Fuck you, M. Night

Seriously. Fuck you. I’m done with you. I had your back with The Village, I actually REALLY liked that one. I was on your side with Lady in the Water. I said, “You know what? This was a little different than the other movies. So what? It was still entertaining.” I even thought The Happening wasn’t terrible. I enjoyed it. I didn’t think it was GREAT, like Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, but I still had a fun time watching it.

But The Last Airbender? Holy wow. This movie was AWFUL.

I know there have been a shit-ton of bad reviews. I didn’t actually READ them, but I’d heard said that it lacked the emotion and humour of the animated series. Man, that’s an UNDERSTATEMENT. I went into this movie WANTING to like it. PREPARED to give it more chances than many other have. I’ve often seen movies and enjoyed them (to some degree) regardless of the feelings of the general public, so I thought, “Maybe I won’t LOVE this, but I bet I’ll at least like it somewhat!” No such luck.

Be prepared, there are be spoilers ahead…

First off, and now I know this doesn’t affect story at all, but it is REALLY annoying and completely pulls you out of the story for anyone who was a fan of the cartoon, but for some unknown, DUMB reason, M. Night has changed the pronunciation of a bunch of names!! Aang is now pronounced “Ah-ng,” Avatar is “Ah-vah-tar,” Sokka is the WORST, pronounced “Soak-ah” — ugh, it makes me shudder just THINKING about it — Iroh is “Ee-roh”…I think that’s it, except for, no joke, someone says “Yin & Yang” and pronounces it “Yin & Yah-ng”!!! What the fuck?!?! WHY?!?! It’s not like you’re adapting the movie from a book where no one has said these names out loud! What POSSIBLE reason can there be for this?!!? Arrrghhh!! Made me so angry and annoyed the whole time. And SOAK-AH just sounds stupid.

Secondly, the acting. Ohmygod, TERRIBLE. Just AWFUL. Reminds me of the terrible acting in Twilight. Only I care less about THOSE movies. Everyone is just so fucking STIFF! Yeah, dude from Twilight, you are JUST as bad in this as you are in those!

Third, yes, NO emotion, NO humour. There’s like ONE joke and it’s so poorly delivered, no one laughs. And honestly, if I hadn’t seen the cartoon I wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass about any of these characters. That’s the BEST thing about the cartoon! You REALLY start to care about them! Not so in this. Not at all.

And holy CRAP, don’t get me started on the bending!! Jeebus! It took them FOREVER to bend! In the time it took them to bend something, they could have been punched in the face! There was like ONE scene with Aang doing some super-cool QUICK bending. Oh, and get this, the fire nation can’t CREATE fire in this version! They can only manipulate it! (Now a friend of mine says he never liked that about the cartoon since none of the other benders could create their elements, BUT, I think it’s a nice trade-off since fire doesn’t exist on it’s own like water, air & earth do. But either way, just stick to the fucking show!)

Zuko! Holy Christ! If you thought he whined too much about his dad on the cartoon! This kid is the WORST! And he’s not bad-ass enough! In season 1, that kid was an a-hole! This one’s a little bitch!

The ONLY thing it had going for it was that Appa & Momo are still adorable. But they’re BARELY in it and completely useless. The scenery was gorgeous, and the few times they DID bend, it was kinda cool. Oh, and the characters LOOKED the part OK. Except for the Fire Lord who was oh-so-NOT-AT-ALL-SCARY. Sigh.

Man, the PACING on this thing was awful too! It’s so rushed! I know it’s a lot to fit in a movie, but it CAN be done! Some shit can be cut out, like the Blue Spirit bit where he rescues Aang. Leave that out, so you can flesh out the story more. SOMEthing! Like, the kids leave the water tribe and then they’re just in the Earth kingdom helping an occupied section. No discussion, nothing. Ugh. It was just so weird. But really, the acting man. Just terrible. I don’t get it.

So, I’m basically saying, “don’t bother.” I mean, I know if you’re as big a fan of the cartoon as I am, you’ll still want to see for yourself. But be prepared. I THOUGHT I was prepared. I wasn’t. This was one of the worst adaptations of something I liked that I’ve ever seen. Serisouly. Worse than Eragon. Simply awful. Which is so depressing.

You know, the whole time, I’m thinking, “Man, Peter Jackson would have made this shit AWESOME."


The End.

Just go buy the real thing: