The Last Airbender is the newest film to join a very select group; a collection of movies that defy the tradition of critics bashing genre fiction and fans defending their favorite properties with their dying breath. Airbender joins such unforgettable works as The Spirit, Dragon Ball Evolution, and Batman and Robin, as a film that unites fans and critics in an unbreakable bond of passionate, undying hatred. If the best films are enjoyable on every level then the worst films are despicable on every level, and Airbender could be used to teach a class on that thesis. Airbender’s plot follows the same basic structure as the first season of Nickelodeon’s award winning Avatar series: Aang is a young Airbender, a monk capable of manipulating air to his advantage, who is destined to master the bending of all four elements (fire, water and earth being the others) and thus become the Avatar, the world’s greatest hero. He runs away from his responsibilities and sacrifices and ends up frozen in an iceberg. One hundred years later he is rescued by new friends Sokka and Katara of the Southern Water Tribe and the three set out to save the world from the fire nation, which has seized control in the century for which Aang has been absent.
Ironically, this is actually a fairly faithful adaptation on the surface: the story hits all the same basic beats, elemental bending works roughly the same way, and the visual style of the show is beautifully captured, especially in terms of costume and set design. However, notice how I said “on the surface." Unlike looser but more enjoyable adaptations like Kick-Ass, or Star Trek, this surface is so thin one need not look any deeper to see just how unfaithful Airbender really is to its source. Many fans’ anxieties about M. Night Shayamalan’s position as writer, director and producer were assuaged when they found out that Shayamalan is himself a huge fan of the show, but that’s what Airbender feels like: fan fiction. It has the same characters and settings and basic rules down, but it doesn’t understand what makes them special. Aang has no character, Sokka (and everyone else) is completely humorless, and no one comes off as likable, or even human. If you’ve never seen Avatar and don’t know or care about any of these characters, this movie won’t change that at all.
Even if the original show had never existed and this was completely a creation of Shayamalan, it would still be terrible (worse in fact, without the existence of an infinitely superior alternative). It’s certainly difficult to take a 20 episode epic and condense it into a movie and the strain shows: Airbender feels way too rushed, skipping over its most visually impressive and (potentially) touching moments so as to get through all the story it has to cover as soon as possible. As little as I was enjoying the film and as much as I wanted to leave, when the climactic final battle was raging, I couldn’t help thinking that I should still be watching the middle of the movie. The film should have been three hours; a long time to sit through a movie to be sure, but as the Lord of the Rings films taught us, a good story is worth taking that kind of time for, and Airbender could’ve been that story. So why isn’t it? Because of M. Night Shayamalan. He’s not talentless- I loved his movie Unbreakable- but as much as he clearly enjoys the series his style is completely mismatched for the material; Avatar relies on three things to carry it: characters, atmosphere (the world, the bending, etc.) and action. Can Shayamalan do good characters? Yes, but they have to be completely humorless and act like entranced drones, which only works in specific situations and not at all for the characters and story of Avatar. Can he do atmosphere? Yes, but again, it’s only that specific kind of atmosphere all his own: dark, paranoid, and depressing, none of which really describe how Avatar’s world and mood feel. Can he do action? Well this is his first real try at it, and it’s an admirable first try, but as solid as the choreography and effects are on their own, he does present them with the necessary cinematography to make them really feel alive, and he treats the bending in an incredibly underwhelming manner, possibly out of fear that he wouldn’t be able to accomplish the sort of epic landscape altering combat seen in the show (the laughable low point for me was watching a troop of earth benders stomp into frame doing a Monty Python-esque silly walk that was supposed to pass for martial arts and using the combined power of five, six, maybe seven earth benders, they shot one tiny rock at a fire bender).
Non-fans will be mystified and uninterested, fans will be enraged. This is truly a film that will send children home from the theater in tears. However, do not give up hope: this is book one, and if the fans and the easily mislead public believe the trailers and sacrifice their pennies to this horrible beast (but not too many), maybe it’s masters at Nickelodeon will green light a sequel, but choose a better director, and maybe one of the show’s original writers. Maybe, if we can endure one truly horrendous film, then when the sequel rolls around, the Avatar will truly return. And Toph will be there. And it will be awesome.
Maybe.
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