Reviews Film / The Last Airbender

Good review, although I disagree with it somewhat. I'd call the movie a C- at best, even taken as a totally original flick. Most of the acting is poor, the CG doesn't look very good (especially noticeable whenever waterbenders are bending ice.) The changes to the way bending works make the fights suffer. The whole situation with the Earth Nation village seems like a poorly thought out plothole— It makes no sense for the Fire Nation to bring every earth bender in town to a quarry...which is why they didn't in the show.

As for the Racebending— the problem is twofold. It seems vaguely racist to make the Ambiguously Brown protagonists white and the villains Indian, although I can understand why they made the latter change. Even ignoring that, in Sokka and Katara's case, the problem is that they appear to be the only two white kids in the village. In general, an actor's race doesn't matter (unless the character's race is important to the plot,) but if every actor playing their extended family doesn't even look related to them, it's a problem.

As long as the actor can do the role justice, their ethnicity shouldn't be any problem. See, that's exactly why the "Racebending" is a problem, because M Night insisted that he was going Ability Over Appearance with these roles. Then when the finished product arrived and the actors turned out to be terrible, it just made the change of race stick even more because there was now no justification for it.

I would say (and have said) that it's quite the opposite: it's too faithful to the original series. That's really what hurts the film structurally; it doesn't feel like a full and complete work. It feels like what it is: 4-5 separate stories all slammed together.

For example, at one point Aang was captured and rescued by Zuko. In what way did that advance the plot, character, or theme of the work? At best, it served as a moment for Zuko, but it fails at that because Zuko only did it to capture Aang himself.

No, the only reason why that sequence was there (a good 15 minutes or so, from setup to conclusion), was because there was an ATLA episode where that happened. You could excise it from the film entirely and the film would be no worse off (outside of other pacing issues, like not having an action scene).

Um, no. At least, not in the way you mean.

Shyamalan is not the right director for this film, period. Not because it wouldn't be light-hearted, but because he's not an action director. He directs drama and suspense, not action. And ATLA is, first and foremost, an action series.

It's like putting Michael Bay in charge of Schindler's List. It's not just that Bay produces crap; he's simply not the right person for that kind of film. Some directors can handle action, and some can't. M. Night proved that he can't with The Last Airbender.

The action scenes are stiff and lifeless, and I don't mean the "performances" by the "actors" of them. The direction of these scenes is absolutely atrocious. The cinematography of these scenes bears all the hallmarks of a dramatic director who's having to direct action for the first time: he treats action scenes like dramatic scenes. Long takes, a focus on movement from place to place, and so forth. All of which serve the needs of drama, but are terrible for action sequences.

M Night was not the right person to direct this movie even if he was firing on all cylinders. Even if you like his direction, he just doesn't have the experience with the medium he's working in.

And let's not forget how he blew a significant part of the budget to film the actors on actual ice... only to film other scenes in the arctic in a studio. That's just a director not knowing what he's doing.

(*Sigh*) ...Ok, I think I'm making a safe bet here that the OP is White because a non-White person would *get* why Whitewashing is a two-fold problem and that Denzel comparison is a False Equivalency because the "It's Just Fantasy" sentiment keeps popping up way too often whether it's reviewers or actors (ex. "Gods of Egypt" and how it's YMMV page on this site had such a statement deleted before I could counter the difference between it and Idris Elba in "Thor.")

Internally: The four nations are Fantasy Counterpart Cultures (as in coding) of real world non-White people down to racial identity, (as in, is there something inherently ethnic to the character? Yes? then cast accordingly,) so even while there's light and dark-skinned Water Tribesmen, they're not. White. In Thor's case, the Asgardians were Human Aliens who imported their culture to the ancient Scandinavians, who took creative license (ex. Heimdall, an Asgardian who doesn't exactly frequent the mortal world) would be mistaken to be White like them. So there's no internal logic in why Sokka and Katara, Egyptian gods and (so far,) a Scar-Jo cyborg are Caucasian when the settings/cultures are very much non-White.

Externally: To save me a lot of time and linking, just Google about acting opportunities for racial minorities in Hollywood to prove they aren't fair despite the likes of people like Woody Allen claiming they are, the importance of racial representation and even the psychological effects of said marginalization.

In short, yes, this movie sucks no matter what as did "Pan," "Gods of Egypt" and so on, but said practice still screwed over opportunities for potential minority actors (ex. Peter Pan's actor still got a push from it,) and the Avatarverse is all about equality and fairness for all yet this movie failed miserably on that front and others.

I enjoyed it

My mom did too, but she doesn\'t like animation generally. I guess it\'s probably just a function of liking the story but getting it in a medium she could actually digest.

Well that\'s your opinion. I myself barely got through it by watching it along with the superior yet flawed netflix show.