Movie Review: The Last Airbender

I should preface this review with two points.  The first is that I am a huge fan of the animated series, which I am sure is known to readers of the site.  It is my favorite animated series pretty much of all time.  The second, is that this might not be able to be classified as a review of the entire film.  There were about 5 minutes where I was not watching because I was in the lobby trying to get my money back.  When that endeavor failed, I returned and watched the rest of this absolutely dreadful, embarrassing, and infuriating mess of a movie.

I could start with the stilted acting or the unacceptably poor dialogue.  I could start with the extremely bad script or the sub par effects.  Maybe I'll start with the terrible directing?   Nah, I'll start with one of the things that bothered me the most.

M. Night claimed that he loved the original series and that he used to watch it with his kids all the time and that is why he wanted to bring the show to life with a live action film.  If that is true, why is it that he has his actors saying the character names incorrectly?  Aang is pronounced "Ung" or "Ong" instead of "Ang".  Sokka is pronounced "Sew-ka" instead of "Sa-kka" and Avatar is pronouced "Uh-vatar"  It's like he went out of his way to make these names sound as unnatrual and clunky as possible.  Perhaps to match the dialogue?  Everytime someone says Aang's name I thought they were about to vomit.

That might sound nit-picky but it really wraps up The Last Airbender in a nutshell.  A complete lack of respect for the brilliant source material. If you can't even get the names right how can you be expected to get anything right?  Well, they don't.  They get nothing right in this film.

The emotion of the series is lost.  The immediacy of the series is lost.  The joy and fun of the characters is lost.  There are some slight flashes mostly in flashbacks but for the most part the film is just...void.

How can someone get it so wrong when the source material is laid out right there for you is a mystery.  This should have been an instant home run.  Everything is done for you just put it on screen!

Since The Sixth Sense, I've been a fan of M. Night.  I've defended him even as his movies became steadily worse and worse.  After The Last Airbender, I can defend him no longer.  Whatever gift he had, whatever talent may have existed has apparently gone the way of the dodo.  Much like this movie should.

I mentioned earlier the dialogue.  It is some of the worst I've heard in a movie that doesn't have Tommy Wiseau's name attached.  The lines have this extremely annoying way of repeating information we've just heard...in the same sentence.  It's like the writer, we're to believe it's M. Night, has no ear for how people speak, even in a fantasy world such as the one in Airbender.  The dialogue is just poorly written.  It's infuriating at times.  Like when a character can't understand how the fire nation keeps following them after just showing how they're stirring up a revolution by visiting towns and putting up pictures of the Avatar around like a trail of breadcrumbs.

The whole thing is a mess.  Did I hate it more  because I'm a fan of the show?  That's entirely possible but even on the most objective level, lore and fandom aside, The Last Airbender is an extremely poor example of filmmaking on every possible level.  I can think of no redeeming aspects, from the woefully miscasting to the incomprehensible script and a director who doesn't see the heart or the soul of the source material or its wonderful characters.  He does not understand Aang, nor his friendships, nor his purpose in life or the pain he feels knowing what his destiny is going to be.  M. Night knows none of these things and that is why this movie fails.

It's made 70 million already (no doubt due to the insane price of 3-D tickets) so we're sure to get a sequel.  I can only hope that M. Night is no longer involved.

The Last Airbender is in theaters now.  If you do decide to see it, please don't see it in 3-D.

Better yet, spend your money on the brilliant Animated Series it does its best to ruin.