Movie: The Last Airbender

[VLSmooth]

Miscellaneous Quotations (hilarious but ultimately useless damning comments omitted)

It's rare to see a film so choppily edited, poorly scripted and spastically directed that you can barely understand what you're watching.

Agreed. I thought the director had ADD.

It's common to come out of a movie thinking you could direct it better, but it's rare that you KNOW you could direct it better.

I'm reading these reviews and really have to wonder, what the hell happened to peer review? Are directors considered so above reproach that they get and use no feedback during the process?

General Rambling

M. Night really should've realized that covering 20 episodes in a paltry 103 minutes was a recipe of disaster. Scenes to film should've been prioritized by importance, resulting in cutting most of the content. It's much better to present a few ideas coherently and well instead of a ton of disconnected irrelevant ideas. M. Night jumped all over the place, covering aspects that lacked lasting impact.

Worse yet, single aspects were often conveyed by <2 minute scenes separately by large time gaps. Imagine watching a movie about someone eating breakfast, cutting to them driving home from work, then cutting to a birthday party a few weeks later. Sure, the prior three might work as a montage, but focusing about 2 minutes on each for three plot points? WTF?

Speaking of a "paltry 103 minutes", a significant amount of it was wasted on slow execution of forms with nigh zero consequence. Jason and I both agreed that montages could've helped significantly. Regarding special effects, they were rarely and sporadically used (at the oddest times mind you) which dispelled any sense of wonder and disbelief. They also screamed budget limitations (at least try to hide it).

Some less coherent thoughts:

• Why didn't they use the original head writer, Aaron Ehasz, for the script or a fan of the series!?
• Why did M. Night decide to remove almost all the humor from the source material, especially when he knew a large amount of the target audience would consist of kids?

I still hope for a second movie, but they really should peer review it and/or (probably for the best) toss out M. Night entirely. (Also, Argh!)

[Jonathan]

Why did you go see this?

It's a children's property.

[VLSmooth]

CNN Review
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Mov ... FPkLbThMsj

Salient points

• The original TV series explicitly tried to be culturally sensititve.
• The head writer, Aaron Ehasz, was left out of the creative process of the film. Why is unmentioned.

"We tried to be as careful as we could not to directly base anyone's culture on a [real world] culture because we wanted to borrow ideas," said head "Avatar" series writer Aaron Ehasz. "The series is clearly Asian inspired with obvious Chinese influences. In the case of the water benders, they are definitely based [on] ... indigenous cultures, a la Inuits, but also indigenous people like those portrayed in the movie "The Whale Rider."

In fact, to be culturally sensitive in the production of the animated series, Ehasz said the team had a consultant, whose "job was to read the scripts and essentially make sure they were culturally sensitive."

...

While Ehasz was responsible for crafting the characters millions watched, he was left out of the creative process of the film. "I made up the middle of this movie and the ending of this movie, and I have zero credit on this movie," he said.

Longtime fans like Robbie Park say that lack of involvement was a big mistake.

"That guy should have been with them; the movie team. There were plenty of parts of the movie where there were holes," he said.

[Dave]

M. Night is a netflix streaming only material now after I got swindled by Lady in the Lake garbage.

[VLSmooth]

Why did you go see this?

It's a children's property.

Because I enjoyed the source material.

As a side note, being outside the target demographic doesn't imply disinterest.

[VLSmooth]

People that watched the show should've known this was coming:

YouTube: Team Avatar's Review: The Last Airbender FAIL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfDk3I6di5E

[VLSmooth]

To read later:

Vulture Breaks the News to M. Night Shyamalan About The Last Airbender’s Reviews
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/20 ... _last.html

Preliminary Thoughts on Race and Gender in The Last Airbender
http://community.livejournal.com/racebe ... tml#cutid1

[Alan]

The previews looked stupid, and when I saw M Night Shyamalan was the director that clinched it for me as a movie that would suck.

When it comes to HBO maybe I'll watch it.

[quantus]

I finally got around to watching this. I also watched the sorcerer's apprentice last night. This was definitely a children's movie when they have to spell out the look between the southern water bender's brother and the northern water bender princess as being instantly interested in each other among a hundred other instances of similar over explanation. I haven't seen or read anything about the series this is based on, so I didn't feel it was really "missing" all that much. I dunno, it wasn't all that horrible. Could've benefited from more humor for sure.