The Last Airbender

Oh God. It's bad. It's very very bad. For the longest time I refused to see this on principal but - sweet baby cucumbers - I had no way of knowing just how bad it would be. Just - Just give me a minute, okay?

I might have given off the impression that I don't like movies with adapted source material. That's not it at all. I think the idea of movie adaptations, at their core, are flattering. As a writer, you know you've crafted a great story when people are so drawn in by the universe you've created that they want to start playing with it too.

We all know this is Twilight fanfiction, right?

And adaptations have a tall order. They are supposed to honor the existing universe with new adventures and/or characters while presenting the whole thing to the general public in a way that makes sense. Films based off of TV shows are by and large mostly harder to pull off than book adaptations because of they have more characters and a lot more plot threads.

I said MOST of the time, Jon. Get back here.
I only have five episodes left before I start with you. 

Now. About this thing.

WHY?

Yes, that's a good start. Why was this made?
Apparently M. Night Shyamalan started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender because his daughter wanted to go as Katara for Halloween.

Pilfering ideas from the children? For shame Shyama-llama. 

I can only assume that Shyama-llama gleaned all of his knowledge about the show by scrolling through a few tumblrs and maybe reading some shady wiki entries, because he decided the best way to handle Avatar: The Last Airbender was to treat it like a comic book. I'm serious. See, there are two styles when it comes to adapting television into movies.

Style One is when you take the premise and the character names and maybe even some trace of the actual plot lines and update to modern day. It's used mostly with older shows.

And apparently also with spy shows, which I did not notice until I made this. 

Style Two is when the movie is a continuation of the show. Same actors, same established plot lines, and if the show continues on after that, then the movie becomes part of the canon. It's mostly used with Disney children's shows and/or shows that recently ended.

I have mixed feelings about what I have created here today.

Comic book movies, on the other hand, draw from a large and varied canon and the specifics are usual unknown/accessible for the majority of the audience. It's similar to Style One from above, made from broad strokes that seek to reference the source material without becoming bogged down by depicting the time Aang lied to get two tribes of stereotypes to stop fighting.

That could work. Technically. Technically I'll eat a potato if enough butter, cheese, sour cream, and chives have been slathered on it.

Still not enough cheese to make me even consider putting this near my mouth. 

So he tried it. Shyama-llama wrote a script including all 20 episodes of Season One than ran over seven hours long and then compressed it into a 1hour 43 minute movie. Was this intended to be a launching point for a new franchise? Did they Do they plan on making Seasons Two and Three into movies? Who was the intended audience for this? Why does everyone have the wrong hair in this?

I'm sorry, but if I keep trying to divine Shyamalan's motivation for this I am going to do something crazy, like eat a potato.

Sokka the Power Ranger. I'm sorry but
this was killing me throughout the entire movie. 

Stupid uproar over casting choices is nothing new, especially when the movie is an adaptation. With The Last Airbender, the producers were fighting off the hot,spicy charge of racism from all directions.

What if I told you it was supposed to look like this?

I am forced to imagine that there would have been a musical number.

Look, I don't think the casting director was just deliberately racist. This is just another unfortunate case of Hollywood white washing.

Guess who gets a speaking part in this scene?

It was stupid. There are a lot of stupid decisions that make up this movie. For starters, they squander time like a five year old on the smallest details. 

The symbol change should have been our first warning. 

The opening sequence is faithfully recreated and the bending throughout looks great. Apparently it cost a metric ton of gold, five arms, and six virgins. But the most important part of this was Katara's narration:

"Water. Earth. Fire. Air. My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days, a time of peace when the Avatar kept balance between the Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Air Nomads. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar mastered all four elements. Only he could stop the ruthless firebenders. But when the world needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years have passed and the Fire Nation is nearing victory in the War. Two years ago, my father and the men of my tribe journeyed to the Earth Kingdom to help fight against the Fire Nation, leaving me and my brother to look after our tribe. Some people believe that the Avatar was never reborn into the Air Nomads, and that the cycle is broken. But I haven't lost hope. I still believe that somehow, the Avatar will return to save the world."

It's absent from the opening bending scene. Shyamalan doesn't trust the audience to watch action and listen to voice-overs. So we get scrolling text. 

I don't know why they felt the need to re-write her opener. The phrasing is stilted and to add insult to injury, doesn't explain things that well. And they knew it didn't make sense because they spend the first ten minutes or so of the movie establishing things that should have already been covered.

EXPOSITION!
Such awkward exposition.

This movie has a weird relationship with the Spirit World, constantly talking about how the spirits are watching over mankind with sadness and how the Fire Nation doesn't want to live by the spirits. They're trying to make it synonymous with Christian Heaven and it just doesn't work very well.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh. The opening of this movie is decent; they quickly hit all of the biggest plot points to get the ball rolling and the setting looks like it should.

Well, hello there green screen.

But the dialogue. Oh god the dialogue.

I wouldn't mind the new lines if only the ones they made weren't so forced and dripping in awkwardness. None of the actors are particularly good at emoting and none of their character's interactions are believable.

Except for Zuko. Dev Patel, you are too good for this movie.

As Prince Zuko leaves the Southern Water Tribe, one of his firebenders happily demonstrates another unnecessary change - Firebenders can only bend fire from sources rather than generating this own.

Shyamalan said things like this and changing the pronunciation of names like Aang, avatar, Iroh were because he wanted to "honor" the source material. Later on in the movie, certain charters say it properly, like the actors gave up on their crazy director and decided to do whatever they felt like.

This is not the sort of universe requiring an overabundance of logic (my rather nitpicky post on the subject aside). If you're so in love with logic, then explain how waterbenders can just make their water freeze at will.

