Noah Ringer stars as Aang, the Avatar a.k.a. the Last Airbender in M. Night Shyamalan's rotten "The Last Airbender." PHOTO: Paramount Pictures
In a summer full of disappointing blockbusters and stinkers like “Robin Hood,” “Killers,” “Jonah Hex” and “Grown Ups,” M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” reigns supreme as the worst movie of the summer and easily the worst big-budget studio film since “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.” In fact, I’d even go with Michael Bay’s monstrosity over this pathetic excuse of a film. With horrendous acting, execrable dialogues, embarrassing 3-D, a script infested with lazy exposition, and a coma-inducing and incoherent plot, “The Last Airbender” will be the final nail in the coffin of once acclaimed writer, director and producer M. Night Shyamalan.
Based on the acclaimed 1990s animated television show, “The Last Airbender” tells the story of a world divided into four nations – the Water kingdom, the Fire kingdom, the Earth kingdom and the Air kingdom (what? no Heart kingdom?). Within each nation are “benders” – talented individuals gifted with the ability to harness their tribe’s element (if I were a bender in the Air kingdom, I could theoretically huff and puff and blow Shyamalan’s mansion down, if I were a Fire bender, I could burn all negatives of this film). According to the expository scroll at the beginning of the film, legend tells of the Avatar, an almighty Dalai Lama-like individual gifted with the ability to manipulate all four elements. The existence of the Avatar is crucial as he, much like the Dalai Lama, functions as the peacekeeper between the four nations. As the movie opens, we’re told that the Avatar has been missing for over a 100 years and as a result, the Fire Kingdom has taken over the world. All of this changes when a young water bender named Katara (Nicola Peltz) and her daft older brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) stumble upon a bald headed kid named Aang (Noah Ringer) and his enormous sloth-like pet, frozen beneath the ice in the outskirts of their sleepy village.
THE LAST AIRBENDER
What they don’t realize is that Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) of the Fire kingdom has also noticed the mysterious emergence of Aang. Banished from the Fire kingdom until he can find and bring back the Avatar, Prince Zuko kidnaps Aang from Katara and Sokka and takes him as his prisoner. But, considering the kid’s incredible athletic skills and broad range of powers, Aang soon breaks free of Zuko and his Yoda-like uncle Iroh (Shaun Toub), reunites with Katara and Sokka, and heads out on a trip to the Water kingdom so he can master the talent of water bending. On the other end of the spectrum, Fire commander Zhao (Aasif Mandvi), a rival of Zuko, manages to persuade the Fire king (Cliff Curtis) to give him the opportunity to capture Aang before Zuko. What follows is an incredibly tedious and coma-inducing chase to capture Aang.
There was a time when M. Night Shyamalan was regarded to be one of the finest young directors in Hollywood. After earning the perfect storm of critical acclaim, lucrative box office and Academy Award nominations for “The Sixth Sense” in 1999, Shyamalan went on to write and direct two more well received thrillers “Unbreakable” and “Signs.” Newsweek went as far as to brand him the next Spielberg. Unfortunately, everything he released from then on ranged from disappointing to flat-out disaster. “The Village” had one of the laziest plot twists in cinema history, “Lady in the Water” was pretentious nonsense, and “The Happening” was the best unintentional comedy of 2008. After those three movies, I was really hoping he would make a comeback and prove his critics wrong. Tragically, “The Last Airbender” will go down as his biggest failure because (1) the film is reported to be one of the most expensive films of the summer, (2) it’s his attempt to branch outside his comfort zone and prove he isn’t a one-trick pony, and (3) he wrote, directed and produced it. Talk about crashing and burning in a storm of urine
Dev Patel in "The Last Airbender." PHOTO: Paramount
The problems begin with Shyamalan’s script which is brimmed with exposition – scenes in which the characters stop what they’re doing and explain in detail what’s going on. Whether it’s by narration, by rolling scrolls or two characters talking to each other (or talking to the audience), it’s absolutely ridiculous how much time is wasted on scenes like these. In fact, much of the story of the film is told this way instead of being shown. Isn’t that the first step of writing – Show not tell? Additionally, the plot is quite simply incoherent and utter nonsense. None of the characters are fleshed out enough for us to give a damn about… not even Aang, who keeps having poorly-shot flashbacks with talking dragons and bald monks telling him (and us) what’s going to happen next. Then there’s a ridiculous love-at-first-sight romantic subplot between two supporting characters that makes no sense in the scheme of things. It’s as his Shyamalan thought: “Hmm, let me add in as much nonsense as I possibly can to distract the audience from realizing what a piece of crap I’m making.” To add insult to injury, the dialogues are just excruciatingly bad. They make George Lucas’ terrible dialogues in the “Star Wars” prequels sound like Shakespeare. And I’m not exaggerating. I knew there had to be a reason why there’s was so little dialogue in the movie’s trailers.
