Post by Neverending on Nov 18, 2014 21:15:34 GMT -5
JUNE 29, 2010
Hey, do you see that? It's a coffin for M. Night's career. The man can't direct a good movie to save his life. Even when he leaves his comfort zone. The Last Airbender could have, and should have, been a masterpiece. Have you seen the cartoon? It's brilliant. Arguably the best animated series of the `00s.
In the series we're introduced to four nations. Each nation controls one of the four elements: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. The one keeping peace is known as the Avatar. The Avatar masters all four elements and resolves any dispute between the nations. In every century there's an Avatar, but the latest one is just a 10-year-old boy. He can't handle it and runs away. Then he runs into a snow storm, gets frozen, and is left there for 100 years. Without an Avatar, the Fire nation starts a war and takes over the world. They are a brutal bunch. One day, a brother and sister from the Water Nation are fishing and find the Avatar. They unfreeze him, update him on the world, and then join him in his battleagainst the Fire Nation.
See? That's epic. But instead, M. Night gives us a condensed 1hr and 40min version. It's so ridiculously condensed. He essentially butchered the story. And no matter how much I badmouth the movie I know that fans will go watch it. But let me warn you. It's really bad. You'll be calling for M. Night's head.
Hey, do you see that? It's a coffin for M. Night's career. The man can't direct a good movie to save his life. Even when he leaves his comfort zone. The Last Airbender could have, and should have, been a masterpiece. Have you seen the cartoon? It's brilliant. Arguably the best animated series of the `00s.
In the series we're introduced to four nations. Each nation controls one of the four elements: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. The one keeping peace is known as the Avatar. The Avatar masters all four elements and resolves any dispute between the nations. In every century there's an Avatar, but the latest one is just a 10-year-old boy. He can't handle it and runs away. Then he runs into a snow storm, gets frozen, and is left there for 100 years. Without an Avatar, the Fire nation starts a war and takes over the world. They are a brutal bunch. One day, a brother and sister from the Water Nation are fishing and find the Avatar. They unfreeze him, update him on the world, and then join him in his battleagainst the Fire Nation.
See? That's epic. But instead, M. Night gives us a condensed 1hr and 40min version. It's so ridiculously condensed. He essentially butchered the story. And no matter how much I badmouth the movie I know that fans will go watch it. But let me warn you. It's really bad. You'll be calling for M. Night's head.
the elmo zombie
I hate hate HATED this movie! Oh god it was horrible. It is ALL M. Night's fault too. The story itself has potential, but he butchered it. The dialogue is awful and the acting is horid, even from the actors i've seen do good jobs in other films. And remember the last scene from JC's Avatar? Well it's in here too, which i find funny as hell. M. Night makes it all about a boy who needs to learn to bend water to save a tribe from a battle that is happening because the boy is trying to learn to bend water from the tribe. Completely redundant. Waste of time. Waste of potential. Waste of 3D.
I hate hate HATED this movie! Oh god it was horrible. It is ALL M. Night's fault too. The story itself has potential, but he butchered it. The dialogue is awful and the acting is horid, even from the actors i've seen do good jobs in other films. And remember the last scene from JC's Avatar? Well it's in here too, which i find funny as hell. M. Night makes it all about a boy who needs to learn to bend water to save a tribe from a battle that is happening because the boy is trying to learn to bend water from the tribe. Completely redundant. Waste of time. Waste of potential. Waste of 3D.
ViRUs
Before I get into my full on review of this movie, I want to talk about M. Night at first. Thinking back about how he made The Sixth Sense, and how it was well received, only to follow up with a good second try in Unbreakable. I think all of us had some kind of issue with Signs, but we let it slide because it was a good movie none the less. Then came The Village, which looking back on it, it is a lot worse than when everyone first saw it. I think everyone was willing to let The village slide as well because it was never really horrible, just not very good. However, now that we saw Lady in the Water, and The Happening, we just all kind of throw The Village in there because it didnt live up to the first two, or even three movies. I get what he was trying to do with The Happening, it just didnt work on many levels. I think that M. Night either doesn't take criticsim well, or nobody really bothers to tell him when he's wrong, or he could possibly surround himself with people that dont.
I felt that the The Last Airbender missed on a lot of different levels as well. I saw that he wanted to put the cartoon into real life. That fact is quite clear with annoying kid actors, and the lines that fall flat, and they fall flat often. I will say that with everyone trying to make their own imprint on movies, I was kind of glad to see him attempt to keep this at it's cartoon roots, at least a little.
