The Last Airbender Thoughts

[emeraldstag]

The Last Airbender

I had to see it for myself. I'd heard the buzz and I'd also seen a behind the scenes special on Nicktoons about the movie. Knowing the lack of box office success I figured yesterday was the last chance for me to see the movie easily without being reduced to traveling to some odd theatre I've never been to in order to see it (And I was right, as of today - Friday - it is not in the theatre I went to see it and in obscure ones only). Expectedly, there were only six people altogether in the tiny 100 seat screen in the mall that The Last Airbender was playing on. I do find it interesting that the one trailer in front of this movie that wasn't in front of the other movies I've seen in the last month was the Green Hornet trailer - probably didn't do that movie much good.

The cast, I thought there were some really poor decisions with who they chose. Jackson Rathbone is turning 26 this year. He is WAY TOO OLD to play Sokka who I imagined in the 16-18 range. This can be defended in two ways by Hollywood: A) age is never important in adaptations - take for instance Harry Potter where they have Alan Rickman & Gary Oldman both men in their 50s-60s playing characters in their early to mid 30s. Or that they have Harry's parents looking like how they should if they were still alive in the pictures when actually they died in their very early 20s. (Both things annoy me to no end) B) I really think they wanted to reduce the idea of three kids basically traveling the world on their own with no adult responsible.

I actually liked the girl they had as Katara. Sure most of her lines were badly written but the way she looked and moved on the screen fit what I expected from Katara. I didn't have a problem with the kid they chose as Aang (it was so strange that Shyamalan changed the pronounciation - I know his reasoning but still odd), but the way they presented him and had him acted were terrible. He was way too quiet for most of the first half of the movie and I don't think he laughs once at all through the entire thing. If there's one way I'd describe Aang from the cartoon was fun, smiling, laughing, full of energy - and I never got any of that from the movie interpretation.

I didn't really care either way about Dev Patel's peformance as Zuko, the only thing I take away from it is that I wish they had made the wound/burns he received from his father a bit more like the cartoon. It's barely like a tiny scar in comparison. I wish they had chosen someone more jolly/older/heavier for the role of Uncle Iroh. And I really didn't understand why they showed the face of the Fire Lord (unless they show it in the final two episodes of season 1 that I haven't seen yet), there really was too much of him and Commander Zhao needed to look tougher. He reeked more of sleazebag than tough soldier.

I think the problem with this movie is that M Night Shyamalan was so busy trying to turn it into an epic movie that he lost the spirit of the show. The show was about fun and adventure and the movie never seemed to be that way, instead just going through the motions. Too many times during the movie it looked like Shyamalan was too busy trying to get the entire season into the movie that he'd end up using Katara narrations constantly TELLING the viewer what happened instead of SHOWING what happened. It's a problem some writers have of telling too much composition and not enough dialogue.

The writing was horrible, the conversations were short and stilted, the scenes were hard to watch at times, and I have to think if you haven't seen the series you wouldn't even make it through the movie. Some of the changes were just stupid, like the Earth benders being "imprisoned" in their own village WHERE THEY ARE ON EARTH. Or the over emphasis that Aang RAN AWAY from responsibility, they kept reminding us of that fact every other scene practically. Even the special effects were very average at best, numerous times you could look at a scene and go "GREEN SCREEN" and it just looks so glaring. Keep in mind I'm not seeing this on IMAX, not in 3D or DIGITALLY and on a SMALL SCREEN so I basically have to think it was even worse on those screens. It made me disappointed to know that ILM was connected to the film, but as I sat through the credits I saw that there was another special effects company also working on the film, so I'm clinging to the hope that ILM was brought in to try to save the effects or did only some specific thing like Appa who looked great but was vastly underused, basically just a mode of transportation.

And with how short the movie was (just over an hour and a half), I wish Shyamalan had left in the scenes with the lady Kyoshi Warriors that he said he cut for time and direction of the movie's story. I wont be buying the movie, but I will be finishing Book 1 of the cartoon soon, and I look forward to getting Book 2 and continuing on. I've heard that the creators are working on a spinoff that takes place in the future and I hope to catch up in time to watch that in real time. Sometimes movies are just not adapted well, and this is definitely the case here. I'd recommend seeing the Eragon movie or Percy Jackson instead of this adaptation but then again the irony is that I haven't read the Eragon books or Percy Jackson books so maybe the fans of that series feel similarly about their movies. However I think this movie takes the cake in not only being badly adapted, but badly made overall.