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Sinha reviews "The Last Airbender"
15 years ago
***Some spoilers may exist. This is your only warning***
So, it's a nice sunny Sunday afternoon, and I've gotten all my yard work done, so I figured it was time to see the movie that I've been oogling over for the last two months since I found out about its impending release. I would have gone to see it last weekend, but was unable due to special circumstances. Regardless, it gave me a chance to hear some mixed reviews of the movies ranging from the low of "It was a horrible movie, don't spend any money to see it" to the high praise of "M. Night Shyamala is a bastard." This gave me a bit of a temper to any preconceived notions I had (although, finding out that King Boomy was not on the cast last back in May had pretty much done that already).
Now, I feel like need to preface this review with the following: in Mr. Shyamala's defense, I think he did a decent job hitting a lot of the important "journey points" as it were in order to get Aang (phonetically pronounced "uh-ng" throughout the course of the film) from the bottom to the top of the world with enough time left over for a climactic battle ending. He had approximately 400 minutes worth of content (20 episodes at approximately 20 minutes each) and put together a 103 minute move from that. Yes, there are many people who feel like important details were left out, but as I tell every Harry Potter fan following the release of a movie "there's only so long they can make the movie" (although, Harry Potter 7 is thwarting that mantra by making TWO movies out of the book).
The casting in my opinion was decent. Not perfect, but decent. Dev Patel's facial expressions give much more life to Zukko than the scripting allowed. Noah Ringer and Jackson Rathbone portray a pretty good real life adaptation to the characters Aang and Sokka (which was expecially surprising to me knowing Rathbone's involvement with the Twilight series). And, Sychelle Gabriel makes a stunning Princes Yue.
My complaints with the acting though, lies moreso with Commander Zhoa (Aasif Mandvi) and Fire Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis). For characters who played evil military bastards in the film, they came off as rather soft. Well, moreso in the military aspect. It felt more like their version of evil would be more apt in a film regarding a law firm or a wall street brokerage than the grandiose fire nation. I'll give Aasif kudos for trying to break out from the comedy routine of The Daily Show, but I think I'd enjoy him more as a correspondent there.
Sadly, after watching the film, I feel that, if I had to pinpoint the single biggest weak point of this film, it would be Mr. Shyamala. The writing of this film was actually very hard to stomach. Please note, this is not just coming from someone who is a HUGE fan of the Avatar: The Last Airbender series, but just as a person who enjoys good flow and content in movies. A lot of the dialogue felt like it ended up being forced out instead of it being fluid and captivating. In some cases, it felt natural for the dialogue to be like that, but those moments were few and far between.
My biggest qualm was the CONSTANT mention of the Great Library through the second half of the film. After about the fifth time that Commander Zhoa mentions his "mission to the Great Library", I was too pissed to even listen to it. First time, okay. Sure, it was supposed to be something he stumbled upon a long time ago and kept the secret with him for a super long time, biding the time when that information would secure his military success and secure his superiority complex, but I can stomach the fact that he knew the place existed and raided it as per the movie. Second mention? Okay...people repeat themselves. Third mention? Okay, this one was to Iroh for the first time, so I can forgive it. Fourth time? Why is he telling Iroh this again? Fifth time? I don't care where you got the bloody scroll anymore! I kept thinking how much more important character development could have been utilized in this time of constant repetition, but oh well...I didn't make the thing.
Speaking of time wasting, that brings me to M.'s directing. It almost seemed like Shyamala deliberately afflicted this movie with Dragonball Z and The Matrix syndromes. I swear Aang would not have been able to blow out a birthday candle without a 10 second kung-fu charge up first. In the cartoon series, the elements immediately interacted with the movement of the characters, almost in a sort of dance. In the movie, it almost seemed like the elements required a dinner and a movie before the character's could coax them to either bubble or form a gentle breeze. In addition, EVERY combat scene resulted in a slow down of time to show the intricate special effects. While it allowed the demonstration of a lot of cool details, it reduced the overall feeling that this was real combat using elemental manipulation, and totally killed my adrenaline buzz.
By the ending, I was thinking that they could have squeezed in a whole cartoon episode's worth of content if they had just left out the cinematic disorders.
In conclusion, I can say this much about the film. It's not great. Heck, I don't think I'll even give it the "good category." However, I won't give this a "bad" or "horrible" category. (I keep a copy of "Mazes and Monsters" on my shelf to remind me the true definition of "horrible.") Probably a 4 out of 10. The acting was mostly good given the horrible scripting they had to work with and the special effects are definitely top notch. There are even certain aspects of the of this film that I think were better thought out than that of the cartoon series (I'll leave those for you to find though). I'd recommend seeing this movie once, not necessarily in the movie theaters and DEFINITELY NOT if you are going into it expecting to see the exact same story and characters of the cartoon series.
