I knew about "Avatar: The Last Airbender", of course. Commercials for it aired all the time, and kids with Avatar tee-shirts sprinted joyfully through the local Target store without a care in the world, at least until I moved my shopping cart into their paths and enjoyed a brief but lively "KSSSHHH" sound of metal carts suffering sudden impact. I just wrote "Avatar" off as a silly kid's show trying to pass itself off as an anime. Something about American cartoons emulating the anime style bothered me. "Teen Titans" was the same way. I decided that I would stick with "Dexter's Laboratory" and "Johnny Bravo", thank you very much.
That being said, I was intrigued by the live-action movie's teaser trailer, in which the Airbender stood in a circle of lit candles and bent air around them while a fleet of imposing ships approached outside, but I heard nothing more of the movie until late last year, when James Cameron's Avatar came out. I was extremely confused because I mistook James Cameron's Pocahontas in Space! for the live-action adaptation of "Avatar: The Last Airbender", not knowing that the later had been forced to change its name to simply The Last Airbender to avoid the very confusion I was now experiencing. I would see previews of a movie concerning big blue kitties and futuristic army men and think to myself "that looks WAY different than what I've seen of that Nickelodeon show..." Well, once I got myself straightened out, I started following The Last Airbender, partially because the trailers looked really cool, and partially because my twin sister goes to the tae kwon do studio where the casting crew discovered Noah Ringer, who would go on to play the lead role in the film.
This winter, the TV show's first season popped onto Netflix's instant queue, so my wife and I sat down and watched all 22 episodes, and I must say, it's an excellent show. It follows Katara, a young girl with the ability to manipulate water with specific martial arts movements, and her big brother Sokka. They live in a world where four nations - water, earth, fire, air - once lived together in harmony. But a century ago, the fire nation attacked the other three, wiping out the air nomads. In this world, one person is born amongst one of the nations with the ability to master all four elements - the Avatar. He (or she) becomes a vital player in the world's politics, and for whatever reason, when he dies, he is reborn in the next nation in the cycle (air-water-earth-fire). When the fire nation attacked, the Avatar simply disappeared. Now, 100 years later, Katara and her brother find a member of the air nomads encased in ice, but as they find him, he awakens and breaks out. His name is Aang, last known member of the air nomads, and, conveniently, the long-lost Avatar.
There's so much depth to the TV show that to talk about it here would be a disservice. Having nearly 500 minutes of showtime for the season gives you plenty of time to get to know Aang, Katara, Sokka, and the Asia-inspired world in which they live. These are great characters, and this is a great show for kids, particularly boys. No episode lacks in the action department, yet it still manages to encourage the viewer to treat others with respect, to not judge a book by its cover, and, above all, to advocate peace. Go watch an episode. Check out the behind-the-scenes on how they created the bending movements of each of the four nations. Do whatever you can... except for seeing the movie.
I'll admit that this movie had been my most anticipated film of this entire year. The trailers looked friggen' epic, and I knew how good the plot would be because the show was filled with great characters, subplots, etc. And to top it all off, it was being directed by M. Night Shaymalan, one of my favorite directors. Sure, Lady in the Water was pretty crappy, but for some reason I liked it. I never saw The Happening, but surely it wasn't as bad as everyone said it was. M. Night just had a few off-moments with his past movies. This was something way different. He'd do great.
No.
There's no need for me to list the failings of The Last Airbender here. It's been ripped to shreds already by everyone else, like on GoldenPigsy's blog, or at IGN. My wife and I made the mistake of seeing a 10:30 showing at night, when approximately 0% of the audience would be children, the target audience of the film. I can understand laughing at moments of poor acting, or bad writing, or even bad directing, and believe me, that happened. But the audience that night contained a few happy (read: drunk-out-of-their-minds) people who laughed at the most random points that even I could not understand, and this coming from a guy who had just spent the past few weeks watching - and lampooning - two of the three Twilight movies.
No, instead, what I would like to do is make a list of the reasons I could think of to see this film, short as that list may be. So, here goes:
-The trailers looked amazing.
-Dev Patel (the main dude from Slumdog Millionaire) plays Prince Zuko, the series' most interesting character.
-The girl playing Katara is very cute.
-The girl playing Princess Yue is also very cute.
-The special effects - done by George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic - were incredible.
-The plot didn't steer away from that of the TV show.
-Apa and Momo - the flying byson and lemur, respectively, are both voiced by the guys who did them for the TV show.
-Slow-motion was used well in the fight scenes.
-They did a good job of adapting the "spirit world" to the film, since a live-action version of what's in the TV show would have been downright terrifying.
That's about it. To date, this has been the most disappointing movie of the year. I know I held it to impossible standards, but there you go. I love "Avatar: The Last Airbender", and I love M. Night Shaymalan, but I should have known how poorly the two would mix. If they try for the second and third films, I dearly hope that they get a new director, but from what I've heard in interviews, M. Night sees this as HIS project, so unless the studios take a risk and fire a director with such a well-known name and get someone not as famous, don't expect the sequels to be any better than this.
But you know what disappointed me the most at this movie? Alamo Drafhouse raised its prices. Now it costs as much as any other theater. I should have known at that moment that that night was going to be a crappy night.
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