Campaign Creations

I must say, I was surprised by M. Night Shyamalan's abilities with this film. I mean, his reputation precedes him, but this was truly something special. The moment the first rolling text started (Star Wars style, mind you) and I heard the voice of the 15 year old girl playing Katara, I knew this was going to be different. This movie was the beginning of a new standard for M. Night Shyamalan films. And with two more additions to the franchise on their way, I don't know how he can possibly top this. It was that bad.

Shyamalan is pretty terrible, but this is a whole new level of awful. I don't even know where to begin, so I'll start with the rolling text. Some of you may have seen the show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and grown accustomed to the word "avatar" being thrown around several times an episode. Well, picture that, but every time they say it, it is pronounced "ahvatar." That may not seem all that bad to you, but it gets worse. They do the same thing with several characters' names as well. Aang is now pronounced Ahng, Sokka is Soakka, Iroh is Earoh, etc. Not a huge deal, right? This was all in the first 15 mintues. There is much more.

Fans of the show will know how the bending works. There is water, earth, fire, and air. Each bending type requires a material to bend: air for the airbenders, earth for the earthbenders, water (coming from the air moisture, plants, bodies of water, snow, and even people if you are really skilled) for waterbenders, and heat for firebenders (mostly from body heat). The first three benders were pretty consistent, but firebenders, in the movie, needed a source of flame to bend. Again, so what? Firebenders are the bad guys and they were so menacing in the show because they could bend out of almost nothing. That is a pretty big dependency to give them, considering they are supposed to be taking over the world.

Fans of the show will also know that the greatest portion of the whole series was not the action or concept, but the character interaction. The script for this movie was so botched, confusing, and all over the place that I barely understood what was going on and I've seen almost every episode. Sokka isn't funny, Katara isn't strong, Aang isn't palyful, and Zuko isn't fearsome. It's like they are all the opposite of what they were supposed to be. And you see literally no bond between any of the characters. No chemistry, no intelligent, logical, coherent conversation, nothing. This was, by far, the biggest disappointment of the whole film, but what can you expect from M. Night?

Bending takes FOREVER in the movie. It seemed like the characters would have been better off just running up to the benders they were fighting and punching them in the face. That's how slow and open it was.

One thing I will give it is that the effects were half-decent. But, in these days, that's kinda a requirment for any film. The worst of the worst movies at least look pretty.

There is the whole race problem with the film that a lot of people were complaining about, but finding actors with the right skill sets and ethinicities and having them be able to speak clear, fluent English can't be the easiest thing to do, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have done a lot better. I would have rather seen good actors with stunt doubles for the action that looked nothing like them than what they gave us. Surprisingly enough, the kid who played Aang, whom has no acting experience at all, wasn't even the worst of them. Everyone was pretty bad, but Sokka was the worst by far.

I remember reading an interview from M. Night Shyamalan on why he decided to make a movie out of Avatar: The Last Airbender and he responded by saying that his 5 year old daughter loved the show and dressed up like Katara for Halloween. He said he was intrigued by the concept and thought it would make a great film. However, he neglected to mention that that is clearly where his involvement with the show ended. I'm convinced that he has never once watched an episode of the show (neither have any of the cast or crew, for that matter) and the entire screenplay was written and directed based on exactly how a 5 year old described it. I'm dead serious. Give a 5 year old the power to make a movie, a fully functional crew and a semi-functional cast that has no idea what's going on, and The Last Airbender is what you get.

My only question is how did Nickelodeon let this happen? How did the writers of the show let this happen? To any fan of the show, making a movie out of it seems like a fool-proof idea for awesomeness and success. Yet M. Night Shyamalan never ceases to amaze me with his talent for ruining a screenplay. But, then again, he "wrote" the screenplay for this movie, so that is a double dose of failure right there.

I bought a copy of the first season of the show immediatley afterwards so I could drown out the awfulness of this terrible film. In the last words of Roger Ebert's review of the movie "I hope the title of the film is prophetic."

Rating: 1 out of 5

I actually saw "The Last Airbender: Revealed" on Nickelodeon yesterday and Shyamalan explained some of the things about the film. Namely:

• He changed pronunciations to "sound more asian".
• He picked the actor for Aang off the internet.
• He gave the firebenders a dependency because he thought it was too much for them to be able to bend anywhere they wanted unlike the other benders.
• He shot many, many scenes involving the Kyoshi Warriors, and decided to not include them in the movie.

I watch the show on occasion, and think it's very good, much better than the usual garbage that pervades Nickelodeon these days, and I was interested in seeing this movie. But after reading so many reviews that say it's horrible, I think I'll just redbox it.

I like how he changed the names to be more asian yet the only asian in the movie is the bad guy and everyone else is white.

Yeah, the Fire Nation is India in Shyamalan's opinion, I guess. All of the firebenders looked like that. Iroh was the only non-Indian actor out of them all, and he was (I believe) Iranian.

It's really a shame that Shyamalan approached this film the way he did. I heard that he held video auditions for Aang, so that isn't incredibly shocking that he used the internet for it, but I kinda expected it to be a little more professional. There aren't many famous white kids who are good at martial arts, though, so I can't criticize his decision that much. I think the names might have been to quell the fans' outrage that everyone was white in the movie, but he probably just pissed them off even more. The whole fire dependency kinda makes sense, but airbenders don't have a dependency and earthbenders are almost never not on solid ground, so they barely have one either. Waterbenders have the biggest one, but at least water is naturally occuring whereas fire isn't, commonly. They gave the Fire Nation, the most fearsome and powerful of all the nations, the biggest dependency. And cutting the Kyoshi Warriors was a huge mistake. He couldn't have possibly harmed his movie any more than he did by leaving them in, so I don't see his logic in that. Maybe he wanted to cut down the time, but, with the amount of content each season has, the film could have easily used another hour of footage. Maybe that would have given him time to flesh out his characters more so they don't seem so transparent and emotionless.

