"What'd you think?" The boy answered, "I hated it." When we asked why: "I wanted it to be fun...'
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME going to see THE LAST AIRBENDER...
You really don't hear me say that many a film - do you?
--------------------------
And let me start out by saying that maxwellgrant did not pay a dime
to see this THE LAST AIRBENDER IN 3D - Thank God!
And that
M. Night has entered Mystery Science Theater 3000 country officially
with this.
I did not bother to take notes during this film - but you may recall
I still haven't fully posted the notes I have for
the animated 9 from last year
(that film showed so much promise -
I wound up writing more pages for a bad film
than I would for a good one).
I could probably do such for AIRBENDER
but it would be much briefer - though longer than this diatribe.
But it is just not worth it for AIRBENDER.
I cannot remember waiting to get to an ending of a film in a more
excruciating fashion since the awful BEOWULF.
I can't recall wanting to walk out on a film so bad
but I wanted to be able to say that I completed it
so I could review it in full.
And in 3D at that - it was a series of circumstances allowing me to get to see it free -
I am so glad as with the pre-knowledge of not just the film but the rushed 3D conversions -
you must know now that there is no more than 4 instances of notable 3D. That's it.
You wonder if M. Night has either never seen a movie or modern video game - or
(because I have heard he is not good integrated special effects not shot on set)
maybe it is he gets overwhelmed by them and stands back with medium shots - like an older
video game - thinking that we are getting the full effect.
Instead, it is distancing - and you feel very little for who or what is fighting.
When M. Night directs from other source material does he lose the wonderful
characterizations he brought us from his early films?
----------------
The rest of my review are 2 online reviews I agree with and saw after the film;
since my time online is limited of late, I am putting them behind cut-tags -
The first is
from aintitcool's head-honcho - who I don't normally agree with on this
but he brings up some interesting points - like
where is M. Night's mind?
Casting the one villian from THE DAILY SHOW (I couldn't place him but
I knew I knew the actor from somewhere and that these were normally good
actors)? I disagree about the cast - they're not the cartoon (apparently)
but they are multi-racial - and you can see M. Night's Spielbergian touch
with the kids (remember how good he was with kids in his earliest three films?)
- but here he must've had too much going on or loss focus or control
(could Nickelodeon - who I didn't realize had a hand in making this -
have studio finaly say on this - and M. Night succumbed because
THE HAPPENING didn't happen and was one of the first he's done
without Frank Marshall producing - so the ball fell fully in the lap
of his new company).
Anyways here's Harry behind the cut; if you skim it check out
what his nephew Gio said - I put the kids' quote in the subject field:
Harry doesn't hate THE LAST AIRBENDER, he pities it.
I don't get it. Watching what has happened to M. Night Shymalan is a lot like that feeling a lot of people get when we see those with the cardboard signs. You may consider being charitable, but then you remember that knifing you heard about, a car jacking, you can tell that there may have been a good person there before, but he's wallowed one time too many and now... You just find yourself hitting the accelerator.
There might be something that you remember about this viewing that you'll hold on to. ILM's FX are pretty cool, but only if you see it in 2D, in 3D the image is so dark you can't really make hide nor tail of it. And that's not a good thing. Unmarred by rushed 3D conversion... the film has a degree of vitality and lushness that isn't altogether unsatisfying to one's viewing palate, but ultimately it is a completely hollow experience.
Now, you might be surprised that I'm not angry about the film. You see, I'm almost completely unaware of this mythology. I've tried to watch a few random episodes... but I didn't like the animation style and never have given the story a fair shake. I have received the first season, so I'm thinking of giving the first disc a try, but after the film... I'm honestly less curious.
It isn't that the film is horrifyingly awful, it is just not very compelling. Nobody in this world has ever lived a day in their lives. They're surrounded by magic and mysticism, but none of it affects or grazes them. You have a boy aged looking boy, but he just kind of stares neutrally for most of the film. I kinda like his look, but he isn't given a single moment of vitality. Now, when ever he gears up for his DEMO, that he performs in various locales... he reminds me of Van Damme balancing on the back of that Motorcycle in HARD TARGET. He's counting. You can see it in his eyes. He's counting. The boy is counting. I don't see the danger of the situation in his eyes, I hear his thoughts, "one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi..."