Also, I very much liked the graphics in this movie. They were at a good level, and showed plenty of detail in the water and fire. The choreography in the fight scenes were good enough, and the one thing that stood out for me were the fight scenes themselves. I thought the fight scenes were well played out, and it was cool to see the different elements in the fights themselves.
Unfortunetly this film was also "written" by M. Night as well. I seriously think that M. Night got cliff notes on the series and just used all of that for dialogue. There are so many times where narration replaces actual character development that I feel that I dont really know any of the character's at all. I remember Ang obviously, but we were flat out told that the brother who found Ang hit it off with the Northern Ice Princess. Then we literally see them walking and they start planning on having her meet his grandmother, where he says that his grandma will question her white hair. Really? You bring home a ice princess and your grandma will ask that first? I know that the story of her hair needed to be told, but there has got to be a better way?
Kind of confused? Thats what the whole movie is like. It will literally jump from one point to another all in about 30 second incriments. We see Ang fighting then there is a cut and we see him flying away after that. Dont worry about how he got away, we'll just assume he did. You leave the theater not knowing any of the characters, who some aren't even bothered to be built up, but they have a long drawn out death anyway. I felt that this was a waste of a good movie because M. Night already had a whole season worth of script for him and he blew it. If this movie has a sequel, I gurantee M. Night's name wont be on it.
This movie's grade will be for the fight scenes and the graphics, because that is all there is to watch. I didnt really stand up for M. Night before, but I didnt really bash him either, but I think I can officially say now that I'm done with him. If he cant make this into a watchable movie, then he proved that the first couple of movies were a fluke.
**/****
Before I get into my full on review of this movie, I want to talk about M. Night at first. Thinking back about how he made The Sixth Sense, and how it was well received, only to follow up with a good second try in Unbreakable. I think all of us had some kind of issue with Signs, but we let it slide because it was a good movie none the less. Then came The Village, which looking back on it, it is a lot worse than when everyone first saw it. I think everyone was willing to let The village slide as well because it was never really horrible, just not very good. However, now that we saw Lady in the Water, and The Happening, we just all kind of throw The Village in there because it didnt live up to the first two, or even three movies. I get what he was trying to do with The Happening, it just didnt work on many levels. I think that M. Night either doesn't take criticsim well, or nobody really bothers to tell him when he's wrong, or he could possibly surround himself with people that dont.
I felt that the The Last Airbender missed on a lot of different levels as well. I saw that he wanted to put the cartoon into real life. That fact is quite clear with annoying kid actors, and the lines that fall flat, and they fall flat often. I will say that with everyone trying to make their own imprint on movies, I was kind of glad to see him attempt to keep this at it's cartoon roots, at least a little.
Also, I very much liked the graphics in this movie. They were at a good level, and showed plenty of detail in the water and fire. The choreography in the fight scenes were good enough, and the one thing that stood out for me were the fight scenes themselves. I thought the fight scenes were well played out, and it was cool to see the different elements in the fights themselves.
Unfortunetly this film was also "written" by M. Night as well. I seriously think that M. Night got cliff notes on the series and just used all of that for dialogue. There are so many times where narration replaces actual character development that I feel that I dont really know any of the character's at all. I remember Ang obviously, but we were flat out told that the brother who found Ang hit it off with the Northern Ice Princess. Then we literally see them walking and they start planning on having her meet his grandmother, where he says that his grandma will question her white hair. Really? You bring home a ice princess and your grandma will ask that first? I know that the story of her hair needed to be told, but there has got to be a better way?
Kind of confused? Thats what the whole movie is like. It will literally jump from one point to another all in about 30 second incriments. We see Ang fighting then there is a cut and we see him flying away after that. Dont worry about how he got away, we'll just assume he did. You leave the theater not knowing any of the characters, who some aren't even bothered to be built up, but they have a long drawn out death anyway. I felt that this was a waste of a good movie because M. Night already had a whole season worth of script for him and he blew it. If this movie has a sequel, I gurantee M. Night's name wont be on it.
This movie's grade will be for the fight scenes and the graphics, because that is all there is to watch. I didnt really stand up for M. Night before, but I didnt really bash him either, but I think I can officially say now that I'm done with him. If he cant make this into a watchable movie, then he proved that the first couple of movies were a fluke.
**/****
Jason Krueger
They stuck to the story, which for the first season of the show, was Aang attempting to master waterbending. Did the kyoshi warriors help him? No. Did Bumi, Jet, Fortuneteller, The Great Divide Guide help him in this? No. They focused on the main part of the storyline which was the avatar's return and the hope it was beginning to bring to the people of the nations.
