Well I have been pretty busy with school and work but I came down from those lofty pursuits to give you my opinion on "The Last Airbender" movie: it sucked big time. It should be named "The Last Airbender Movie You'll Ever Want To See".
It was honestly terrible which is a shame because the original series is a masterpiece of epic proportions. Without further adieu I give you the top 10 worst things about the movie (in no real particular order).
10. Lame acting. This is surprising because M. Night has created amazing movies with young actors such as Sixth Sense. Maybe Haley Joel was just a much better actor (obviously) or maybe there is some other reason that I felt like I was watching a middle school play.
9. Character appearance. From Zuko's almost invisible scar to Katara's missing hair loopies I was a bit put off by the departures from the original look of the characters, including the fact that Appa (the Bison) looked really kinda weird. If it had been me, I would have tried to nail everything exactly instead of making my own interpretations of existing material.
8. Story mish-mash. It really turned me off that M. Night took such liberties to an already rich and fleshed-out story universe. He added his own lore (The Avatar can never have family connections? WTF?) as well as making a completely new script when he should have used familiar lines during familiar scenes.
7. Crappy bending. In the cartoon a character would move and the element would move, in the movie the character dances around like a retard for a handful of seconds before anything happens. If it takes you 30 seconds to splash someone with water or 3 seconds to shoot them with an arrow why would anyone ever take up bending?
6. Fire bending bullcrap. This one pissed me off. Firebenders MAKE FIRE from their chi but in the movie apparently only the most powerful ones could make their own fire. Everyone else had to use existing fire sources. So gay. In the original series the powerful firebenders showed off their power in one of three bad-ass ways: 1) Blue fire 2) Lighting 3) Making giant flames so large you say "eff me!!".
5. The overall pacing of the film. Of course I realize that a 20+ hour anime season will lose a bit when it is turned in to a 2 hour movie, but first of all the movie was NOT 2 hours when it would still have been popular if it had been a 3 hour movie. Secondly, season two could have been shortened easier than season one, there is no real reason to have rushed through it so fast and ended the movie at the same point that the season ended, they should have spent a bit more time on character development, made the movie a bit longer, and turned the three seasons into at least 4 movies. Instead it really feels like we got cheated, which is bad for everyone because those of us who are fans of the original feel like too much is missing and those who haven't watched the series are confused about what is going on.
4. Choreography. It sucks that all the fight scenes in the original series were built and executed much better than in the movie. That's gotta hurt going down...
3. Nobody hurt anyone else. It really kinda struck me as funny that Aang couldn't go into his Avatar state until he calmed down and decided not to hurt anyone. Wha..? In the series he was pissed because the moon spirit had been obliterated and it was his past Avatar lives that carried him into the Avatar state. One of the beautiful quirks of the original series is that Aang has NO control over his Avatar powers and they are triggered by outside situations and he is sort of carried helplessly along like everyone else until he finally masters it. In the movie he certainly looked like he had mastered it already. Suck.
2. Really bad comedy. The original series started out very light-hearted which allowed the climactic two-part episode at the North Pole to be so friggin' powerful because it was so dark and out of control. In a similar fashion the whole series becomes much more serious as it goes on. It sucked that there were only a couple parts which were supposed to be funny and they felt forced and shallow.
1. The mispronunciation of everyone's names. From the start of the movie where Katara calls him the AH-VUH-TAR and Aang is AHNG and Iro (Eye-ro) is EE-RO Sokka (Sock-uh) is SOAK-UH, I died a little inside at each butchering. Groan.
I hated this movie almost more than I can communicate to you. Have a nice day.
Serving/Working
6 years ago
You hit on everything that made me want to throw up. It was a huge disappointment especially because everything to make a great movie was ALREADY there! Storyline, action sequences, music...everything. Why they jacked up the storyline and made it so slow rather than action packed I'll never understand. It was painful to watch. Now we need to re-watch the animated series and eat cheese cake so we can get the bad taste out of our mouths.
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