And I almost believe M. Night told him to count for his cues.
M. Night can create a few pretty killer shots. But they're just random shots. The casting, which various race based organizations have been protesting as being racist... is to me, even worse... boring.
There's only one part that I found genuinely compelling to watch. The big bad Commander Zhao... as played by THE DAILY SHOW'S Aasif Mandvi. The casting is possibly amongst the worst casting since Frank Sinatra in THE KISSING BANDIT - which obviously should have been Gene Kelly. Here... Had Omar Shariff played Commander Zhao... or hell if you had to cast younger... Naveen Andrews... If Sayid was tormenting some kid, you might feel vaguely threatened... But Aasif Mandvi? He's the least scary person ever. He'd make Lou Costello stick his chest out. The only person that Aasif Mandvi intimidates is Jon Stewart, but that's just because well... Jon is made of sugar and spice and cotton balls all built around a popsicle stick skeleton forged in adamantium. Seriously though... Mandvi's hair is the same. His accent and delivery? The same as on DAILY SHOW. I kept expecting Kurt Russell's character from USED CARS to try and sell him a Lemon.
And he's your BIG THREAT of the movie. You may have noticed you didn't see him in the Trailers and TV ads... I think it is because the marketing folks know how badly miscast he is. That does get me mad though... You see, I don't think Aasif Mandvi is a bad actor. I don't think he was given anything to do.
That's a serial offense throughout this movie. Nobody has anything to do. You might think that our main character is motivated out of revenge... but that doesn't really seem to be. No, Aang floats about with a chip on his shoulder. Upset that everyone he knows has died, upset that he didn't learn how to master the other elements... and that's about it. Seriously. He apparently has a ton of adventures in the film, we're just not privvy to them.
Instead we'll go visit assorted Fire Nation characters - none of whom seem to like or know much of anything about anyone. Other than this is the prophesied one. So he must die. There's no elegance, no charm. When a major character dies, you're not really sure why - and it isn't transcendent or hurtful in any real way, but I understand it is supposed to be a big deal.
Dev Patel is kind of pulling a Sal Mineo from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE here. Another mopey bastard that can't satisfy Daddy. Ho hum.
Like I said though, I've never gotten LAST AIRBENDER... but my nephew does. He's seen every episode. When asked, "What'd you think Gio?" The boy answered, "I hated it." When we asked why, he responded, "I wanted it to be fun. Aang should have more fun."
I don't know if that is so, but certainly having a degree of fun might be preferable to this really drawn out empty shell of a film. It is pretty to look at, but there's nothing really to digest. It is all curious surfaces... but nothing to leave one particularly impressed.
That said, if you loved this show. Prepare yourself. You could go stark raving insane mad at this film.
Me? I found myself wishing he'd told the story from the vantage point of Aang. I didn't need to know what the Fire Nations was up to. I really did want to learn more about Aang, but M Night had - well I don't want to say more important things on his mind, but that is kinda how I feel. This felt directed from two continents away. There's just no weight. No substance and nothing at all to see. If you want to spend time in a theater this weekend, I suggest going to anything else. You're not likely to leave with happy thoughts... and I don't feel children will either. This could by your child's first real disappointment in a theater. I did find talking to my nephew about his problems with the film... kinda amazing. Cuz I just thought it was forgettable, but he was passionately dismissive and angry about this movie. He doesn't really do that. He's 10. He loves most things. Just, really not this.
The 2nd review is from
movies.ign
The Last Airbender Review
Or The Last Shyamalan Movie?
by Scott Collura
The title Avatar isn't the only thing that The Last Airbender has lost in its transition from the small-screen world of animated television to the realm of would-be franchise feature filmmaking. Also gone, unfortunately, is any semblance of heart or drama or, really, anything of interest at all.
