Like many SFF fans, I was looking forward to watching M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender. Though Shyamalan has been sucking big time for the last couple of years, I thought that perhaps this would be the film that would put him back in the game.
Then I read my friend John's comment on Arrow in the Head and realized that it was not to be:
I was psyched to check out THE LAST AIRBENDER recently, hoping it would be a return to form for Shyamalan. Sadly it's not only the worst film he's made, it also tarnishes an amazing show through the magnitude of its suckiness.
And then I read the official review from the mother site, Joblo.com. Here's an extract:
THE LAST AIRBENDER is an astonishingly bad movie. After awarding TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE a 2/10, a figured I had finally seen the worst film of the summer. Instead, I hadn't even seen the worst film of the week, as THE LAST AIRBENDER manages the extraordinary task of making ECLIPSE and JONAH HEX look good.
Oh ye God, what was Shmalayan thinking? Everything about this film is so mind-bogglingly stupid, I barely know where to begin! The most obvious flaw has to be our three Lilly white protagonists.
[...]
At the very least, Shmalayan could have chosen capable actors, as the performances in this film make the awful acting I complained about yesterday after watching ECLIPSE, look award worthy.
[...]
I'm tempted to say Shmalayan's done for as a director, but despite making yet another atrocious film, I still think the guy has talent. It's been a decade since his last good film (UNBREAKABLE), but I still think he has a comeback in him. Alas, THE LAST AIRBENDER ain't it. In a summer full of bad films, THE LAST AIRBENDER pushes aside ECLIPSE and JONAH HEX to become the worst film yet. Hopefully PREDATORS and INCEPTION will save us from making this quite possibly worst summer of films ever.
Well, doesn't look that there is much to look forward to, eh?
Some hopeless believers will want to dismiss these as cheap-ass online reviews, true. Yet keep in mind that these guys get more hits per week than Gaiman and Scalzi combined. So they're not running a fly-by-night kind of gig.
Good movies are certainly coming harder and harder to come by. . . =(
Then I read my friend John's comment on Arrow in the Head and realized that it was not to be:
I was psyched to check out THE LAST AIRBENDER recently, hoping it would be a return to form for Shyamalan. Sadly it's not only the worst film he's made, it also tarnishes an amazing show through the magnitude of its suckiness.
And then I read the official review from the mother site, Joblo.com. Here's an extract:
THE LAST AIRBENDER is an astonishingly bad movie. After awarding TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE a 2/10, a figured I had finally seen the worst film of the summer. Instead, I hadn't even seen the worst film of the week, as THE LAST AIRBENDER manages the extraordinary task of making ECLIPSE and JONAH HEX look good.
Oh ye God, what was Shmalayan thinking? Everything about this film is so mind-bogglingly stupid, I barely know where to begin! The most obvious flaw has to be our three Lilly white protagonists.
[...]
At the very least, Shmalayan could have chosen capable actors, as the performances in this film make the awful acting I complained about yesterday after watching ECLIPSE, look award worthy.
[...]
I'm tempted to say Shmalayan's done for as a director, but despite making yet another atrocious film, I still think the guy has talent. It's been a decade since his last good film (UNBREAKABLE), but I still think he has a comeback in him. Alas, THE LAST AIRBENDER ain't it. In a summer full of bad films, THE LAST AIRBENDER pushes aside ECLIPSE and JONAH HEX to become the worst film yet. Hopefully PREDATORS and INCEPTION will save us from making this quite possibly worst summer of films ever.
Well, doesn't look that there is much to look forward to, eh?
Some hopeless believers will want to dismiss these as cheap-ass online reviews, true. Yet keep in mind that these guys get more hits per week than Gaiman and Scalzi combined. So they're not running a fly-by-night kind of gig.
Good movies are certainly coming harder and harder to come by. . . =(
7 commentaires:
I attempted to watch it last night, actually, and I couldn't agree more. Poor acting, nonsensical plot, and very lame characters. I haven't seen Eclipse (don't plan to) but I can understand how this would be worse, particularly if the Shmalayan expectation was so high.
I saw a reporter interviewing fans of the show as they exited the movie theater, and their responses of how horrible the movie was were almost comical. He's talking a sequel already and I can't belive any studio would allow him to make another film.
I wish I hadn't read this.I was planning on going to see it tonight. Now what do I watch? :(
I am a huge fan of the Avatar cartoon series and saw this as a "can't screw up" movie. The series was so fun, yet had a great plot and character development. Somehow Mr. Shamalanadingdong managed to drain all the fun out of the characters while muddling up the plot enough to make it incomprehensible for people who had not followed the series. I was so dissapointed when I left the theatre. I even paid extra to watch it in 3D. That was a bad idea, as the 3D, like everything else in the movie, was subpar. :(
Oh well, maybe he'll get it right when he adapts season 2. Ok, even an eternal optimist like me doesn't believe that.
Jeff
There are some good parts to it. I think the Water-Bending, the Fire Nation ships, and some of the imagery was well done, although not anything really special or unique. The actors playing Zhao and Uncle Iroh do pretty good jobs with what they have (Zhao's actor was quite obviously hamming it up, and it was actually fairly funny), and the actor playing Zuko occasionally has flashes of quality in his otherwise mediocre acting.
Other than that, everything else was terrible. The kids' acting was terrible (Aang's acting was the least bad out of it), but I don't blame them too much for it. They're kids, after all, and it's probably doubly hard for kid actors to keep it real in front of a green screen.
Less forgiveable was the use of voice-over narration as a lazy way to cram in a whole ton of characterization and background knowledge, made worse with the use of Katara's actor as the narrator voice (I was cringing whenever she started talking in "narrator" mode). Or the terrible bad choreography.
I think Shyamalan has a gift for cinematography and sound. He should never, ever be allowed to write another screenplay though - I think if someone else wrote/produced a movie and he just acted as director it would turn out a lot better.
What has happened to Shyamalan? I really enjoyed Sixth Sense and Unbreakable but recently his films have just been silly.
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