If there’s an element worse than the script, it’s the acting. With their piss-poor delivery and zero emotional investment in the characters, the three leads – Noah Ringer, Jackson Rathbone and Nicola Peltz – make Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner sound like established award-winning actors. Man, even Hayden Christensen and the kid from “The Phantom Menace” are better. The funny thing about this is Rathbone, who also stars in "Eclipse," is one of the best things about that movie but here, under the direction of Shyamalan, is laughably bad. When an actor's performance in a "Twilight" movie is more acclaimed, you know this movie is in trouble. The actors who aren’t bad are woefully miscast. How could anyone cast Dev Patel (“Slumdog Millionaire”) as a menacing scarred prince or comedian Asif Mandvi from “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” as the principal villain of the piece? If "Slumdog Millionaire" made Patel's career, then "The Last Airbender" will kill it.
Noah Ringer, Jackson Rathbone and Nicola Peltz in
"The Last Airbender." PHOTO: Paramount Pictures
The 3-D in “The Last Airbender” is comparable to the 3-D in “Clash of the Titans” – in a word – it’s useless. Like “Titans,” the 3-D for “Airbender” was added only after the movie had completed filming. Why? Well let’s see: Our movie sucks and it’s opening against “Eclipse” so tacking on crap 3-D is the best way to pump up the grosses on this one before word-of-mouth kicks in. When a film is not filmed for 3-D, it looks drab, dim and ugly, and naturally that’s exactly what “The Last Airbender” suffers from. As bad as some of Shyamalan’s past movies may have been, they did have beautiful cinematography. “The Last Airbender” makes use of some splendid locations but under fake 3-D, it looks ugly.
Even the action scenes of “The Last Airbender” aren’t that good. Shyamalan has never directed an action movie before and it shows. His fight sequences have zero tension and are not thrilling at all. Plus, since this is a PG rated film, nothing happens. Even the fight scenes in last month’s “The Karate Kid” are more violent and better executed. Perhaps the only good thing in “The Last Airbender” is James Newton Howard’s lush score. Howard’s scores have always been the highlights of Shyamalan’s films and this one is no exception. Still, I’d rather you download the score on iTunes or buy the soundtrack rather than watch this tripe.
Oh, and this movie carries the tag of “Book One: Water” and ends on a cliffhanger. Barring the apocalypse, there’s not going to be a “Book Two: Earth” and “Book Three: Fire.”
BOTTOM LINE: M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” is the worst movie of the summer. Hell, it’s the worst movie since “The Love Guru” in 2008. It’s worse than “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra” and that’s saying something. The acting is beyond sophomoric, the dialogues are worse than the stuff in George Lucas’ “Star Wars” prequels, the 3-D is worthless, the characters are cardboard-cut caricatures, and the action is just disappointing. This is an astoundingly bad movie. I hated it.
GRADE:
(Note: I don't like giving out "F" grades to movies but this is the first film in over a year that left me beyond frustrated and disappointed. I mean, how can an Oscar-nominated filmmaker fall from grace this bad?)
THE LAST AIRBENDER
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Dev Patel, Jackson Rathbone
Rated: PG (
"THE LAST AIRBENDER" is now playing in cinemas all across South Florida. Click on the NCM widget below for showtimes.
CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW FOR MY MONTH-BY-MONTH 2010 SUMMER MOVIE PREVIEW.
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Comments
So u guys all like to flame on movies......U speak as though u never seen an episode of this series. So for you all to come out and say it deserves a F.....means u think the cartoon series deserves that also. Reuben.....with a name like that i wouldn't go around calling other things failures. Wow u think the second transformers movie was a failure... your one of those angry-at-the-world losers that see nothing good in anything around you. Do this world a favor after u tie that noose and take that big step forward:)
Oooohh. Someone's got a hater ;) Congrats!! LOL
This is disappointing to hear. The cartoon is pretty awesome and the fact that the movie doesn't live up to it is sad. I'll wait to watch this randomly on HBO since I don't pay for premium channels ;)
Radu... Thanks for your superb constructive criticism of my review.