They stuck to the story, which for the first season of the show, was Aang attempting to master waterbending. Did the kyoshi warriors help him? No. Did Bumi, Jet, Fortuneteller, The Great Divide Guide help him in this? No. They focused on the main part of the storyline which was the avatar's return and the hope it was beginning to bring to the people of the nations.
Neverending
The first season was 20 episodes (or 20 chapters as they call it). Aang arriving at the Northern Water Tribe, getting his training, and fighting the Fire Nation was 3 episodes. In other words, 90 minutes. That's the running time of this movie. So, I don't see how you can defend it. Here is the list of episodes relevant to the MAIN plot:
- The Boy in the Iceberg/The Avatar Returns (1-hour pilot)
- The Souther Air Temple (Aang's origin)
- The Spirit World/Avatar Roku (2-part episode that explains being an Avatar)
- The Storm (more of Aang's origin)
- The Blue Spirit (character development for Zuko)
- The Waterbending Master/The Siege of the North 2-part finale
That's 7 hours of relevant source material. Taking 7 hours and reducing it to 1hr and 43mins is ridiculous. A proper adaptation should have been 3 hours long. 2hrs and 30mins if Paramount felt that was too much for the kids.
The first season was 20 episodes (or 20 chapters as they call it). Aang arriving at the Northern Water Tribe, getting his training, and fighting the Fire Nation was 3 episodes. In other words, 90 minutes. That's the running time of this movie. So, I don't see how you can defend it. Here is the list of episodes relevant to the MAIN plot:
- The Boy in the Iceberg/The Avatar Returns (1-hour pilot)
- The Souther Air Temple (Aang's origin)
- The Spirit World/Avatar Roku (2-part episode that explains being an Avatar)
- The Storm (more of Aang's origin)
- The Blue Spirit (character development for Zuko)
- The Waterbending Master/The Siege of the North 2-part finale
That's 7 hours of relevant source material. Taking 7 hours and reducing it to 1hr and 43mins is ridiculous. A proper adaptation should have been 3 hours long. 2hrs and 30mins if Paramount felt that was too much for the kids.
Knerys
Currently watching the anime series on netflix. It's fantastic! I'm actually really pissed at M. Night now. The source material is nearly fool proof. Any other person would have made something at least watchable. Granted I haven't seen the movie, but at $13 a pop (sans 3-D) I can't afford to waste money on something that only has an 8% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Currently watching the anime series on netflix. It's fantastic! I'm actually really pissed at M. Night now. The source material is nearly fool proof. Any other person would have made something at least watchable. Granted I haven't seen the movie, but at $13 a pop (sans 3-D) I can't afford to waste money on something that only has an 8% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
PG Cooper
Alright, I've never seen the show that this film is based off. I've heard great things, and I wanna see it, but I haven't got around to it yet. The point I'm making is I don't have any bias with this film. Fans of the anime have been trashing this film has being a poor representation of the series. So as someone unfamiliar with the series, did The Last Airbender work for me? Not at all.
The biggest problem with this film, for me, is the characters. Most characters have no depth whatsoever. They aren't interesting at all. Hell, I barely use the term characters here. They're just so generic and in no way are any of them relatable. The two characters they try to give some depth to are the Avatar Aang, and a Fire Nation Prince, Zuko. In the case of Aang, the actor who played him, Noah Ringer, was awful and I found him annoying. Dev Patel did a better job as Zuko. Had the writing been stronger, and more time been given to expand on Zuko's character, I may have found him more interesting. Speaking of the writing, most of it is pretty bad. The dialogue here isn't particularly great. Another huge problem is the plot. The movie has a run time of one hour and thirty minutes, and attempts to cover the entire first season of the show. As a result, the film has severe pacing issues. There is a lot the film tries to do, and it fails on almost all levels. The story is so poorly told that I found myself not caring whatsoever.There are times when the movie just tells you something and they don't show it, and the audience is just expected to buy it. Another problem is the film tries to sell the audience on The Fire Nation. Basically, the Fire Nation has started a war against the other three nations (Air, Water, and Earth). The Air nation has been completely wiped out, and the other two are still fighting against the Fire Nation, and the Fire Nation seems to have the edge. However, whenever we see The Fire Nation in action, they don't seem effective at all. Not once do we see the Fire Nation win a battle. How am I suppose to buy this force as a threat exactly?
Despite my criticisms, I did find something to like. The action scenes and special effects. The actual act of bending was pretty cool. And whenever it was used in an action scene, it at least entertained the eyes if not the brain.