To be honest, I had high hopes for this movie when I first heard about it. I thought that it would be the franchise to turn Shyamalan's career around, but he dug it into an even deeper hole. He is stuck in the folly of his own style. He is incapable of directing a movie with legitimate emotion and that's always been the way he worked. It worked well in The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs, but everything after that was just ridiculous. He needs to branch out and try new things. And he must NEVER write his own script again. If the thought of him writing the second and third scripts even crosses his mind, he should call me. I'll write it for him.

Is airbender a creative way of saying fart master?

IskatuMesk wrote: Is airbender a creative way of saying fart master?

Yeah, like Crapbender.


Personally, I didn't even bother watching the series on account of it not appearing interesting enough. Kind of glad I didn't bother even seeing this.

thebrowncloud wrote: My only question is how did Nickelodeon let this happen? How did the writers of the show let this happen?

1 - Money
2 - They probably don't own the IP

thebrowncloud wrote: Shyamalan is pretty terrible, but this is a whole new level of awful. I don't even know where to begin, so I'll start with the rolling text. Some of you may have seen the show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and grown accustomed to the word "avatar" being thrown around several times an episode. Well, picture that, but every time they say it, it is pronounced "ahvatar." That may not seem all that bad to you, but it gets worse. They do the same thing with several characters' names as well. Aang is now pronounced Ahng, Sokka is Soakka, Iroh is Earoh, etc. Not a huge deal, right? This was all in the first 15 mintues. There is much more.

Yeah whatever... it's actually the cartoon that had it wrong. Particularly grating if you know how Mai is supposed to be pronounced. No, you can't argue with this, it's wrong. If you want to pull a foreign name you can at least try to pronounce it right.

Not defending the film; however, here's one minor clarification that I noted in the film that seems to have been left out here.

Spoiler

Um, the Firebenders needed a source; however, later in the film the General proceeded to use his body heat as a source. Furthermore, the Lord indicates that this kind of control will become possible for all the Fire Nation for whatever reason, some age of fire or w/e.

Regardless, the uncle uses it in the moon cave and all the fire nation soldiers run out saying, "he's bending with no source", or the such. Not saying that repairs the entire movie, but there you go. Uncle obviously learnt to harness the energy of his inner chi in order to exert fire bending from his body heat.

Oh, and the prince also did it in order to break out from below the ice.

Fire nation in this movie seem like a group of massive morons, so those who have turned their backs from the spirits seem to have forgotten how to bend properly. Anyways, seems like the General and the prince, or at least the General forsure, respect the spirits and what they represent. That spirituality seems to give the General a leg up in the bending arena. :p

RazorclawX wrote:
Yeah whatever... it's actually the cartoon that had it wrong. Particularly grating if you know how Mai is supposed to be pronounced. No, you can't argue with this, it's wrong. If you want to pull a foreign name you can at least try to pronounce it right.

Yeah, that was one name that they definitely pronounced wrong. I remember I read the name of that character before I heard her name in the show and I remember thinking, "Wait, what?" The other names in the series didn't always sound 100% asian either, but I never really considered the show to be all that asian. Watching it, it felt like I was looking at regular, everyday western kids in an asian-esque environment.

Dread wrote: Not defending the film; however, here's one minor clarification that I noted in the film that seems to have been left out here.

Spoiler

Um, the Firebenders needed a source; however, later in the film the General proceeded to use his body heat as a source. Furthermore, the Lord indicates that this kind of control will become possible for all the Fire Nation for whatever reason, some age of fire or w/e.

Regardless, the uncle uses it in the moon cave and all the fire nation soldiers run out saying, "he's bending with no source", or the such. Not saying that repairs the entire movie, but there you go. Uncle obviously learnt to harness the energy of his inner chi in order to exert fire bending from his body heat.

Oh, and the prince also did it in order to break out from below the ice.

Fire nation in this movie seem like a group of massive morons, so those who have turned their backs from the spirits seem to have forgotten how to bend properly. Anyways, seems like the General and the prince, or at least the General forsure, respect the spirits and what they represent. That spirituality seems to give the General a leg up in the bending arena. :p

Spoiler

True, true. I feel like that was such a tacked on, added bonus for Zuko and Iroh. It makes sense to me that, since Zuko was learning under him, Iroh would have taught him to manipulate body heat, but that is really a no-brainer. Having them be the only two who thought of using themselves as a source just makes everyone else look stupid. The Fire Nation does indeed seem like a bunch of ignorant morons when it comes to the spirits. Admiral Zhao was so much more strategic about the way he carried out his plan in the show. He seemed like he knew what he was doing and had a rough sense of what the consequences were. In the movie, he seemed like he was thinking “No big deal. Just kill the moon and be done with this thing.” He also contradicted himself in the movie when Iroh was warning him about the consequences and he retorted by calling it superstitious nonsense. By that logic, he doesn’t even believe his plan will work. The characters were just so poorly written that everyone looks dumber.