So, I went to see The Last Airbender with IslandChick and Dirtshake. If you're holding out hope for this movie, exit this window. Where do I start? Well, as a huge fan of Avatar, having seen every episode at least 3 or 4 times, I think I'm qualified to judge this movie fairly.
If you're new to the franchise, Avatar is the story of a world with 4 nations based on the 4 elements (The Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, Water Tribes and Air Nomads). Each of these nations have found ways to manipulate their title element for the benefit of their society in some way. In this world, there's an ever-present spirit called the avatar that is born into a single human, and constantly reincarnated into a different person after it's host dies. The avatar soul grants its host the ability to master control over all four elements. The avatar serves as a medium between the spirit world and the humans, but more importantly serves as a religious/political icon that symbolizes peace between the four nations and is normally supposed to keep them from being at each other's throats.
Sounds pretty generic right? It is, the premise isn't incredibly unique or interesting, true. But you forget that when you get sucked in by the intricate, whimsical world, beautiful visuals, great characters, great character development, and flawless pacing. You just don't get TV cartoons like this more than once in a decade. This show is a true argument for good execution... It'll make you a believer in the idea that there is way more to a story than just a cool idea; if you have a great premise and think everything will work itself out, you're sadly mistaken. (I'm looking at you Ben 10, Bleach, Soul Eater, Naruto, Generator Rex and Wolverine and the X-Men) I could go on and on kissing this show's ass, but I won't. The main gist of this paragraph is that The Last Airbender is COMPLETELY DEVOID of everything that made the cartoon series good. EVERYTHING.
The good pacing is gone. Everything in this movie happens at 200 miles an hour. All the character exposure is gone, so unless you're like me and know the franchise mythology in and out, you won't know, enjoy, or give a fuck about the characters. They don't mean anything. They ARE the 2 hours of stilted, dry dialogue and blank stares and nothing more. They don't have personalities or feelings.
The intricate, whimsical world is gone. Half the fun with avatar was seeing all the cool detail put into the show's world. If you watched the show regularly, you knew the world INSIDE OUT because they showed you EVERYTHING. You could identify the spirits, the gods, the places, the cities, the fighting styles, everything.
As for visuals, this wasn't too bad. The animation was... believable... most of the time... I suppose but not quite Avatar. The bending was incredibly slow and delayed, and the fighting was stuffed with cheese (Lots of slowmo, lots of quickly-switching camera shots)
Great characters? Hell naw! That's asking too much. Every character was robbed of their fun personality from the show and the story was gutted of every opportunity to get to know the characters that the cartoon used. Now, when I noticed this through the first half hour, I figured M. Night had done this because the movie was going to be short and they wanted to focus on the story. IT WASN'T. The movie was 2 hours! The character development scenes from the show were replaced by shitty dialogue/narration scenes that were creatively crafted by M. himself and served no purpose to draw you in at all.
Great character development? Okay, granted I'm not a big fan of the franchise's spunky male lead Aang becoming more "serious" and "responsible" later in the cartoon series, but it was SOMETHING. In the show, female lead Katara went from being an emotional, plucky kid to a tough, level-headed warrior broad; lazy, insecure Sokka gradually became a confident, crafty, cunning strategist; Prince Zuko and General Iroh perhaps the two most interesting characters slowly realize the hypocrisy and tyranny of their comfortable lives. The movie... Wait...this movie had characters?
That's all I can say. It was a major disappointment. Maybe somebody who KNOWS avatar should have been involved with that movie because NO ONE in that crew did. That is my opinion. If you liked it, glad to hear it. But the way I see it, I can't even see someone who didn't know the real mythology the way I do enjoying that movie. If the cartoon never existed, it still would have been a bland, hollow head-smacker. Ok I'm done.
