. They're all bland. 

Especially bland is Sokka, the "Funny guy" in the show. No humor here at all. 

To point out at least one more thing wrong with it, the name pronunciations. It's not hard to figure out how to pronunciation the character's names. Several people involved claim to have seen the TV show, including the director. Yet we get pronunciations like Ong, Soaka, General Earo, and Auvautar. And Avatar is just a regular word! It's not even made up! 

Ong the Auvautar

And they captured the Earth benders and put them in camps on the ground... in the show they're on metal boats in the ocean... what was so wrong with having logical consistency? 

 But did the movie have anything good in it? 

Why yes, yes it did. 

That scene where the six Earthbenders do a huge dance with screaming and shouting to move a tiny rock is hilarious. I was rolling on the floor.

You guys are lucky Toph wasn't here to see this

And my one actual commendation for the film was the musical score. At times it was actually pretty cool and epic to listen to. Of course, negative points for not having the show's already excellent musical score. 

Overall, the Last Airbender is an excellent example for why most TV show movies aren't adaptations of the show and are just extended episodes. Like the Psych movies, or the original Star Trek movies, the Mask of the Phantasm, the Simpsons movie, and, should it ever happen, a Community movie.

Don't try it. 

Luckily, it's being remade by Netflix into a full length series, probably premiering in 2022. It will be bringing back the original creative team and creators, so at best, it can strongly remind us of the television show while never being quite as good. Wait... they creators left over differences and not respecting their vision? Shoot. Never mind.

Either way, there's no way it could be worse than this. Although, to give the movie credit, if it was a student film, it would be pretty good.

Not gonna lie, this looks super dope. Cautiously high hopes for this series.

Oh, and at the beginning of the post I talked about the reason all of these stupid decisions were made. I honestly have no clue. M. Night Shyamalan said he watched the show. I'm fairly sure he knows how to make a movie. Somehow, we got this, a shell of a movie. 

Overall, I give The Last Airbender a 1/10. "The Last Airbender dangerously crosses the line between insulting adaptation and unintended comedy, often with a mixed bag of an already bad movie."