The film is notable because it is the first attempt by the once mighty M. Night Shyamalan to make a big-budget, effects-heavy fantasy film -- and one based on preexisting material at that. The Sixth Sense writer-director had once been known for crafting his own smallish but memorable thrillers, but as his work's quality has grown increasingly dismal in recent years (see Lady in the Water or The Happening… or rather, don't see them), Shyamalan finally decided it was time for a change of pace. Alas, this new direction does not seem to have revived his former great potential.
Based on the quite popular Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender, the film condenses the first season of that show into its brief 103 minutes of running time. The result is at times reminiscent of David Lynch's Dune, only not in a good way, as this character's voiceover intersects with that character's voiceover, all doing their expository best to get across vital plot points that the series had 20 episodes to unveil.
Bent? Or broken?
The long and short of it is that a boy messiah named Aang (Noah Ringer, reciting his lines as if he's just been cast in a middle-school play) has been missing for a century from the magical realm of the Airbender world. Here there are four different tribes of mankind, each of which is blessed with certain individuals who possess the ability to "bend" or manipulate the elements -- air, fire, water and earth. Aang was born with the power to master all four, which is why he is the presumptive Avatar who is destined to keep the peace among the tribes, or some such.
But during his absence (frozen The Thing style in a globe of ice), the Fire nation has begun to wage war on the other tribes. The waterbender Katara (Nicola Peltz) and her brother Sokka (Twilight's Jackson Rathbone) find and thaw out the boy (though none of this group's performances have any chance of warming up, we soon learn), and the trio promptly head out on yawn-inducing adventure after adventure as they seek to free the land from the firebenders.
Speaking of which, the one somewhat compelling scenario here comes from Prince Zuko (Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire), the disgraced son of the king of the Fire nation who sees his only path to redemption as being the capture of Aang. Accompanied by his uncle (Shaun Toub, who co-created Iron Man's armor with Tony Stark in the first film), a once great general, Zuko is sometimes tragic and convincing, though we begin to suspect that his being surrounded by such dullards might be the real reason he's in such dire straights.
The actual bending effects are the highlight of the film, a cool alternative to our dependence on lasers and giant robots and capes in order to get our kicks, though how many balls of fire and wind can one really stand after a while? And surprisingly, some of the picture's other visuals aren't terribly convincing. The creatures (a flying monkey and a flying giant something) have no personalities to speak of, and the climactic scenes at the Northern Water Tribe are like a bargain-rate Rivendell, evoking a mid-1990s Star Trek TV series feel more than the epic fantasy films Shyamalan and his crew are trying to ape.
And a note on the 3D version of the movie: Don't be surprised if the most three-dimensional aspect of The Last Airbender seems to be the onscreen credits and subtitles. This film, the result of a postproduction conversion to the format, seems to have opted for the less is more approach to 3D. Almost the none is more approach, really.
Shyamalan seemed on his last legs when The Happening didn't happen back in 2008, and yet he managed to convince Paramount to let him make this movie. Like a cursed cat one might find in an M. Night film, however, the filmmaker has got to be running out of lives at this point. How could the director who once handled child performers so well allow such lame acting into his movie? Why doesn't the film look better than it does? Is the guy who wrote The Sixth Sense really only capable of a CliffsNotes version of this saga? Would it be more accurate to call this The Last Shyamalan Movie?
and the third is
Mr. Beaks's THE LAST AIRBENDER Review
from aintitcoolnews again
to make note of the 3D (or rather lack there-of) usage, enjoy!:
Having lost interest in the film after the first reel, I kept myself interested by occasionally taking off my glasses to see if this abomination was somehow more tolerable in boring ol' 2D. To my surprise, many shots were in 2D. Though the ratio definitely favored converted shots to unconverted shots, the fact that a healthy chunk of the film was perfectly viewable sans glasses seemed a gesture of bad faith - especially since the 3D moments were so underwhelming they barely enhanced the movie at all, and only served to dim the image.
