The Last Airbender (2010)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
A century has passed since the Fire Nation declared war on the other three nations of air, water, and earth in its attempt for global domination. Aang, the long-lost Avatar, is found by Water Tribe siblings Katara and Sokka and must learn to master water, earth, and fire bending to defeat the Fire Nation and restore balance to the world.
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This means doing a lot of traveling, so it helps that Aang has with him a giant, friendly, furry, flying beast (think here of "The NeverEnding Story").
He and his “sky bison,” a giant flying creature that looks like a cross between the Luck Dragon of The NeverEnding Story (1984) and one of Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things, became trapped under the ice of the northern territory and were freed by Katara (Nicola Peltz), a young woman of the Water Tribe who is also a nascent bender, and her older and very protective brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone).
Much-loved characters from the animated series are brought to life, including the monkey Momo and a flying bison named Appa (who looks terrific but is a little too reminiscent of the luckdragon Falcor from Wolfgang Petersen’s The NeverEnding Story, 1984).
Filmed in 2-D with 3-D applied after the fact - with marginal results - its muddled mythology is a patchwork of influences, from "Compass," "The Chronicles of Narnia," "The Lord of The Rings" and "The Neverending Story" to, of all things, the Dalai Lama parables "Little Buddha" and "Kundun."
All the makings of Joseph Campbell's would-be "the hero's journey" are here, but instead of joining the ranks of Lucas and Jackson, Shyamalan performs more along the lines of David Lynch's work in "Dune."
The result is at times reminiscent of David Lynch's Dune , only not in a good way, as this character's voiceover intersects with that character's voiceover, all doing their expository best to get across vital plot points that the series had 20 episodes to unveil.
In fact, it almost seems to be a remake of "Kundun" at times, what with the protagonist, Aang (Noah Ringer), being the reincarnation of a spiritual leader not unlike the Dalai Lama... except that he does martial arts and can control the elements!
Filmed in 2-D with 3-D applied after the fact - with marginal results - its muddled mythology is a patchwork of influences, from "Compass," "The Chronicles of Narnia," "The Lord of The Rings" and "The Neverending Story" to, of all things, the Dalai Lama parables "Little Buddha" and "Kundun."
Aang confers with a mystical serpent and is wounded when half a yin-yang fish god is killed - the movie's spiritual core feels like " Willow " mixed with "Kung Fu."
The Last Airbender feels like throwback to the pre-Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter era when fantasy was a joke (the bastard son of science fiction) and when movies like Willow dotted the landscape and set unwatchably low expectations for the genre.
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By the way, the filmmakers decided to leave the word "Avatar" out of the title, even though it was in the title of the TV series, because they didn't want to confuse audiences with that other movie of the same name.
Shyamalan - who adapted the screenplay from the Nickelodeon cartoon - even lost the title's preface, "Avatar," to James Cameron.
The Last Airbender doesn't put that theory to the test, but it comes closer than anything else has: while Shyamalan still wrote the screenplay, he adapted it from the first of three seasons of the American anime series Avatar: The Last Airbender , which aired on Nickelodeon beginning in 2005 ("Avatar" was snipped from the title on account of that other movie ).
So now he has adapted an animated TV series, "Avatar: The Last Airbender," and eliminated the "Avatar" from the title for obvious reasons.
He was just looking for a little redemption by turning “Avatar” into a major franchise.
At times it feels as if Shyamalan is trying to achieve the grandeur of The Lord of the Rings, or evoke the sort of overarching Eastern mysticism found in Star Wars.
Honestly, the film comes off as little more than Shyamalan's desperate attempt to put his name to an "epic," a "Star Wars" or "Lord of the Rings" kind of trilogy.
We’ve got an opening text-crawl right out of one of the bewildering, second-string “Star Wars” films, written in pseudo-ancient prose full of phrases like “amongst all the peoples of the world.”
The narrative engine is assembled from Star Wars, The Matrix and countless other (better) 'chosen one' tales, so even the more original, spiritual aspects of Airbender can't mask the creakingly unoriginal script.
The movie is "Star Wars" with martial arts, plus a touch of "The Last Emperor."
And let's not forget about the action sequences, which feature awesome fight choreography, impressive special effects allowing the heroes and villains to throw air, fire, water or air at each other, and some really cool long unbroken shots that use zoom-ins and slow-motion in a way that recalls "The Matrix" or "300".
The narrative engine is assembled from Star Wars, The Matrix and countless other (better) 'chosen one' tales, so even the more original, spiritual aspects of Airbender can't mask the creakingly unoriginal script.
The rest of the movie is comprised of a giant flying buffalo, a wise dragon that talks in an old man's voice and battle scenes that once again resort to the bullet-time photography The Matrix invented.
“The Last Airbender’’ is dreadful, an incomprehensible fantasy-action epic that makes the 2007 film “The Golden Compass,’’ a similarly botched adaptation of a beloved property from another medium, look like a four-star classic.
Although there’s supposedly more to come, this expensive epic has the huge, hugely desperate feel of “The Golden Compass,” “Eragon” and all those other films that were supposed to kick off kids’-movie franchises — and never got past their first installments.
The Last Airbender feels almost exactly like The Golden Compass.
“Airbender” is kiddie fantasy so limp it makes “Narnia,” “Percy Jackson” and “The Golden Compass” look like unqualified masterpieces.
Just as likely, however, it will suffer the same fate of another fantasy it resembles: "The Golden Compass," which failed to push whatever buttons such fare needs to prosper.
Shyamalan has only directed one Airbender movie -- he's signed on for two sequels, but their fate rests with the box office grosses of this $150 million production -- and this situation feels awfully reminiscent of The Golden Compass, the first (and open-ended) installment in an intended franchise that was abandoned after audiences didn't turn out in enough numbers.
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I wasn’t a big fan of “Avatar” but it’s “ Citizen Kane ” compared with M. Night Shyamalan ’s “ The Last Airbender ,” based on the animated series “ Avatar: The Last Airbender .”
Curtis ( Whale Rider ), Mandvi ( The Mystic Masseur ), and Patel ( Slumdog Millionaire ) seem like actors in a Shakespearean tragedy here.