Movie Review: "The Last Airbender"
Franck Tabouring
Seen on: June 29, 2010
The players: Director: M. Night Shyamalan, Writer: M. Night Shyamalan, Cast: Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz, Cliff Curtis, Aasif Mandvi, Shaun Toub
Facts of interest: None whatsoever.
The plot: A young boy with powers has to embark on a mission to stop the evil Fire Nation from taking over the world.
Our thoughts: “The Last Airbender” is undoubtedly one of the worst films of 2010. In fact, it is so bad, it almost made me want to pack up my stuff and leave the city for a few days to recuperate. In other words, M. Night Shyamalan has created a huge big-screen disaster that sucks the money straight out of your wallet and offers you absolutely nothing in return. It’s one to skip, for sure.
The film is based on Nickelodeon’s popular animated series, which I admit I’ve never seen. That said, I strongly believe you don’t have to know the show to realize that this adaptation has got it all wrong. A lot of money has been wasted on this project, and the end result is something that should’ve been going straight to TV or something. Or better yet: they should’ve skipped this movie all together.
I’m not going to waste much time going into great story detail, but essentially, “The Last Airbender” follows Aang (Noah Ringer), a young kid who also happens to be an Avatar, a dude who seems to be the only one capable of preventing the ruthless Fire Nation from enslaving the Water, Earth and Air nations. While he’s got some crazy powers already, he must also head out to learn others…
This may not exactly be the best summary of what goes down in this messy movie, but to tell you the truth, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that “The Last Airbender” completely failed to pull me into its world. It lacks both a sense of adventure and suspense, and it suffers from one of the most dreadfully boring plots I’ve experienced in a long time. I really can’t imagine the kids liking this thing…
They might though, and that could help the movie bring in some moola, even though I doubt it will be a huge success. Needless to say, it’s still a bad film, and I still don’t understand why Shyamalan would ever agree to do this, let alone write it. But he did, and the end result is just laughable. The script fails on every level, the dialogue is ridiculous at best, and the acting is horrid. Anything else?
Yeah… the 3D thing. Once again, somebody out there thought it would be such a great idea to convert this movie to 3D, and truth be told, that somebody should move out to the jungle. The 3D conversion doesn’t have any effect in “The Last Airbender,” and instead of spicing it up visually, it makes the whole movie look worse. I mean, not even the special effects are in anyway intriguing.
I saw the film early with a big audience, but everybody I heard afterwards was just trashing it on every level. That’s certainly not a good sign for Mr. Shyamalan, who will have to work very hard to regain the cinemagoers’ trust. “The Last Airbender” certainly doesn’t help him, because it’s a train wreck of epic proportions. Value your money? Then skip this one for sure.
Freaky quote: "I will stop them." - Noah Ringer, delivering a solid dose of terrible acting...
The final word: I think I let all of my frustration out. If you decide to see this and end up liking it, I am very happy for you. That means you’ve accomplished something I simply couldn’t, no matter how hard I actually tried. I can only hope this will be “The Last Airbender” we’ll ever have to see. Hey, even “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” is better than this. That should tell you something.
Article by Franck Tabouring
Reader Comments (2)
I agree with. I loved the show. And you didn't bring up how they changed all the characters names. Aang is called ong. M. Night ruined a beloved show. After I saw this I actually went to nick.com went to contact us and asked them to not let m. Night not do any more avatar.
The Last Airbender was the biggest failure I've seen in a long time. Thing went from bad to worse. So horrible, couldn't even watch it till the end..... somebody shoot the director and cast...PLEASE!!!!!!!!! I don't think the director had any idea what the show was about. While I understand that the movie adaptation will never be like the original source material, M. Night managed to take something with potential to be one of the best movies of 2010 and turn it into what could become the greatest failure in his career.