CrapShoot 2011: The Last Airbender

I sit here at my keyboard speechless, as I write of my experience with what may possibly be one of the most horrendous cinematic abominations that dares to call itself a movie. I am in genuine shock; not since “Battlefield Earth” have I seen a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster fail so spectacularly to tell a story, visually wow or just flat out entertain on every conceivable level possible. How the man that directed the phenomenal “Unbreakable” managed to adapt such a travesty out of one of the best cartoons of the last decade continues to just baffle me but somehow M. Night Shyamalan has managed to create in his adaptation of the critically acclaimed “Avatar: The Last Airbender” a film so god-awful that it should be preserved, studied, and dissected in film classes in lessons of what never to do when telling a story.


“The Last Airbender” is set in a fantasy world in which the civilizations of ancient Asia (or what is supposed to be Asia) are split into 4 groups that each worships a different element of nature: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. The titular character, Aang, is the last of his people, the Air Nomads, who held a mastery over air and were wiped out by the power-hungry Fire Nation. Shortly before their invasion, Aang learned that he was the most recent airbending reincarnation of the Avatar, a human being capable of mastering all 4 elements and tasked with keeping the peace between the nations, thus the world. Upon the discovery of his destiny, Aang flees before he could receive his training, overwhelmed by the responsibilities that lie ahead of him. Through means that go unexplained however, he somehow gets frozen in an iceberg for 100 years, only to be found by South Pole Water Tribe members and siblings Katara and Sokka who have lived under the oppression of the ruling Fire Nation their entire lives. Together, the group seeks to accomplish the poorly defined goals of the plot that will somehow lead to the restoration of world peace.


This paragraph long synopsis may be one of the hardest things that I have ever had to write because it somehow contains more depth and detail about the story than the entire length of the movie itself. “The Last Airbender” is like being told a spoiler-free plot synopsis of the first season of the cartoon; it gives you enough to know what the point of the story is but fails to give you any of the character development, emotion, twists, revelations, action set pieces, or humor that is actually necessary to make a story satisfying. Never once does this movie truly define the personalities of the actors’ characters, tell you what is supposed to be the goal or motivation of the characters, tell you how they reach certain points and conclusions, or simply give you a reason to care about them. I had to frequently stop the film for entire minutes on hand to rant and rave against the gaping plot holes and inconsistencies that seemed to pop up every minute and a half.


For example, one scene involves Aang, Katara and Sokka being captured by Fire Nation soldiers and imprisoned in a prison camp composed primarily of earthbenders. The earthbenders are completely surrounded by their natural element; why didn’t they revolt against the soldiers before? Furthermore, it is only after this scene that Aang makes the revelation that he must master all of the remaining elements, beginning with water. If he didn’t already know that, where the hell was he even traveling to begin with? I’ve read crappy internet fan fiction with more consistency than this movie.


Every performance is bland and stilted, from newcomer Noah Ringer as Aang to rising stars Nicole Peltz and Jackson Rathbone as his travelling companions. Even real talent like Dev Patel and Shaun Toub, whom I adore in “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Iron Man” respectively, can’t help but go between stoic and overacting thanks to the piss poor material that they are given. The costume design and lame fight choreography only help to further dig the hole that this movie finds itself in within 15 minutes of its opening. It doesn’t help that the casting of the movie is all over the place, such as the main water tribe protagonists and their grandmother conveniently being the only Caucasians in a tribe of Eskimos (Hollywood White-washing or director incompetence? I believe that it’s a little bit of both). Watching convention cosplayers give a stage performance of fight sequences without wiring would probably look more convincing than any scene of this movie.


Even the special effects are highly unremarkable. When the bending doesn’t look like unconvincing CGI, it lacks the speed, impact or fury to really feel like an attack that was meant to hurt somebody. Special mention to the dull grey barely visible wind effect on the airbending and the pathetic flames of the fire bending that look like they can extinguished by turning on my bedroom ceiling fan.


I was ready to dislike this one, I was ready to watch a film that was more than likely going to be utter garbage and I was more than ready to type up a scathing review afterward but I could not have prepared myself for what I just sat through no matter how hard I tried. I knew there were some stinkers on the list that I have lined up but I am now officially walking away with battle scars on my very soul. “The Last Airbender” is so light on actual content and substance that it makes cotton candy look like a steak dinner by comparison yet makes 90 minutes feel like almost 3 hours.


It is not simply a bastardization of a terrific source material but the final nail in the coffin for M. Night Shyamalan’s credibility as a filmmaker, an embarrassment that every actor involved is dying to put behind them, and is far beyond the shadow of a doubt, one of the worst theatrically released movies that I have ever seen in my life and I feel dumber for having sat through it. Don’t suffer my fate and avoid it like the plague. After watching this, I feel that I now have to rewatch the series, despite pulling what I had intended to be a final viewing of it last summer, just to remove the bad taste from my mouth. All I can do is pray that this is as low as it gets.


1.5/10