Review of The Last Airbender (2010) by Alan D — 30 May 2014

Even years after it's season finale, Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender stands as one of the family television channel's finest works. Mixing Japanese anime and American cartoon styles, the series is universally praised for its sense of humor, entertaining characters, and themes. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and in the case of Avatar: The Last Airbender, its end comes in the form of director M. Night Shaymalan. Shaymalan's adaptation of the hit show results in nothing but failures due to its wooden acting, atrocious visual effects, bland script, and overall horrible execution.

Being an adaptation, the film follows the basic story of its source material. The opening exposition explains how 100 years ago, the Fire Nation (a group of fire-wielding warriors) attacked the Water, Earth, and Air Nations (whom control their respective elements). Yet for some reason, the Avatar, the only being capable of controlling all four elements, vanished, leaving the Water, Earth, and Air Nations to suffer from the reign of the Fire Nation.

100 years later, two denizens of the Southern Water Tribe, 14-year-old Katara and 15-year-old Sokka, stumble across a huge iceberg while hunting. After cracking open the iceberg, the two siblings find a 12-year-old boy named Aang, as well as his flying bison. It's soon revealed that Aang is the long-lost Avatar, the same being spoken of in the prologue. Of course, a discovery such as this can lead to nothing but bad things, as the Fire Nation's exiled Prince Zuko begins a quest to hunt down the Avatar and bring him to his father, Fire Lord Ozai, in an attempt to regain his respect. If the plot at this point seems hard to follow, don't worry: the film's constant exposition attempts to clear up the plot.

That ultimately becomes the biggest of The Last Airbender's numerous problems. The character development, humor, and overall entertaining qualities of the show's writing are put on the sideline in favor of a lousy attempt to cram 20 episodes of the show into a 103 minute movie. Characters in the film serve no other purpose than to explain the backstory leading up to the events of the film, or events completely passed over in the script. Shaymalan has proved that he can be a good screenwriter, but The Last Airbender shows that he can just as easily be a terrible one.

With a script this bad, the acting is sure to be awful as well, and The Last Airbender doesn't disappoint in this regard. The trio of Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, and Jackson Rathbone are all very mediocre as Aang, Katara, and Sokka, respectively. None of the characters share any real chemistry, and they are all terribly unenjoyable. In fact, the cast all around the board is mediocre, even in spite of some decent actors such as Shaun Toub and Aasif Mandvi. The only real stand-out is Dev Patel as Zuko, who is easily the only redeemable asset in this movie.

As if The Last Airbender couldn't get any worse, Shaymalan tops it off by delivering some of his laziest directing. The film lacks any real excitement, any real tension, and, most of all, any real enjoyment. This all comes without mentioning the terrible visual style. For a movie based on a very visual cartoon, the special effects in The Last Airbender come off as cheaply made and not even fun to look at. Add in some completely shoehorned 3D and you've got a movie that has neither style nor substance.

Coming off of the show's excellent execution, it's absolutely appalling how awful The Last Airbender really is. Shaymalan's script is nothing more than the first season of the show condensed into 103 minutes of film, delivered by a horrible cast of actors (excluding Dev Patel). Not even the visuals can serve as entertainment for this piece of trash film. Everyone involved in the making of this film should be ashamed for making one of cinema's biggest atrocities.