Animated Amnesia's brilliant take-down of The Last Airbender

[skemono]

A reviewer of animated shows and films (and live-action spin-offs) recently finished doing a lengthy, and brilliant, review of The Last Airbender. For those curious, his series goes by CabelStudios or Animated Amnesia, and can be found multiple places:
His personal blog
His Blip.tv channel
On That Guy With the Glasses
On That Fellow in the Coat

Comments

[keithmex17]

~98 fucking minutes

[skemono]

~98 fucking minutes

Indeed. And--as thorough as he was--can you believe that there are still things wrong with the movie that he didn't talk about, or at least didn't explore in depth?

[sharkman_jhones]

Yet another video review comes out that makes my own fantasies of doing this ever the more irrelevant...*sigh.*

Maybe I should do it anyway. Especially if there's stuff he didn't cover.

[sharkman_jhones]

And not to toot my own horn, but he called the Fire Nation "Japanese."

The Fire Nation wasn't Japanese, it was also Chinese, the only Japanese place was Kyoshi Island.

[skemono]

Yeah, that's true, but I don't hold that against him. There's a lot of things out there saying that the Fire Nation was based off Japan. I guess people just wanted each of the separate nations to have basis in a separate real-world country. And the Fire Nation did have some Japanese elements, even if the vast majority of the cultural stuff was still based off of China.

[sharkman_jhones]

Yeah, but which Japanese elements? I can't really think of any that aren't also just as prevalent anywhere else, even non-Asian sources. It's mostly the names being either made up or Chinese and other cultural aspects (The Fire Nation has beds instead of futons for one.)

[himhilien]

I watched most of his review and enjoyed it for the most part. There were a few things that bugged me about it but not much. However, when he talked about how the fault is Shyamalan's, he should have talked about Paramount's part in the racefail and for allowing this egotistic idiot have so much creative control of the movie in the first place.

That bit towards the end of the last part with Shyamalan is absolutely disgusting and just shows how much he's up his own ass.

[full_metal_ox]

...he should have talked about Paramount's part in the racefail and for allowing this egotistic idiot have so much creative control of the movie in the first place.

And, arguably, setting up a filmmaker of color (however deserving a prat he might be) as the fall guy.

[elanor_pam]

LOL, I just... I'm midway through the second video, and I can't- I just can't do this. Watch this, I mean. Even with the snark. It's just... physically painful, somehow. Too much concentrated fail for me to bear. DX

[dietotaku]

"i would love to except i haven't seen the show." how is that an obstacle? TLA is objectively bad even without comparisons to the show. really could have done without seven and a half fucking minutes of him calling his unfunny friends in the last video.

it reminds me a lot of my review/takedown of the movie, but he seemed to focus a lot more on what was different from the show than what was bad from a technical standpoint.

[skemono]

Yeah, the opening part of the last video went on too long, but enh. I'm kinda used to that sort of occasional self-indulgence among internet reviewers now.

And I thought he struck a fair balance between explaining how the film failed both as its own narrative and as an adaptation.