Everything below this line can and will contain spoilers, so I'm warning you now.
First off, a quick summary:
The movie starts off introducing us to the brother-sister pair of Katara and Sokka, two members of the small southern water tribe. Katara (who doubles as narrator for the movie) informs the audience that there has been a war going on between the four nations of Earth, Water, Fire, and Air for the last century. The powerful Fire Nation is sweeping the globe, trying to eliminate all other forms of bending, and the other 3 nations are trying to survive. Now, normally these things wouldn't happen, as there is one person in the entire world who is the master of each of the four elements - the Avatar. The Avatar maintains balance between the elements and the spirit world. However, 100 years prior to the movie, the Avatar mysteriously vanished. The two water tribesmen find a boy frozen in a sphere of ice who, if you haven't guessed it, is the Avatar, frozen solid for a century. Hope is renewed for everyone, but the Prince of the Fire Nation, Zuko, has been exiled from his home and can only return after capturing the Avatar and regaining his honour. After a few battles and finding out the Fire Nation wiped out the Air Nomads in an attempt to destroy the Avatar 100 years ago, Aang, Sokka, and Katara head to the great Northern Water Tribe to teach Aang (and, to a lesser extent, Katar) proper water bending. They arrive, a battle ensues, Avatar glows bright white and saves the day.
Now, if you've never seen the Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender, then this post may not apply to you, and you may enjoy the movie. But as a diehard fan of the show, I was expecting a lot more from the summer blockbuster. In a few words, the movie lacked everything that made the show so amazing; character development, humour, love connections, great dialogue, excellent situational comedy and awareness, and just so much more. For M. Night's for foray into creating something he didn't write himself (although he did write the screenplay) I can't believe this is the same dude that made The Sixth Sense, quite possibly one of the best movies of all time (and, I might add, some of the best child-acting ever out of hollywood - something Airbender severely lacked).
I don't know, it could just be me, (though judging by the scores it's receiving on rottentomatoes.com, it's not) but the flick just had nothing going for it. It was one of the most rushed stories out of any movie I've seen in a long time, possibly ever. It had awful acting, with the exceptions of Dev Patel as Prince Zuko and Shaun Toub as his Uncle Iroh. It decided to take the cartoon's pronunciations of everything and just slaughter them (avatar became awvatar, iroh became eeroh, agni kai became agni kii, aang became ong, and that's to only name a few). And most importantly, it lacked the humour that made Avatar stand out as one of the greatest cartoons of all time. I don't know what Shyamalan was thinking when he switched the pronunciations around, but it drove me nuts thoughout the entire movie.
Trying to rush 20-some odd episodes into a 1.5 hour movie isn't going to work, and I understand that. So make it a 2-2.5 movie and make it good. Add more of the little things that made the show great, like the budding relationship between Katara and Aang, or have more fun with the animals Momo and Appa, but most importantly, mention the Kiyoshi warriors, one of the huge turning points in the later episodes of the series. They were in Kiyoshi village; why there were no warriors, I have no clue, and I don't know what they plan to do with that later.
My final point, and a big one, was the fact that Katara was so readily accepted as a water bender in the Northern water tribe. One of the most warming moments in the entire series is when, after all their trials and tribulations, the threesome makes it to the Northern Water Tribe to have Katara and Aang practice water bending, Katara isn't allowed merely because she's a female. She has to practice the art of water bending healing instead, and only after defeating the best teacher in the village is she allowed to fight alongside Aang. It's an incredible display of toughness and resilience in the girl, and in the movie she only ended up looking whiny and weak for the entire 103 minutes. In the show, she turns out to be the most powerful water bender in the world, yet here she can only dabble in the art and summon small aqueous tentacles by the end of the movie, let alone defeat the eldest water bender.
Honestly, after this huge disappointment, the only way I see myself going to see the two upcoming sequels is if they hand it over to somebody capable (read: not Shyamalan) rather than a once-brilliant-but-now-awful producer/director/writer. Otherwise, I don't think I can once again deal with the disappointment feeling that I've just had my favourite cartoon of the decade ripped from my hands, torn to pieces, had the pieces set ablaze, and the ashes urinated on.
As an afterthought, I'd like to point out that if you are watching this in 3D, don't. The only 3D things are the subtitles and the paramount logo right at the beginning (which gave me very high hopes). Turns out they added the 3D as an afterthought and didn't film specifically for 3D, which is really the only way to make it work the way it did in James Cameron's Avatar.
See you Tuesday for the first official Power Up post, video game related, I promise!
/rant
-Devon
No comments:
Post a Comment