A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUCNEMENT
"The Last Airbender" is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here. It puts a nail in the coffin of low-rent 3D, but it will need a lot more coffins than that.
Stories feed us. Stories sustain us. They tell us who we are, who we could be. They tell us where we've been, and where we are going. Stories are what we leave behind.
If you think that stories are not important, if you think a movie that just removed real world people from the landscape of a source material that respected and loved their 5000 years of culture and history is no big deal, if you've never known what it means to be erased from your own world and told to be thankful for it, I want you to do something for me.
Stop thinking. Stop feeling. Put down your books, put down your pens, forget your stories. Close your eyes and plug your ears. Forget what your story sounds like. You have no myths. You have no history. Stop breathing with your heart and living in your head. Your dreams are worthless, because they are not real. They are not tangible. You can't sell them. They are worthless. Go outside and consume, consume, consume. But never question. Never speak. Never dare to feel that you've been malnourished or mistreated. Never, ever admit that you have been poisoned. Be satisfied; you are well fed.
Remember: It's no big deal. It doesn't matter. And neither do you.
Shyamalan's true achievement in this film is that he takes a thrilling cult TV series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and he systematically leaches all the personality and soul out of it - in order to create something generic enough to serve as a universal spoof of every epic, ever. All the story beats from the show's first season are still present, but Shyamalan manages to make them appear totally arbitrary. Stuff happens, and then more stuff happens, and what does it mean? We never know, because it's time for more stuff to happen. You start out laughing at how random and mindless everything in this movie is, but about an hour into it, you realize that the movie is actually laughing at you, for watching it in the first place. And it's laughing louder than you are, because it's got Dolby surround-sound and you're choking on your suspension of disbelief.
This needs to be the end of M. Night Shyamalan. The Happening was a joke but The Last Airbender is an insult. I wouldn’t let him direct me to the restroom after this movie. If a studio wants to hire him, they would be better off burning their money for warmth. He’s a fool for thinking that whitewashing the movie wasn’t problematic. He’s a fraud for turning in a script that’s not worth the napkin it’s written on. He’s a hack for cobbling together a vapid, cruel taunt of a movie that blows its budget on subpar visual effects and massive sets while refusing to take even a second to provide a character moment. As much as I hate this movie, it hates me and every person who sees it even more. I don’t care that the year is only half over. I’m calling it: The Last Airbender is the worst movie of 2010. It’s too disturbing to consider that there could be something even more hideous out there.
I know most (if not all) of you on the f-list have no plans to see this movie, for many perfectly good reasons. I know I won't, and I don't need to tell you. But if there's one good thing that horrendous movies can accomplish, it's a tremendous stream of well-written, well-thought out, witty, and sometimes even thought-provoking writing in response. Here is but a sampling of these responses, all of which have resonated with me, and I hope it will do the same with you, even if it is the proverbial preaching to the choir.
Now I just need to start watching the animated series. To anyone reading this: Have you ever seen it? Did you like it?