Or explain how exactly the avatar test Iroh does on Aang makes any sense. If flames grow, rocks float, and water um, forms perfect circles in the presence of the Avatar, how does Aang go anywhere without creating a causing rock-slides or something?

Zuko finds honor in this puddle.

Aang's escape from the warship sadly ends any sort of clear direction this plot had. He takes Katara and Sokka on Appa (carefully zoomed in on the saddle so that we never really have to see the expensive CGI mess) to his home at the Southern Air Temple, unaware that 100 years have passed.

Keep in mind this is 19 minutes into the movie. They got on a strange animal with a strange boy
 and flew thousand of miles away from their home without even knowing his name. 

The revelation that everyone he knows and loves was mercilessly slaughtered decades ago is a little...abrupt.

Is it rude of me to talk about how fake those bones look?

But at least it triggers the Avatar state and sends Aang to the spirit world for the first time.

That's supposed to be a dragon, in case you can't tell. It's kind of a mix between representing the dragon Avatar Roku had in the show and a quasi-God Spirit that acts how people with very confused notions about Eastern religions think they should. A mess. I'm not sure why they didn't just cast an Avatar Roku to be ghostly and awesome.

We could take a break right now and talk about Zuko's scenes. All things considered, they're not bad, establishing his history, motivations, and relationships with other quite nicely. For the most part, the Fire Nation is the most accurately depicted of the Four Nations.

For the most part. There's an unjustifiable amount of Fire Lord Ozai in this and his effect is completely wasted.

See? He's this all-powerful figure that literally sits on a throne of flames. But the thing that makes him truly scary is the hidden face. Fear goes very well with the unknown, allowing our wonderfully creative minds to do all the work of conjuring up some hideous monster that gobbles up children for snacks. When you finally did get to see his full face, he instantly became less scary.

It's a technique that's been used with a ton of cartoon villains and for some reason it's always the first thing to go with movie adaptations.

Can you even tell which one is the Fire Lord in that scene?

Right, let's talk about some Earthbenders for a change. I'm sure you've seen this famous scene by now.

It's not that it take give flailing earth benders to move a tiny stone.
It's just a horribly filmed scene. 

It is true, however, that the entire thing takes place in the middle of an Earth village, unlike the metal ship that was so effective in the series. I assume that there just wasn't room in the budget for yet another CGI Fire Nation ship, so they went with the village of people too downtrodden to fight back.

Also, poor Haru was turned into a seven year old.

And most people thought he was a girl.

Luckily for Haru's village, Aang makes a five-second motivational speech that manages to wake up their brains. Having come to the realization that they are Earthbenders and that Firebenders can only draw from tiny, crappy fires, they have that horrible fight choreography and retake the village. They also manage to cram in references to the Waterbending Scroll and Kyoshi Warrior episodes.

Apparently they filmed a more complete Kyoshi sequence but then cut it to save time with the 3D conversion (because that was completely necessary).

First you take our title and then you force 3D back into popularity?
Will the outrages ever cease? 

And I am probably most upset about the lack of the Kyoshi Warriors. It was a great episode, one of the best in the entire series, and it had important character moments for all of the characters as both individuals and as a group.

I could go on like this for the rest of the night. 

What follows is a truly useless montage. The Gaang are shown heading towards the Northern Water Tribe, sparking several rebellions in minor Earth Kingdom villages, but it doesn't show them bonding as friends or even growing in skill with their weapons or bending. By the time they get to their destination,   I'm about as emotionally invested as a spork.

So? What of it? Also, yes, shlong hair. Moving on.

The Northern Water Tribe stuff is boring preparations for war and Sokka falling in love with the princess and it takes up half of the movie. For all the time spent there, it doesn't even touch on the interesting issues, like Princess Yue's betrothal and Katara struggling against the sexism of the Waterbending Master. Instead they just wander around and train and never make an issue about the fact that their Avatar is a pacifist.

Smoke mixed with water to make black snow.
Also known as a ripoff of Doctor Who, your highness.

So the Fire Nation attacks again and there is a flood off suitable fight scenes. Not much talking, good graphics, close to the end = definitely the best parts of the movie. Then Zhao kills the Moon Spirit in front of Iroh.

Iroh used Righteous Fury. It was super effective.

If you have enough chi or strength or cookies or something as a Firebender then you can channel it to make fire from nothing. This becomes a point at the very end when Fire Lord Ozai details his plan to use Sozin's comet to make every Firebender capable of this and blahblahblah.

They're never getting the sequel so who cares?

Now, Iroh doesn't actually attack anyone with his fire. He just sort of startles them all away by showing off what he could theoretically do. It's like the wimpy teacher finally snapped and is screaming at everyone. This is a recurring theme. When Aang finally gets over his crushing survivor guilt (with help from the creepy dragon spirit and the ocean spirit), he enters the Avatar state and goes to show the Fire Nation Armada who's boss. By that I mean he raises a wall of water and lowers it.
It is supposed to look this.

What he actually does is this.

That's good enough for some people. The Fire Nation see the tallest of water walls and promptly sail as fast as possible in the other direction. The Northern Water Tribe is left alone and Aang acknowledges his responsibility as the Avatar.

His first act is to invite you to erase this whole thing from your mind. 

There is an episode called the Ember Island Players that had the Gaang watching a horrible play about themselves and their adventures. Aang was played by a girl, Katara tearbended, and Sokka made bad food jokes. It was more accurate than this movie.

In case you were unclear, I'm calling this movie a textbook case of Adaptation Decay.

Crikey that was long. If you read this far, I love you and admire your dedication. Let us all take comfort in the news that Nick just ordered an additional 26 episodes for Legend of Korra, not counting  the already ordered Season 2. So that probably means we're getting a Book 3 and a Book 4. My excitement cannot be contained.