Did you actually read my review or did you just look at the "F" and decide to judge me Radu? Never once in my review did I criticize the television show Radu. From what I have gathered, the TV show was very good Radu.
Oh, and you're right on the money about me being one of those "angry-at-the-world losers that see nothing good in anything around me." I'll take your good advice into consideration Radu.
Thanks again for your insightful comments Radu. :)
Thats goo i'm glad something good will come out of this. I read your whole review and the only thing i can agreed with was that the acting was a C, C minus at best. But i'm pretty sure this movie can't even begin to compare to Transformers or the 2nd one. Go out into the world and read some actual good reviews and maybe you'll open up more. From what i can assume your one of those idiots that talks trash about everything out there that doesn't have a Notebook or Broke Back Mountain theme in it. Your a really sad person.
That about says it all.
I know exactly what you mean. M.Night was at the top of my list after The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, and I was one of the few fans of The Village.
I really thought we had found the next great genre director, another Spielberg, Zemeckis or Cameron. Well, he is younng enough to rebound, but none of the all time greats ever made a movie this bad. Hook is Citizen Kane compared to this.
Thanks again Radu. :)
Good review, this is quite possibly one of the worst movies of the 21st century. Comparable to Dragon Ball. What makes it worse it that i love the cartoon, one of my favorite animations. From the first preview i went had low expectations, i went in to the movie already expecting it to be horrible, hoping to be pleasantly surprised, but Shyamalan actually dove deeper than my already sunken expectations. Anyone familiar with the cartoon knows that this was a nearly impossible movie to screw up, but low and behold Shyamalan managed to do so. I'm still Baffled how he managed to squander 150 million on such an abomination of a movie. Lord of the rings, the fellowship was only 93 million and makes The last Airbender look like armature child's play. This was a sever disappointment.
What amazes me even more is not a single move critic in the world realizes that the director changed the pronunciation of Aang for a reason. In this case, Aang is pronounced as "Ang" in Chinese for a common boy name. The director chose Aang to be pronounced not "Ang but "Ung" is not that fact that he is ignorant about the hero's name pronunciation . On the contrary, he wants the hero to be called "Ung" because he's wants Aang to represent a Hindu boy and not Chinese. The director afterall speaks Hindi himself. Even all the Chinese movie critics failed to understand this. If my 11 years old questioned me if Aang pronounced "Ung" a Chinese name, why is there not a single movie critic realize this?
Eddie
We don't have to listen to you dumb-ass critics, Transformers 2 was rated bad by critics and yet it broke boxoffice records... so take that and sove it up your ass
You do realize that box office has NOTHING to do with how good a movie is right? That's what you call marketing and publicity. Did you check the grosses on the Twilight movies? Maybe they're masterpieces too.
BTW... Transformers 2 won the award for the worst movie of 2009 and is widely regarded as a disaster. Even the stars of the movie admitted it wasn't good.
vous appelez ça de la critique pfff, commencez par vous regarder dans un miroir. C'est facile d'assassiner un film sans vraiment l'avoir regarder (c'est pas en regardant quelques extrait que l'on peut juger une œuvre).
Changer de métier monsieur.
I have no idea what Radu is on, but your review is spot on. The last airbender movie was probably the worst adaptation ever (good thing i didn't pay to watch it theaters). I watched every episode of the cartoon and I loved it, but this movie is just horrid. I don't think you are an "angry-at-the-world losers that see nothing good in anything". I think you are a person that sees an awful movie and tells the truth. This movie really was worse than transformers 2 and gi joe rise of cobra, and thats saying something because those two movies are complete shit. It doesn't matter how much money the movies made, it has nothing to do with whether the movies are good or not. The movies just make a lot of money because of the hype and supposedly cool cg effects. A good example of a good adaptation is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It had a great story, great cgi effects, great acting, and it made a lot of money. The last airbender really is a failure and deserves an F. Radu is wrong to think that movies like last airbender and transformers are good just because they're box office hits. It had horrible casting, bad story, couldn't even say the names of the characters properly, bad action, and the cg effects weren't even good. Don't listen to idiots that don't know anything about film.
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