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Last Airbender: Shyamalan Falls Short
Sykora
July 6, 2010
M
Night Shyamalan fails to deliver in his newest undertaking: the Last Airbender. One might consider the difficulties involved in creating an action-based, martial arts movie--from an American anime--but then again, M. Night Shyamalan isn't a rookie Director/Producer and Paramount pictures didn't give this film chump change. No, Shyamalan has a good portfolio, and the Last Airbender received a stout budget of $150 million.
Perhaps the greatest factors that make Avatar a brilliant masterpiece are the show's character development, balance of humor and life-lessons, the story, and the fighting scenes. Shyamalan's version fails to interpret these factors into his movie on several occasions.
The movie starts off decently enough showing good computer-generated effects with the water bending, but the acting starts off rather unconvincing. Certain characters like Aang (Noah Ringer), and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) are too serious and dull at times. Sure, Aang deals with troublesome responsibilities in the beginning, but Shyamalan fails to capture Avatar's comical relief in Sokka. To top things off, most pronunciations of the primary characters' names are aggravatingly mispronounced throughout the film. This reviewer doesn't even recall Momo's (the cute little lemur-monkey) name being used once.
Further dilemmas are the slow fighting speed of most action sequences, quickly paced scene transitions, and the ridiculous amount of forms required for each "bender" to perform their attacks. The Last Airbender movie falls short of the anime however in that it lacks the elements that make the show a success.
Considering all of this, the Last Airbender, at certain angles, doesn't look like a complete waste. Positive notes to add are the improvement in acting as the film progresses, the close following of the original storyline, and the physical resemblance of key actors to their counterpart animated characters. (Yes, we know that Uncle Iro should be fat and jolly...) Another positive are the battles between Aang and Zuko (Dev Patel) are up to par.
As a standalone movie, the Last Airbender may move non-fans of the show, but it may also end up annoying those individuals who are acquainted with the original. In the end, it can be summarized that M. Night Shyamalan has almost misinterpreted the heart behind the Avatar production and likely didn't do enough homework on the subject. Fortunately, there is all the room for the next few sequels to improve upon, depending on the outcome of the box office profits.
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