The Last Airbender Review
When I first heard that there was going to be an live action movie based on Avatar(sorry James Cameron, but the show was around before your movie) I was VERY excited! I really like the show. Then I heard that M. Night Shyamalan was going to direct it! Now, he’s never directed a licenced product nor an action movie so I was skeptical about it. I think that Unbreakable is one of the best movies ever made, so I thought i’d give him a chance.
Let’s start with the visuals. This was my main concern about a live action verson, but they were very well done actually. The action is a bit slower than in the show, but no big deal. When it shows the bending of the elements you can tell how much time and effort went into this film. The end scene when Aang lists up the water to the huge wave looks incredible. Good job on the visuals!
The story on The Last Airbender follows the show very well. Aang is the last airbender left on earth, and is called the Avatar as he can learn all the bending abilities, unlike others who can only learn one. They are: Air, Water, Earth, and Fire. The Fire Nation has taken over most of the lands in search of the Avatar. Fire is the hardest and most powerful of the elements to learn and that is why the other benders serve them. The Avatar is the only person who can stop the Fire nation and Aang learning the abilities to stop them is the main draw to the series. The problem this movie runs into is the pacing of it. This is the first Book(chapter, season) called Water, and Aang learns how to use Water is why it’s called that. The problem is that M. Night tries to cram a whole 20 episode season into a 1hour 40min movie! It feels off. There is A Lot he cut out in order to do this, but it’s as good as it can be in the running time it has. The movie should have been 2 1/2 hours and that would have fixed that. There is also no character development. If I hadn’t seen the show, I couldn’t have told you most of the characters names. I mean, Princess Yue doesn’t appear until the very end and only has a handful of scenes(She’s a pretty big character, if u haven’t seen the show). The ending is a “bit” different than the end of the first season, but it wasn’t “that’ big a deal to me. One thing I liked that M. Night did, was take away most of the comedy from the show. I like the comedy in the cartoon, but the seriousness tone in the film really worked for me.
The acting is ok. I didn’t have too much a problem with it. Some of the actors seem stiff, and some you can tell are just acting and not making you believe, but this isn’t that often. Noah Ringer plays Aang, Dev Patel(Slumdog Millionaire) plays Prince Zuko. Nicola Peltz plays Katara, and Jackson Rathbone plays Sokka. Noah does a decent job as the lead character, seeing as this was his first movie.
I wanted to address something before I end this review. The names in the film sound different than they do in the show, and people are complaining about this. Well, they sound that way because that is how the names are pronounced in asian speaking countries, and M. Night wanted to make the film authentic in that aspect.
The Last Airbender ends up being a dissappointing first book into the avatar trilogy, but not a bad one. You can tell M. Night is a fan of the show, and cared about how the movie was handled. It was his first licenced product to direct, and i’m willing to let this one go with a decent rating. If you like the nickelodeon tv show then you’ll find this movie to be worth seeing. If you are a fan and are bashing this movie you’ve obviosly never seen the tv show, or just finding another reason to bash M.Night Shyamalan.
3/5