Overall, while bending was cool, it couldn't save the film. At the end of the day, this movie is terrible. The combination of the poorly told story and the lack of interesting characters makes for a film where I find myself not caring. Bending may be cool, but it can't save this.
2/10
Alright, I've never seen the show that this film is based off. I've heard great things, and I wanna see it, but I haven't got around to it yet. The point I'm making is I don't have any bias with this film. Fans of the anime have been trashing this film has being a poor representation of the series. So as someone unfamiliar with the series, did The Last Airbender work for me? Not at all.
The biggest problem with this film, for me, is the characters. Most characters have no depth whatsoever. They aren't interesting at all. Hell, I barely use the term characters here. They're just so generic and in no way are any of them relatable. The two characters they try to give some depth to are the Avatar Aang, and a Fire Nation Prince, Zuko. In the case of Aang, the actor who played him, Noah Ringer, was awful and I found him annoying. Dev Patel did a better job as Zuko. Had the writing been stronger, and more time been given to expand on Zuko's character, I may have found him more interesting. Speaking of the writing, most of it is pretty bad. The dialogue here isn't particularly great. Another huge problem is the plot. The movie has a run time of one hour and thirty minutes, and attempts to cover the entire first season of the show. As a result, the film has severe pacing issues. There is a lot the film tries to do, and it fails on almost all levels. The story is so poorly told that I found myself not caring whatsoever.There are times when the movie just tells you something and they don't show it, and the audience is just expected to buy it. Another problem is the film tries to sell the audience on The Fire Nation. Basically, the Fire Nation has started a war against the other three nations (Air, Water, and Earth). The Air nation has been completely wiped out, and the other two are still fighting against the Fire Nation, and the Fire Nation seems to have the edge. However, whenever we see The Fire Nation in action, they don't seem effective at all. Not once do we see the Fire Nation win a battle. How am I suppose to buy this force as a threat exactly?
Despite my criticisms, I did find something to like. The action scenes and special effects. The actual act of bending was pretty cool. And whenever it was used in an action scene, it at least entertained the eyes if not the brain.
Overall, while bending was cool, it couldn't save the film. At the end of the day, this movie is terrible. The combination of the poorly told story and the lack of interesting characters makes for a film where I find myself not caring. Bending may be cool, but it can't save this.
2/10
Tolkien
I finally got around to seeing this film with the hopes that it wasn't as bad as people were making it out to be. With that said, I would like to apologize for my positive hopes and ask for forgiveness. This... film... was... BAD! I mean, terrible would be the understatement of the century. The story in the tv show = memorable GOLD. The story here = disgrace to screenwriting. The acting was just god awful. Those kids should feel horrible, just horrible for their performances here.
I hope they left their first viewing in tears over just how bad a job they did. The pacing and cutting was just completely off. It was like they took ten hours of material from Book One and spat all over it. And the fight scenes, WHAT WAS THAT? All of that stupid moving and BS for what? Talk about overdramatic bull****!!! In the end, I felt bad just knowing that there might be people out there in the world who knew that I had just saw this piece of garbage film.
a great big "f**k you" to M. Night and a more than generous 3/10 from me.
I finally got around to seeing this film with the hopes that it wasn't as bad as people were making it out to be. With that said, I would like to apologize for my positive hopes and ask for forgiveness. This... film... was... BAD! I mean, terrible would be the understatement of the century. The story in the tv show = memorable GOLD. The story here = disgrace to screenwriting. The acting was just god awful. Those kids should feel horrible, just horrible for their performances here.
I hope they left their first viewing in tears over just how bad a job they did. The pacing and cutting was just completely off. It was like they took ten hours of material from Book One and spat all over it. And the fight scenes, WHAT WAS THAT? All of that stupid moving and BS for what? Talk about overdramatic bull****!!! In the end, I felt bad just knowing that there might be people out there in the world who knew that I had just saw this piece of garbage film.
a great big "f**k you" to M. Night and a more than generous 3/10 from me.
true fan11212
The Last Airbender makes Dragonball Evolution look like a masterpiece in filmmaking.
The Last Airbender makes Dragonball Evolution look like a masterpiece in filmmaking.
Neverending
Dragonball: Evolution is worse than this. The Last Airbender is a horrible adaptation. Dragonball: Evolution doesn't even bother to be one.
Dragonball: Evolution is worse than this. The Last Airbender is a horrible adaptation. Dragonball: Evolution doesn't even bother to be one.
