Review of The Last Airbender (2010) by Brinna B — 13 Feb 2016

M. Night Shyamalan succeeded two things: 1.) Adapting a popular animated series with more faithfulness retained than what "Dragonball Evolution" showed; and 2.) Opened a door of opportunity for this to be improved with better choices and results. His goal was to do this film with grace as he'd watched the first season "Book One: Water" and knows the fact that it would make a good movie. Well it both did and didn't.

The reason why the film's good is that he'd done it as a remake from how his vision was for the original's age group. He also gave the film reasonable logics on the show's effects. But that can be looked as a mistake when the majority of those aware of Nickelodeon's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" franchise were older than the focused age group, and satisfactory was complicated and hard to feel. However when watching the film, which was given a makeover of a modern "epic" fantasy, there's at least an unspecified source of an entertaining value that represents enjoyment at least.

Although the more I watch this, the film's level decreases. This brings out the reasons why this film isn't too good. It starts with Shyamalan's vision being poorly executed, and from watching the film, the narrative structure of Book One was quick and mostly relies on the narrator's role. So meaning that the narrative structure was a lazy one as someone was simply explaining Book One. He should've took his time and turn his adaptation into a blockbuster than going with his preferred pacing zone that he always use on his films.

Similar to "Dragonball Evolution", the film deserves a better adaptation with a better treatment on the handling of the structure, characterization and the casting in some areas, and both at least some of the pronunciations and the nature matching the original's when it feels cold on film. Both films don't deserve weak treatments and weak performances in comparison to what they're based on.

The only ways for this film to be forgiven is that the possible adaptations of Book Two and Three turns out way better and ignores the predecessor's flaws by having significant changes in the flawed areas. Other ways would be a multi-parted remake that can follow the same plan, or just hope that "The Legend of Korra" results a better film. This film managed to be better than Book Three's episode "The Ember Island Players", but it's still much inferior to the rest of the series.

Shyamalan's attempt to adapt the popular animated series was blown (he blew it), but there was an understandable reason behind the treatment he'd done and envisioned and we should just accept the film's existence, if possible. Even if it's mediocre in the areas that makes the film, there are at least some slight enjoyment to the entertaining value that makes this film likable with logics, weaknesses and flaws. Satisfactory would be hard to get to. (B-).