You really don't hear me say that many a film - do you?
--------------------------
And let me start out by saying that maxwellgrant did not pay a dime
to see this THE LAST AIRBENDER IN 3D - Thank God!
And that
M. Night has entered Mystery Science Theater 3000 country officially
with this.
I did not bother to take notes during this film - but you may recall
I still haven't fully posted the notes I have for
the animated 9 from last year
(that film showed so much promise -
I wound up writing more pages for a bad film
than I would for a good one).
I could probably do such for AIRBENDER
but it would be much briefer - though longer than this diatribe.
But it is just not worth it for AIRBENDER.
I cannot remember waiting to get to an ending of a film in a more
excruciating fashion since the awful BEOWULF.
I can't recall wanting to walk out on a film so bad
but I wanted to be able to say that I completed it
so I could review it in full.
And in 3D at that - it was a series of circumstances allowing me to get to see it free -
I am so glad as with the pre-knowledge of not just the film but the rushed 3D conversions -
you must know now that there is no more than 4 instances of notable 3D. That's it.
You wonder if M. Night has either never seen a movie or modern video game - or
(because I have heard he is not good integrated special effects not shot on set)
maybe it is he gets overwhelmed by them and stands back with medium shots - like an older
video game - thinking that we are getting the full effect.
Instead, it is distancing - and you feel very little for who or what is fighting.
When M. Night directs from other source material does he lose the wonderful
characterizations he brought us from his early films?
----------------
The rest of my review are 2 online reviews I agree with and saw after the film;
since my time online is limited of late, I am putting them behind cut-tags -
The first is
from aintitcool's head-honcho - who I don't normally agree with on this
but he brings up some interesting points - like
where is M. Night's mind?
Casting the one villian from THE DAILY SHOW (I couldn't place him but
I knew I knew the actor from somewhere and that these were normally good
actors)? I disagree about the cast - they're not the cartoon (apparently)
but they are multi-racial - and you can see M. Night's Spielbergian touch
with the kids (remember how good he was with kids in his earliest three films?)
- but here he must've had too much going on or loss focus or control
(could Nickelodeon - who I didn't realize had a hand in making this -
have studio finaly say on this - and M. Night succumbed because
THE HAPPENING didn't happen and was one of the first he's done
without Frank Marshall producing - so the ball fell fully in the lap
of his new company).
Anyways here's Harry behind the cut; if you skim it check out
what his nephew Gio said - I put the kids' quote in the subject field:
Harry doesn't hate THE LAST AIRBENDER, he pities it.
I don't get it. Watching what has happened to M. Night Shymalan is a lot like that feeling a lot of people get when we see those with the cardboard signs. You may consider being charitable, but then you remember that knifing you heard about, a car jacking, you can tell that there may have been a good person there before, but he's wallowed one time too many and now... You just find yourself hitting the accelerator.
There might be something that you remember about this viewing that you'll hold on to. ILM's FX are pretty cool, but only if you see it in 2D, in 3D the image is so dark you can't really make hide nor tail of it. And that's not a good thing. Unmarred by rushed 3D conversion... the film has a degree of vitality and lushness that isn't altogether unsatisfying to one's viewing palate, but ultimately it is a completely hollow experience.
Now, you might be surprised that I'm not angry about the film. You see, I'm almost completely unaware of this mythology. I've tried to watch a few random episodes... but I didn't like the animation style and never have given the story a fair shake. I have received the first season, so I'm thinking of giving the first disc a try, but after the film... I'm honestly less curious.
It isn't that the film is horrifyingly awful, it is just not very compelling. Nobody in this world has ever lived a day in their lives. They're surrounded by magic and mysticism, but none of it affects or grazes them. You have a boy aged looking boy, but he just kind of stares neutrally for most of the film. I kinda like his look, but he isn't given a single moment of vitality. Now, when ever he gears up for his DEMO, that he performs in various locales... he reminds me of Van Damme balancing on the back of that Motorcycle in HARD TARGET. He's counting. You can see it in his eyes. He's counting. The boy is counting. I don't see the danger of the situation in his eyes, I hear his thoughts, "one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi..."
