The Last Airbender...Hopefully Also "The Last Movie This Bad About Avatar: The Last Airbender."

[neko_no_hanashi]

Well...I just saw The Last Airbender. Perhaps I am a masochist for doing so, or perhaps I was feeling overly optimistic to hope there would be SOMETHING of value in a movie that has an amazing 9% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes...

If you don't want of the spoilers, do NOT read.

Comments

[kaitodoushi]

Yeeeeeah, I've been hearing a lot of this poking around the internet. After I got pulled into the whole Racebending thing and decided not to see it, I was sort of hoping it would be bad but I never expected THIS.

For that matter, the attraction that Katara seems to have to Aang seems a bit similar; a boy too distant to realize that she cares about him and a girl who is determined to follow him around.

Wait... Are you saying he got the entire Aang and Katara relationship BACKWARDS?! I had not heard this part yet. Wow...

I'm starting to think the only thing he succeeded in was getting EVERYTHING wrong.

[neko_no_hanashi]

The Racebending issue made me rawr a LOT...but as I said, I was hoping that there would be at least something of value. The only thing that was kind of interesting was that Yue didn't end up becoming the Moon Spirit in this movie, instead just giving her life energy back to the Moon, so her hair turned black again when she was laying dead in the water like it had been when she was born...and even then I had a problem with it because it made it even darker than the original series and Yue makes a pretty Moon Spirit, whuuuuut. DX

[womaninrubber]

Wow....
Even though I never followed the Avatar series and haven't seen this, I still feel horrible that you had to go through that. And who in God's name decided to to pronounce Avatar with an AHH?!?!? We've always used the basic short a to pronounce it, with our avatars on the boards, in the James Cameron Avatar, even in the rare 70s movie Wizards where the main character was called Avatar. Yeah, it's been in our way of thinking for a long time.

And M. Night Shalyaman? Oh man. The Sixth Sense is a much better movie than what I see here just from your writing. I have a horrible feeling that this is going to be this generation's Dune in levels of epic fail, only here this one doesn't have the benefit of having Sting (which is the reason that I have that on DVD).

[neko_no_hanashi]

The Avatar series REALLY is something that I would recommend anyone watching simply because it is such a wonderful mixture of Asian mythology, Asian philosophy, anime-style art, action, drama and modern humor, and because it has some of the most developed relationships and characters in any canon I know, romantic as well as not. But yes, that being said, having to sit through this movie when it has none of that was very difficult to do without wailing in despair. The only good thing about it is I know fully how bad it is and can testify that it is truly horrible.

I have heard from some people that M. Night's films have been decreasing in quality for a while (his film Lady in the Water in particular has been mentioned as being terrible); I honestly don't watch his films enough to know if that's true, but after seeing this, I'd believe it. Rotten Tomatoes' rating has even dropped from 9% yesterday to 7% today, so many critics hate it and the fans aren't giving it any support either.

[blacksheep91]

Ah yes, I remember cringing when hearing Sokka's voice actor pronounce his name that way in the trailers.

Most friends I know who like the show went to see the movie and only have negative reviews. Although, just out of innocent curiosity as this has happened to me before, if you had never seen the show whould you consider it a tolerable movie otherwise? (I have a feeling what your answer will be but thought I'd ask anyway. I remember seeing a film and finding it pretty okay, only to relate the events to a friend who read the books who proceeded to, erm, flip out over changes that had been made. I can be the flipping out type myself. >_>)

[neko_no_hanashi]

I honestly do not think anyone with no knowledge of the show could keep up with the movie; since so many of the characters' names were mentioned almost as an after-thought and a lot of things are never explained thoroughly or at all, I think it would be very confusing. Plus the acting really is terrible almost all of the time and a lot of the staging and script is very forced. I'm normally okay with films that make changes though it disappoints me a little; as long as they're true to the characters and relationships and it flows, I'm better with it, hence why the Harry Potter movies I enjoy as well as The Chronicles of Narnia. Nothing about this was like the Avatar show in feeling, though. The elements of the story were in pieces here and there, but it felt nothing like the show or like much of anything at all.