Movie Review: The Last Airbender
Don’t buy into all of the Shyamalan-bashing, The Last Airbender is a decent movie.
By John J. Joex
Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars
M. Night Shyamalan is a writer/director known for producing supernatural-tinged movies with a twist ending who, after setting the bar stratospherically high with his biggest success The Sixth Sense, has yet to equal that movie’s accomplishments either artistically or at the Box Office. The Last Airbender represents a career course-changing move by Shyamalan as he departs from the familiar territory he has mined since the 90’s and tackles a straight-up action/epic feature. The movie is based on the animated Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender (with the “Avatar” dropped from the title to avoid confusion with another recent sci fi action/epic) which had an acclaimed run on the cable channel for three seasons. It follows the story of a boy named Aang who is the last of the Airbenders (people with the power to manipulate the element of air) and who discovers that he is the Avatar who can also control the other elements of Water, Earth, and Fire and who can unite the four nations (each based on one of the elements). He disappeared for a hundred years after he ran away from his responsibility then became locked in a state of suspended animation as a protective measure against a treacherous storm. Two members of the Southern Water Tribe discover and revive him and he finds that the planet is under siege from the Fire Nation which seeks to dominate all of the nations.
Shyamalan’s movie adaptation cover’s the show’s first season and has received almost universal derision since its debut last week (currently at an abysmally low 8% Fresh Rating at Rotten Tomatoes). I really wonder, though, how much of this is simply carrying on the trend of Shyamalan-bashing that we have seen over the course of his last few releases, because I can’t see the justification of the overwhelmingly negative reviews. Among the complaints that I have heard is his decision to go with non-Asian actors in the lead roles despites the Asian traits of the characters in the cartoon series (which was made in the style of Anime). I do agree that this was a poor casting choice on his part, though I really do like Noah Ringer as Aang, and I can’t reasonably knock the other actors for being “too white”. Other criticisms have zeroed in on the stiff acting, uneven direction, and the clunky dialogue. And while I saw evidence of those throughout the film, it was not much more than you see in a typical sci fi/fantasy epic and I do not feel that they derailed the movie.
Now I should probably confess at this point that I have never seen the entire cartoon series. I have sampled some episodes and enjoyed them, but have just not gotten around watching the show from start to finish. So for the most part, I am judging the movie on its own merits, not how it compares to its source material and I think those comparisons (along with the severe animosity many have toward Shyamalan’s casting decisions) have fueled the negative reviews of the movie. But I believe that the movie, judged on its own merits, accomplishes what it sets out to do and delivers an enjoyable, engaging epic tale. I do admit that I cringed at the dialogue more than once and felt that some of the actors could have injected more life into their performances. I also believed that Shyamalan crammed too much into the movie as he covered the entire story of the show’s first season (originally comprising 20 episodes) into an hour and forty five minutes. He could have framed it much better to help it flow and to make up for the necessary fast-forwards in the action required to keep the film to a reasonable running time. He employed the narration by Katara at times to fill in a few blanks but should have used it much more extensively to flesh out what he could not work into the onscreen action. This could have provided more substance to some of the character interactions, like the romance between Sokka and Princess Yue, and elicited more sympathy from the audience when Yue makes her sacrifice toward the end. Also, some may find the martial arts flourishes a bit too excessively ornate, but I personally enjoyed them and believe this will help the movie play better to international audiences.
So while The Last Airbenber in no way delivers a movie that I would place in the upper echelon of genre films, neither does it assault us with the bloat-fest type blockbuster that we have seen in recent years like last year’s Transformers 2. I would also say that it succeeds better on the sci fi/fantasy epic scale than other recent release like James Cameron’s Avatar and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland because it steers clear of the cliché-ridden, hackneyed stories those two delivered (in large part because of its rich source material). The Last Airbender has plenty of flaws, but the sum of its parts add up to a decent movie experience and it presents a promising start to a new film franchise.
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Date: July 5, 2010
Categories: John J. Joex, Movie Reviews, Reviews