And I almost believe M. Night told him to count for his cues.
M. Night can create a few pretty killer shots. But they're just random shots. The casting, which various race based organizations have been protesting as being racist... is to me, even worse... boring.
There's only one part that I found genuinely compelling to watch. The big bad Commander Zhao... as played by THE DAILY SHOW'S Aasif Mandvi. The casting is possibly amongst the worst casting since Frank Sinatra in THE KISSING BANDIT - which obviously should have been Gene Kelly. Here... Had Omar Shariff played Commander Zhao... or hell if you had to cast younger... Naveen Andrews... If Sayid was tormenting some kid, you might feel vaguely threatened... But Aasif Mandvi? He's the least scary person ever. He'd make Lou Costello stick his chest out. The only person that Aasif Mandvi intimidates is Jon Stewart, but that's just because well... Jon is made of sugar and spice and cotton balls all built around a popsicle stick skeleton forged in adamantium. Seriously though... Mandvi's hair is the same. His accent and delivery? The same as on DAILY SHOW. I kept expecting Kurt Russell's character from USED CARS to try and sell him a Lemon.
And he's your BIG THREAT of the movie. You may have noticed you didn't see him in the Trailers and TV ads... I think it is because the marketing folks know how badly miscast he is. That does get me mad though... You see, I don't think Aasif Mandvi is a bad actor. I don't think he was given anything to do.
That's a serial offense throughout this movie. Nobody has anything to do. You might think that our main character is motivated out of revenge... but that doesn't really seem to be. No, Aang floats about with a chip on his shoulder. Upset that everyone he knows has died, upset that he didn't learn how to master the other elements... and that's about it. Seriously. He apparently has a ton of adventures in the film, we're just not privvy to them.
Instead we'll go visit assorted Fire Nation characters - none of whom seem to like or know much of anything about anyone. Other than this is the prophesied one. So he must die. There's no elegance, no charm. When a major character dies, you're not really sure why - and it isn't transcendent or hurtful in any real way, but I understand it is supposed to be a big deal.
Dev Patel is kind of pulling a Sal Mineo from REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE here. Another mopey bastard that can't satisfy Daddy. Ho hum.
Like I said though, I've never gotten LAST AIRBENDER... but my nephew does. He's seen every episode. When asked, "What'd you think Gio?" The boy answered, "I hated it." When we asked why, he responded, "I wanted it to be fun. Aang should have more fun."
I don't know if that is so, but certainly having a degree of fun might be preferable to this really drawn out empty shell of a film. It is pretty to look at, but there's nothing really to digest. It is all curious surfaces... but nothing to leave one particularly impressed.
That said, if you loved this show. Prepare yourself. You could go stark raving insane mad at this film.
Me? I found myself wishing he'd told the story from the vantage point of Aang. I didn't need to know what the Fire Nations was up to. I really did want to learn more about Aang, but M Night had - well I don't want to say more important things on his mind, but that is kinda how I feel. This felt directed from two continents away. There's just no weight. No substance and nothing at all to see. If you want to spend time in a theater this weekend, I suggest going to anything else. You're not likely to leave with happy thoughts... and I don't feel children will either. This could by your child's first real disappointment in a theater. I did find talking to my nephew about his problems with the film... kinda amazing. Cuz I just thought it was forgettable, but he was passionately dismissive and angry about this movie. He doesn't really do that. He's 10. He loves most things. Just, really not this.
The 2nd review is from
movies.ign
The Last Airbender Review
Or The Last Shyamalan Movie?
by Scott Collura
The title Avatar isn't the only thing that The Last Airbender has lost in its transition from the small-screen world of animated television to the realm of would-be franchise feature filmmaking. Also gone, unfortunately, is any semblance of heart or drama or, really, anything of interest at all.