So, it's a nice sunny Sunday afternoon, and I've gotten all my yard work done, so I figured it was time to see the movie that I've been oogling over for the last two months since I found out about its impending release. I would have gone to see it last weekend, but was unable due to special circumstances. Regardless, it gave me a chance to hear some mixed reviews of the movies ranging from the low of "It was a horrible movie, don't spend any money to see it" to the high praise of "M. Night Shyamala is a bastard." This gave me a bit of a temper to any preconceived notions I had (although, finding out that King Boomy was not on the cast last back in May had pretty much done that already).
Now, I feel like need to preface this review with the following: in Mr. Shyamala's defense, I think he did a decent job hitting a lot of the important "journey points" as it were in order to get Aang (phonetically pronounced "uh-ng" throughout the course of the film) from the bottom to the top of the world with enough time left over for a climactic battle ending. He had approximately 400 minutes worth of content (20 episodes at approximately 20 minutes each) and put together a 103 minute move from that. Yes, there are many people who feel like important details were left out, but as I tell every Harry Potter fan following the release of a movie "there's only so long they can make the movie" (although, Harry Potter 7 is thwarting that mantra by making TWO movies out of the book).
The casting in my opinion was decent. Not perfect, but decent. Dev Patel's facial expressions give much more life to Zukko than the scripting allowed. Noah Ringer and Jackson Rathbone portray a pretty good real life adaptation to the characters Aang and Sokka (which was expecially surprising to me knowing Rathbone's involvement with the Twilight series). And, Sychelle Gabriel makes a stunning Princes Yue.
My complaints with the acting though, lies moreso with Commander Zhoa (Aasif Mandvi) and Fire Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis). For characters who played evil military bastards in the film, they came off as rather soft. Well, moreso in the military aspect. It felt more like their version of evil would be more apt in a film regarding a law firm or a wall street brokerage than the grandiose fire nation. I'll give Aasif kudos for trying to break out from the comedy routine of The Daily Show, but I think I'd enjoy him more as a correspondent there.
Sadly, after watching the film, I feel that, if I had to pinpoint the single biggest weak point of this film, it would be Mr. Shyamala. The writing of this film was actually very hard to stomach. Please note, this is not just coming from someone who is a HUGE fan of the Avatar: The Last Airbender series, but just as a person who enjoys good flow and content in movies. A lot of the dialogue felt like it ended up being forced out instead of it being fluid and captivating. In some cases, it felt natural for the dialogue to be like that, but those moments were few and far between.
My biggest qualm was the CONSTANT mention of the Great Library through the second half of the film. After about the fifth time that Commander Zhoa mentions his "mission to the Great Library", I was too pissed to even listen to it. First time, okay. Sure, it was supposed to be something he stumbled upon a long time ago and kept the secret with him for a super long time, biding the time when that information would secure his military success and secure his superiority complex, but I can stomach the fact that he knew the place existed and raided it as per the movie. Second mention? Okay...people repeat themselves. Third mention? Okay, this one was to Iroh for the first time, so I can forgive it. Fourth time? Why is he telling Iroh this again? Fifth time? I don't care where you got the bloody scroll anymore! I kept thinking how much more important character development could have been utilized in this time of constant repetition, but oh well...I didn't make the thing.
Speaking of time wasting, that brings me to M.'s directing. It almost seemed like Shyamala deliberately afflicted this movie with Dragonball Z and The Matrix syndromes. I swear Aang would not have been able to blow out a birthday candle without a 10 second kung-fu charge up first. In the cartoon series, the elements immediately interacted with the movement of the characters, almost in a sort of dance. In the movie, it almost seemed like the elements required a dinner and a movie before the character's could coax them to either bubble or form a gentle breeze. In addition, EVERY combat scene resulted in a slow down of time to show the intricate special effects. While it allowed the demonstration of a lot of cool details, it reduced the overall feeling that this was real combat using elemental manipulation, and totally killed my adrenaline buzz.
By the ending, I was thinking that they could have squeezed in a whole cartoon episode's worth of content if they had just left out the cinematic disorders.
In conclusion, I can say this much about the film. It's not great. Heck, I don't think I'll even give it the "good category." However, I won't give this a "bad" or "horrible" category. (I keep a copy of "Mazes and Monsters" on my shelf to remind me the true definition of "horrible.") Probably a 4 out of 10. The acting was mostly good given the horrible scripting they had to work with and the special effects are definitely top notch. There are even certain aspects of the of this film that I think were better thought out than that of the cartoon series (I'll leave those for you to find though). I'd recommend seeing this movie once, not necessarily in the movie theaters and DEFINITELY NOT if you are going into it expecting to see the exact same story and characters of the cartoon series.
But anyway, what would you say about the movie for those of us who have never seen the cartoon?
If you're looking for something unique, different, and something that will totally captivate you, watch the series.