Returning to my M. Night Shyamalan marathon, it was time to check out The Last Airbender. The only thing I knew about this was the title and character in name only and an idea of what it's about. Beyond that, I went into the movie with pretty much no knowledge of the history and mythology of the series as I have never seen the show or read any of the books. The only thing I knew first hand on the film, based on all the negative reviews it has gotten is that it sucked. I was actually willing to give this one a serious chance and not listen to any of the reviews and actually convinced myself that the hatred was more about slamming M. Night just because it's "the thing to do" now.

Well, having just watched this, I will say that the negative reviews are actually nice compared to what I thought of this dreck. I am not trashing this movie because M. Night is attached to this, I'm coming at this purely from a movie-going agenda and in the end, it's just not a good movie. There are a few things that immediately rubbed me the wrong way. I don't know what the "violence" level is in the series or comic books if there is any, but this was just waaaaaay to kid-friendly. The special effects do look good for what we get, but the production as a whole looked like it was made-for-TV / Direct-to-DVD. It just looked cheap when going for some grand and epic battle scenes. You can tell that a lot and and mean a loooooooot of corners were cut in the budget because the final battle scene is hands down the lamest and most dull fight sequence I have ever seen on film.

The other things that really did suck here were the actors and more specifically the writing. There is some horrible dialogue being bantered about. I can't believe M. Night was ever considered a good writer beyond The Sixth Sense. It's clear that he really doesn't know what he is doing and just like the twist endings he is known for, the biggest sham he ever pulled off was getting studios to believe the hype about himself. You would think that since he is pulling from previous source material that he could at least give us a competant story here. He can't. Also, the story beats here are painfully obvious. I had the entire movie mapped out within the first 5 minutes. So, there were no surprises for me at all. As the movie wore on, I basically just started barking out "and this is where such and such will happen". I should have made it a drinking game. Oh well.....

Anyway, the movie does indeed suck. This is a Skip. I love fantasy films, but this is like watching a bunch of High School kids putting on a half-ass production of a first draft script. Seriously, don't waste your time with this at all. The characters are cliches and the acting wooden. Makes the Star Wars Prequel look Shakespearean by comparison.

This was a real early "how Did This Get Made."  I did like how they said Nicola Peltz was "the Merryl Streep of The Last Airbender."  She's the only one I'd expect to pop up in something else, but I haven't seen that happen yet.

Yeah, the movie is pretty lousy and really does a bad job of representing the series, which you really should see (I picked up the first season of "Legend Of Korra" the other day but haven't **** into it yet).  This movie is honestly just a summary of those events and it lacks everything that made the series special.

I definitely had that, and I'd only half-seen the movie ages earlier.  I mean, given that the movie follows the plot of the WHOLE FIRST SEASON there's no getting around it.  Heck, you could probably just jump into season two.  But the first season is an enjoyable watch.

What I think they should have done is just pull an anime trick and set the movie in between seasons or make it a total stand-alone adventure, not try to make it "legitimate," the series was already brill (TRS show of the year, I recall).

Here's what the movie was missing: humour.


And here's a cool little fight scene from season two.

Another thing I was thinking about when watching the movie was this would have been a perfect role for Ernie Reyes, Jr. Only problem is that this movie would had to have come out 25 years ago for him to do it and have it be age appropriate. Did not like the kid they cast in the main role for Airbender.

How was he able to continue to work?

I have no f*cking clue how he is able to still get employment. I never thought I would say this and I'm saying it with all sincerity here, but Paul W. S. Anderson is better than M. Night. And I can't stand most of Anderson films.