Tuesday, January 30, 2018

The Last Airbender (2010)

Today I'm taking a look at a very unspecial movie. Based on the hit Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender, this movie is a dismal offering from director M. Night Shyamalan.




We begin with an intro faithful to the show, as various elementalists demonstrate their ability to "bend" the elements. If you're unfamiliar with the show, check it out. I'll wait. I'm hardly an expert on it as I've only seen the first ten or so episodes, but it's a great show.

This movie, on the other hand... does it no justice. First of all, this movie is devoid of humor or levity, things that were strongly present in the show. Behold the somber opening monologue/explanation, telling us how things are terrible now compared to how they used to be.

It's a total info-dump, which illustrates the second big problem with the movie: It's all exposition and explaining. We're thirty seconds in!

Yes, they were planning three more of these movies.

We begin with Katara water-bending in the frozen tundra. She accidentally drops a huge blob of water onto her doofus brother, Sokka.

Here's Sokka. By casting Hayden Christensen 2.0 in the role, they pretty much deprived the audience of any of the Sokka Charm that he has in the show.

Sokka is VERY SERIOUS and VERY SOMBER. I can't wait to see M. Night Shyamalan's The Legend of Korra, starring Kristen Stewart.

Sokka and Katara spend a lot of time having things explained to them by wisened older people. Actually, that's what 99% of the dialogue in this movie is: Explaining. None of these people actually have personalities; they don't react to anything in a human way. Instead it's just exposition dump after exposition dump. The movie tells us all about the world, but gives us no reason to care about the characters.

Another issue? The villains, the Fire Kingdom, are all oddly Middle-Eastern in this movie. One need only go back one image to see that the heroic Water Tribe are white people. It's pretty weird when you consider that, on the show, it was the other way around. The heroes were brown Eskimos, while the bad guys were generally white. But don't let that get in the way of your movie...carry on.

Whoa, it's Aasif Mandvi! ...said everyone who watched this movie. As a comedian, he's woefully miscast as a super-serious Fire Nation general.

Behold our main hero, Aang. Here he is in EXTREME CLOSE-UP form. If you like EXTREME CLOSE-UPs, this is your movie. Because it has tons of them.

Anyway, the story begins with our heroes roaming around in the frigid land of Antarctica, looking for walruses to harpoon. Or something.

They spend a lot of time talking...but not about anything they think or feel, noooo. Just exposition dumps. Really heaping the information on the viewers. It's like listening to someone read a textbook. The information is that everything is terrible and sucks, because their tribe has been dying of starvation and such and no one is happy and nothing is good. It doesn't help that Sokka's actor speaks way too fast and slurs his words like a drunken hobo.

They stumble upon a sheet of ice...and there's something frozen inside. Some very familiar music begins to play...

Katara thinks maybe they should just leave it alone. Sokka, on the other hand, is busy bellowing forth exposition and being as unhappy as possible.

Yep, there's definitely something under there. Is it human... or something more malevolent?

Sokka proceeds to start breaking the ice to try and get to this mysterious figure.

Soon, the ice begins to crack and break with alarming speed.

Our heroes back away slowly, as it appears they've awakened... whatever that is under there.

Something emerges from the ice, forming a large blister that explodes.

What's in the crater? WHAT'S IN THE CRATER?

 "WHAT'S IN THE BOOOOX?"

Our heroes freeze in confusion at the sight of...

...a husky dog? Aww! C'mere, pooch!

......and it immediately begins transforming!

The Thing is NOT happy to see these soulless facsimiles of beloved characters!

Sokka reels in horror as a tentacle rapidly zips towards him!

"TORCH IT, CHILDS! TORCH THIS WHOLE DAMN MOVIE!"

::M. Night Shyamalan screeches in horror::

"YEAH FUCK YOU TOO!"







that concludes my remake of The Last Airbender


3 comments:

  1. Must've been cathartic to actually get to do this in a review. I agree this is better than continuing with having to review everything in this vein.

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  2. "M. Night Shyamalan's The Legend of Korra starring Kristen Stewart"

    *Darth Vader like NOOOOOOOOOOOO*

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  3. Whoa, it's Aasif Mandvi!

    Wow, this movie had a much better ending than I was expecting.

    ReplyDelete