The film is notable because it is the first attempt by the once mighty M. Night Shyamalan to make a big-budget, effects-heavy fantasy film -- and one based on preexisting material at that. The Sixth Sense writer-director had once been known for crafting his own smallish but memorable thrillers, but as his work's quality has grown increasingly dismal in recent years (see Lady in the Water or The Happening… or rather, don't see them), Shyamalan finally decided it was time for a change of pace. Alas, this new direction does not seem to have revived his former great potential.
Based on the quite popular Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender, the film condenses the first season of that show into its brief 103 minutes of running time. The result is at times reminiscent of David Lynch's Dune, only not in a good way, as this character's voiceover intersects with that character's voiceover, all doing their expository best to get across vital plot points that the series had 20 episodes to unveil.
Bent? Or broken?
The long and short of it is that a boy messiah named Aang (Noah Ringer, reciting his lines as if he's just been cast in a middle-school play) has been missing for a century from the magical realm of the Airbender world. Here there are four different tribes of mankind, each of which is blessed with certain individuals who possess the ability to "bend" or manipulate the elements -- air, fire, water and earth. Aang was born with the power to master all four, which is why he is the presumptive Avatar who is destined to keep the peace among the tribes, or some such.
But during his absence (frozen The Thing style in a globe of ice), the Fire nation has begun to wage war on the other tribes. The waterbender Katara (Nicola Peltz) and her brother Sokka (Twilight's Jackson Rathbone) find and thaw out the boy (though none of this group's performances have any chance of warming up, we soon learn), and the trio promptly head out on yawn-inducing adventure after adventure as they seek to free the land from the firebenders.
Speaking of which, the one somewhat compelling scenario here comes from Prince Zuko (Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire), the disgraced son of the king of the Fire nation who sees his only path to redemption as being the capture of Aang. Accompanied by his uncle (Shaun Toub, who co-created Iron Man's armor with Tony Stark in the first film), a once great general, Zuko is sometimes tragic and convincing, though we begin to suspect that his being surrounded by such dullards might be the real reason he's in such dire straights.
The actual bending effects are the highlight of the film, a cool alternative to our dependence on lasers and giant robots and capes in order to get our kicks, though how many balls of fire and wind can one really stand after a while? And surprisingly, some of the picture's other visuals aren't terribly convincing. The creatures (a flying monkey and a flying giant something) have no personalities to speak of, and the climactic scenes at the Northern Water Tribe are like a bargain-rate Rivendell, evoking a mid-1990s Star Trek TV series feel more than the epic fantasy films Shyamalan and his crew are trying to ape.
And a note on the 3D version of the movie: Don't be surprised if the most three-dimensional aspect of The Last Airbender seems to be the onscreen credits and subtitles. This film, the result of a postproduction conversion to the format, seems to have opted for the less is more approach to 3D. Almost the none is more approach, really.
Shyamalan seemed on his last legs when The Happening didn't happen back in 2008, and yet he managed to convince Paramount to let him make this movie. Like a cursed cat one might find in an M. Night film, however, the filmmaker has got to be running out of lives at this point. How could the director who once handled child performers so well allow such lame acting into his movie? Why doesn't the film look better than it does? Is the guy who wrote The Sixth Sense really only capable of a CliffsNotes version of this saga? Would it be more accurate to call this The Last Shyamalan Movie?
and the third is
Mr. Beaks's THE LAST AIRBENDER Review
from aintitcoolnews again
to make note of the 3D (or rather lack there-of) usage, enjoy!:
Having lost interest in the film after the first reel, I kept myself interested by occasionally taking off my glasses to see if this abomination was somehow more tolerable in boring ol' 2D. To my surprise, many shots were in 2D. Though the ratio definitely favored converted shots to unconverted shots, the fact that a healthy chunk of the film was perfectly viewable sans glasses seemed a gesture of bad faith - especially since the 3D moments were so underwhelming they barely enhanced the movie at all, and only served to dim the image.