The Last Airbender Review

There's only one pair of glasses that will make The Last Airbender a tolerable adventure and it's not the 3-D kind. Based on the Nickelodeon animated TV series, "Airbender" is a kids movie, fully equipped with a PG rating and young protagonists asked to shoulder a majority of the workload. Expect just that: a film for young audiences. In a post Lord of the Rings movie world, the expectations of fantasy are higher than ever: epic action, breathtaking landscapes and character-driven stories piloted by professional actors. Armed with the budget of an epic, The Last Airbender gives the illusion of such a film and will be judged primarily in all the ways that it fails to live up to those standards. But through the lens of a child, this film must appear as an awing big-budget spectacle that delivers itself directly at their eye level. If much-maligned filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan "did it all for the kids," I suspect he succeeded, but for fantasy fans and matured fans of the TV series, the story is a heck of a dud. Shyamalan fails this time as a writer. The script serves only to push the plot and is loaded with almost nothing but background information, running rampant like one of those faulty robotic floor cleaners scurrying about frantically with some false notion of purpose when it hits a corner and keeps backing up and re-treading over the same places, never covering all the desired spots. The oft-repeated concept is that Aang (Noah Ringer) is the last of the Air nation (there's Earth, Water and Fire as well) because they were exterminated by the Fire nation over the course of the last hundred years, during which time he was frozen in ice. The reason for their extermination was because the Fire nation, bent on ruling the planet, knew the next Avatar, or the ever-reincarnating human who is connected to the spirit world, can bend all four elements and exists to preserve peace, would be born an Airbender. That Avatar is Aang. Fire nation is after him (and not to kill him, because he'd be reincarnated so it's pointless) and he's destined to save the world. The script has very little faith in the fact that kids will understand that, which is probably a correct assumption in many ways, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't be able to enjoy it if the script had been geared a bit more toward the 16-and-up crowd. These young actors, Ringer and co-stars Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone as young Water nation friends that accompany Aang's adventure, are asked to deliver almost all of this information-based dialogue, which sometimes even the best actors aren't good at. You can't expect a kid to act without giving them any kind of motivation-driven lines or some kind of an emotion to play out in the scene. Only Dev Patel as the Fire prince Zuko gets that luxury. Exiled by his father and shamed in front of his people, Zuko actually has motivation and it shows in Patel's performance being the only decent one in the film aside from a few moments from the supporting character Princess Yue (Seychelle Gabriel), who impressively finds her character's motivation in a story that doesn't provide it outside of expository dialogue. As for racist accusations in the casting of this film, every race and ethnicity is represented, (Earth people are Far East Asian, Fire are Persian, Indian and Italian, Air is a mixture of ethnicities and so on), but I can certainly understand it being suspect that the main characters (most of whom are Water nation citizens) are Caucasian. Without any frame of reference from the original series and expectations as to what the characters should look like, it did not affect the film experience or manifest itself in any way other than looks alone. The visual effects, which you'd expect to be the saving grace in some way, are not prolific enough to redeem "Airbender." The best scenes were already exposed in the trailers. However, the way that different martial arts styles for each element influence the way that element is "bent" in the fight sequences is interesting and unique and the way ancient Asian beliefs are incorporated into the fantasy lore certainly prevents any accusations of unoriginal or bad material. The presentation of this viable concept is what ends up being a tangled, frantic mess, particularly for those beyond a certain age who can't simply be awe-stricken into enjoying a movie. As a fantasy epic for children, however, "Airbender" will be like nothing they've experienced before because it will feel to them as if meant for older kids but they'll be able to grasp the elaborate concept behind it. Unfortunately, it won't hook their parents or older companions too. Rating: 5/10 The Last Airbender Written and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan Starring: Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone Other Player Affinity Reviews Dinah thought: "I’ve been pulling for M. Night Shyamalan. I purchased my ticket to The Last Airbender with hopes the director would make a comeback with the film. A departure from his typical feature, The Last Airbender is an adventure rather than a thriller. Unfortunately, changing the genre did not create the output I expected. Shyamalan had a formidable task directing so many young actors, who tend to be less gifted than adults in the craft. Noah Ringer, the film’s leading young man is wooden, often holding an open-mouthed wide-eyed expression no matter the information presented him. Co-stars Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone are no better, delivering their lines without zest, emotion, or the urgency the story requires. Perhaps anticipating the difficulties for the kid stars, Shyamalan makes excessive use of tight shots, distracting thematic music, and redundant off screen narration. However, the greatest disappointment is the action sequences, all the way down to the final scene. There were no dramatic and exciting effects in presenting fights between the warring element powered nations.  The reality is action scenes that are too few, far between, and utter failures to enthrall."  Rating: 3/10 Simon thought: "How, I ask you, could a man who received a best original screenplay Oscar nomination (among other nods for The Sixth Sense) tumble so far from grace as to scribe such an utterly pathetic movie as The Last Airbender? There are more than a few poor scripts floating around Hollywood and I would not make this claim lightly, but M. Night Shyamalan’s “Airbender” could have been written by a sixth grader. Aside from Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel in the role of main villain, the acting is universally cringe-inducing and combined with the idiotic script more than once extracted an unintentional laugh. The Last Airbender was headed for the realm of an unrestricted abomination but thankfully the action ramped up in the final act and was diverting enough to forgive at least some of the preceding acts. I am still of the belief that the once great director will reclaim his past glory but with a planned trilogy for this franchise, that reincarnation does not look to be in the near future." Rating: 4/10 Player Affinity Composite Rating: 4.0/10