The Last Airbender

[corvus_corax]

Formerly known as Avatar The Last Airbender on Nickelodeon.

This is a review and WARNING, POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!
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First off, don't waste your money purchasing the 3D glasses. Just see it in 2D. Yes, it's that flat in 3D. Quite frankly, Alice in Wonderland had much better 3D effects. I LOVE 3D movies, but this one was obviously hacked together later in 3D (keep in mind, I even thought the 3D of Avatar was weak)

Now on to the story, soul and characters of the movie.

This is a summary of Book 1: Water. When I say summary, I mean SUMMARY. Do not expect the full story. Even the love story between Soka and Princess Yue was summarized in less than (estimated) 7 minutes of screen time.
The "soul of the story" (regarding the original animated series) seems to be missing. There is almost no character development, and what little development there is seems to be rushed, almost as if MNS is expecting this movie to ride on the dollars of Avatar: the Last Airbender fanboys like me and my son. Heck I didn't even really care for Prince Zuko.
The characters- rushed, and in many cases changed. Now I understand that MNS was trying to summarize 10-15 hours of storytelling in less than 2 hours, but still.......I left the theater not actually caring about any of the characters.
Additionally there seems to be some serious character changes-
Zuko- Not NEARLY angry enough for Book 1
Zhao- Not nearly aggressive enough.
Soka- Not humurous
Ozai- Not intimidating or scary
Aang- Not the "trickster" concept that the entire Book 1 rode on


Additionally, there seems to be purposeful mispronunciations of names (e.g. "ee-roh" vs "I-roh", "ong" vs "Ang", "SO-kah" vs "SAH-ka", etc.)


Now, I know that MNS was trying to compact an entire season worth of entertainment into less than two hours, and for that I should applaud him. I'm just wondering if this endeavor should have been attempted at all.




MAJOR SPOILER ALERT- (HIGHLIGHT TO READ)-
There is not only NO fight between Prince Zuko and Commander Zhao, there is no Agni Kai at all (one of my favorite scenes from Book One: Water)






On the plus side the special effects are awesome (i.e. you can actually believe that Bending is happening), and the overall storyline adheres to the actual Book One: Water from the series. Additionally, Aang's tattoos look like the BOMB (yeah, cool as heck), Appa and Momo were pretty convincing, and the look of Katara and Soka were captured pretty darn well.

 

[laconicstudent]

I heard it sucked, unfortunately.


But it was Shamalan, so what else would we be expecting?

 

[corvus_corax]

I heard it sucked, unfortunately.


But it was Shamalan, so what else would we be expecting?

Personally, I don't blame MNS. I think it would have been difficult, if not impossible for ANY director to actually "capture" the feel of A:TLA given the fact that they were trying to summarize 10-15 hours of a series in a 103 minute movie.
Like I said above, I'm wondering if this endeavor should have been undertaken at all (regardless of director), considering not only the difficulties of it, but also considering the expectations of fanboys (and fangirls) like me, my son and my wife.

 

[laconicstudent]

Still, even if it would admittedly have been impossible, an 8% on Rottentomatoes.com is pretty appalling.

Course, I'm not really all that surprised. I think MNS is pretty inept, personally.

 

[Hakan101]

This movie is just terrible, it's just bad. I could take a really really long time going into explicit detail explaining why, but please just trust me, this is a HORRIBLE movie! I tried really hard to explain it to my brother and he wouldn't believe me, this movie held such promise he just couldn't take my word until he saw the atrocity with his own eyes. And now he wishes he could get his nine dollars back...

 

[Nova Scotian Boy]

I saw the movie this afternoon and really enjoyed it. I was surprised after getting home and looking up more about it that people really do not like it. Personally I can agree with some of the issues people are having the Princess Yue and Sokka love story had about 7 minutes on it. And she was around for only that much time. You felt no real loss with her sacrifice. It felt over rushed and disjointed like someone had filmed about 20, 5 minutes long webisodes and glued them together for a movie. More character development needed, I personally didn’t notice the lack there of too much as I was hung close to the characters I knew from the show. One minor disappointment I had was I was really looking forward to some crazy animas I wanted to see a platypus-bear or a sabre-toothed- tiger moose.

What I liked about it is I thought the actors did a great job at the characters. Noah Ringers Ang was superb. I had my reservations about the girl playing Katura but though she also did a great job. I actually liked Sokka in the movie I agree he was not comic relief he was in the cartoon. But I understand as the slapstick humour he brings to the table is hard to fit well into live action without looking completely outlandish. The CGI was very well done and bending was made believable and I loved how MNS really focused on the movements of within bending. I though the landscape and overall look of the world was amazingly done. Possible one of my favoroit things was the differentiation between the different kingdoms. I found the actors who played Katura and Sokka perfect for Water Tribes. I one complaint in this is they should of made this consistent, with these actors they should of kept with more Nordic looking southern water tribe members. We get to the village and Katura, Sokka and Grangran are the only tribe member that didn’t look Inuit. I just would of liked them choosing one or the other and not made a mishmash. The decision to cast the Fire Nation with East Indian was great, I felt it forked well as in the cartoon the consistent complexion of Fire Nation was darker than others. Earth Kingdom being Asian was another good idea as they in my opinion seemed the most Asian inspired of the nations.

For me I guess it come down to that I feel the CGI, costume, character consistency, look and feel of the world and people were great. What was lacking most was a good script. Given a better one it would have been great. I don’t blame MNS this was a huge undertaking and very hard to pull off with being so popular. I personally hope to see more and maybe MNS will learn from the mistakes of this one. I will admit I almost peed myself during the end scene with Azula, and I left wanting to see more of the world.

 

[dinonum]

I really loved the movie. I loved the cartoon and I was stoked to see it. I was impressed by the action sequences and the effects and costumes. I liked all of the actors that were chosen.

Overall it was an entire season packed into a movie, like you said, so there is only so much they could do. I think it could make an awesome movie series though and I hope that they continue with it.

 

[JCFantasy23]

I enjoyed the movie but I know many didn't. I haven't seen the animated series, though. My fiance has and still enjoyed the movie a lot. Most around here did not and it failed. Want to see the second as it seems the end of the first is when it really picked up and left me wanting more.

I agree with you on the 3d glasses - it's not much of a 3d movie.

 

[Sitswithamouse]

I took my daughter to see this last week and I thought it was okay but the movie skimmed a lot of the cartoon series.
The 3-D was not very good and I was expecting more and like Corvus mentioned Soka was not funny as he is in the cartoons.

My daughter liked it but she too kept getting annoyed everytime Ang was pronounced Ong.

Hope they do more films,might be a good idea to get some of the caracters to be more in line with the cartoon.

 

[Speculative]

We just saw this last week at the discount rate theater. It was okay. It wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible, either.

 

[Traderjoeeee]

I didn't mind the movie itself that much, it was quite enjoyable to look at. But the acting and dialog that went with it, was just plain terrible...

 

[Sanesoul]

I won't see it because I don't want to spoil the cartoon. We enjoy it very much in our house and watch it often. I heard it was really butchered.

 

[corvus_corax]

I won't see it because I don't want to spoil the cartoon. We enjoy it very much in our house and watch it often. I heard it was really butchered.

Seriously, stay with the animated series.*
Just my recommendation.






*especially the last four episodes of Book three: Fire

 

[christian74]

The effects are great, this should be a movie like Capt Planet.