Thursday, July 1, 2010

The Last Airbender......

I don't think there was anyone more excited about The Last Airbender than the group of people at the midnight showing of the movie premiere at midnight this morning. People were dressed up as characters from the tv show, some had arrows drawn on their bodies. I made sure to wear my Appa shirt to show off my own personal fandom. Unfortunately, it was not worth the effort.
I don't want to give out any spoilers for anyone that wants to see it but know that I thought that it was not a good movie..... at all. However, beyond getting the names wrong, Aang was called Ang, AND changing huge chunks of the stories original plot, the movie was just poorly made. I don't blame M. Shamalan though. It just seems like the movie ran out of money. However, rather than using lower quality special effects, the rest of the movie suffered for the few special effects that there were.
The editing of the movie was bizarrely paced. Some sections seemed to drag while other, more important sections, flashed by.
The dialogue was atrocious. For some bizarre reason it seemed as if someone thought it would be a good idea to leave out EVERY pronoun in the movie. This caused some incredibly redundant sentences. This was especially true when referring to the Avatar. I have no idea why.
The bending was also done in a way that seemed to be saving money. Rather than having each martial arts move cause some sort of bending, the martial artists would do these incredible complex moves and then a small little fire blast or air blast would appear. It seems unintentional and another sign that this movie had a very low budget.
Overall, as a fan I cannot seem to fathom why things were made the way they were and why Nickelodeon studios decided to make the movie the way they did. What I do know is that this was a film that ran out of money far before it ended and this combined with poor writing ruined this movie for me. I would say that anyone who was a fan of the show should probably pass and anyone who has never seen it, catch it when it comes to Nickelodeon later this year.

Effects: 8
Story: 6
Dialogue: 2
Overall: 5

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