Rest
All these years later I still chuckle at what a fucking moron that guy is.
It's always hard to know where you fit into the spectrum on consensus. I usually find that my opinions about movies differ from the most vocal groups here on GAF. Years ago, television viewers were blessed with the best cartoon ever to be aired, "Avatar: The Last Airbender." It sadly only lasted three short seasons, and the final episode seemed like a story that should have taken about an hour to tell compressed into 20 minutes, but over all it was satisfying. But, since it ended so soon, it left you wanting more.
Well, what better to fill the gap it left than for a studio to make a live action adaptation? With a renowned director like M. Night Shyamalan no less? That's what I thought anyway, but the internet seemed to disagree. Not one person had anything good to say about it, but it always seems that way when you adapt something to another medium. Surely this was just another case of fans wanting to be told the same exact story the exact same way all over again, instead of just embracing the new version for what it was, right?
A couple weeks ago I was ordering some DVDs from my local library, and since I'd recently watched the entire cartoon, thought it was about time I finally watched the movie. I looked it up, another branch had it, I ordered it and waited.
What I was hoping would happen was something like this: the internet hate machine having cooled down and long forgotten a movie from years ago, I'd be able watch it, enjoy, and find some likeminded people to discuss it with online. If only.
"The Last Airbender" is hot steaming garbage. No, it's a hot steaming festering garbage salad with diarrhea dressing. I have never seen a movie where every single line of dialog was absolutely terrible until yesterday. Every written line was bad, ever actor's delivery was universally terrible. One thing I hate in movies is a character repeating verbatim dialog from something else with no irony, but the one line that wasn't headspinningly terrible was exactly that. What makes that more irritating is that it was a quote from the TV show, and it shed light on the fact that they could have just lifted the dialog from the show 99% of the time and the movie would have been much, much better.
Another issue with the movie was the filmmakers mangling the story with new exposition that was entirely un needed. The basic idea of the show is this: bad guys want to take over the world, bad guys invade other countries, bad guys enact complete genocide on one of them, the ensuing war lasts over 100 years. You don't need to add anything to that to show how bad the bad guys are, they're clearly fucking evil. But that wasn't good enough for Shyamalan or whoever wrote this thing. They had to add in some bullshit about the Fire Nation doing this as a direct act of religious disobedience to group of guiding "spirits," or, as George Lucas called it, "The Force."
The last straw for me was a scene where for no apparent reason Aang water bends, fire bends, and earth bends in front of Uncle Iroh. Basically, Zuko and Iroh have captured Aang and put bendable materials in front of him. For whatever reason, Aang bends every single one of them in front of them, when they will quite obviously try to kill him if he does this. What's worse, as a viewer you know that Aang understands what will happen when he does this because of the horrified look on his face as they set each material in front of him and watch him bend it. Since Aang knows what's going to happen, why does he do it? They don't instruct him to, he just does it on his own. Why?
Truth be told, this movie was terrible and I didn't make it much further than that. They went to the Air Temple and I'd had enough, so I ejected it. I could tell it wasn't going to improve, so I gave up the ghost. Though I hate to say it, the internet was right. This movie sucks.
Well, what better to fill the gap it left than for a studio to make a live action adaptation? With a renowned director like M. Night Shyamalan no less? That's what I thought anyway, but the internet seemed to disagree. Not one person had anything good to say about it, but it always seems that way when you adapt something to another medium. Surely this was just another case of fans wanting to be told the same exact story the exact same way all over again, instead of just embracing the new version for what it was, right?
A couple weeks ago I was ordering some DVDs from my local library, and since I'd recently watched the entire cartoon, thought it was about time I finally watched the movie. I looked it up, another branch had it, I ordered it and waited.
What I was hoping would happen was something like this: the internet hate machine having cooled down and long forgotten a movie from years ago, I'd be able watch it, enjoy, and find some likeminded people to discuss it with online. If only.
"The Last Airbender" is hot steaming garbage. No, it's a hot steaming festering garbage salad with diarrhea dressing. I have never seen a movie where every single line of dialog was absolutely terrible until yesterday. Every written line was bad, ever actor's delivery was universally terrible. One thing I hate in movies is a character repeating verbatim dialog from something else with no irony, but the one line that wasn't headspinningly terrible was exactly that. What makes that more irritating is that it was a quote from the TV show, and it shed light on the fact that they could have just lifted the dialog from the show 99% of the time and the movie would have been much, much better.
Another issue with the movie was the filmmakers mangling the story with new exposition that was entirely un needed. The basic idea of the show is this: bad guys want to take over the world, bad guys invade other countries, bad guys enact complete genocide on one of them, the ensuing war lasts over 100 years. You don't need to add anything to that to show how bad the bad guys are, they're clearly fucking evil. But that wasn't good enough for Shyamalan or whoever wrote this thing. They had to add in some bullshit about the Fire Nation doing this as a direct act of religious disobedience to group of guiding "spirits," or, as George Lucas called it, "The Force."
The last straw for me was a scene where for no apparent reason Aang water bends, fire bends, and earth bends in front of Uncle Iroh. Basically, Zuko and Iroh have captured Aang and put bendable materials in front of him. For whatever reason, Aang bends every single one of them in front of them, when they will quite obviously try to kill him if he does this. What's worse, as a viewer you know that Aang understands what will happen when he does this because of the horrified look on his face as they set each material in front of him and watch him bend it. Since Aang knows what's going to happen, why does he do it? They don't instruct him to, he just does it on his own. Why?
Truth be told, this movie was terrible and I didn't make it much further than that. They went to the Air Temple and I'd had enough, so I ejected it. I could tell it wasn't going to improve, so I gave up the ghost. Though I hate to say it, the internet was right. This movie sucks.
