‘The Last Airbender’: Still a Catastrophe 10 Years Later
Ten years ago, one of the worst movies came to theaters. Not only was it an embarrassment to cinema, but it was an embarrassment to the show it was based on: Avatar The Last Airbender.
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, The Last Airbender follows the story of Aang (Noah Ringer), a young monk who has the ability to control all four elements: water, earth, fire and air. He lives in a world where a majority of people can control only one of those elements, and he must stop the Fire Nation from conquering everything.
As mentioned, this is an adaptation of the show, Avatar the Last Airbender. Unlike the show, however, this movie is complete and utter garbage. The characters. The plot. The pacing. The dialogue. Everything.
I remembered going to the midnight screening with my cousin. We both dressed up as characters from the show, took fun pics beforehand (which I won’t share because that would be embarrassing) and discussed how hyped we were to see our favorite characters appear on the big screen. Oh, how naive we were.
When the movie started, the whole theatre erupted in applause. But when the end credits rolled up, the theatre fell into silence. Well, except for one individual, whom loudly cursed Shyamalan’s name when his credit appeared. At first I didn’t think much of the film, perhaps I became numb with shock. In just two hours, everything that I loved about the show fell to disarray before my eyes.
10 years later, I reluctantly decided to watch the film again, this time with my boyfriend so I wouldn’t suffer alone. It’s still as horrible as it was a decade ago, and I think I might’ve broke my boyfriend.
He’s good now, don’t worry.
Now, let’s get into the specifics of what’s wrong with this film. The most controversial aspect is the whitewashing. The film takes place in a world heavily Asian influenced; however, a vast majority of the cast is White. What’s most alarming though, is that all the bad guys are POC. Needless to say, that’s an awful move on the director. He’s a POC himself so why did he make that decision? Who knows, but whatever the case, it’s poor taste.
Speaking of characters, they’re terrible. I know you shouldn’t be harsh on child actors, but they chose the wrong kid to play Aang. Aang in the show is happy-go-lucky and fun. Ringer on the other hand, played Aang as if he had depression. Now, why would you want to follow a character who seems miserable through out a film aimed for children? You don’t.
Look at Aang in the movie:
Now look at Aang in the show:
Who would you want to follow? Aang in the show, of course. Sure, original Aang has aangst (pun intended), but it’s not all the time. He knows when to be serious, when to be funny, when to be sad, etc. Aang’s a compelling character but for some odd reason, they butchered his character.
Same goes with everyone else in the movie. None of the actors portrayed their counterparts in an appropriate light. Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) is also miserable and has the eyes of a serial killer.
In the show, Sokka is the comic relief. He’s funny, but has the traits of a leader. Rathbone shows none of that; instead, he’s standing idly in the background most of the time, wandering around with little to no direction. No one has direction.
The only character who may have been slightly good was Iroh (Shaun Toub). Granted, Toub’s portrayal is also different from his counterpart, but you can tell he’s at least trying. No one else in the film is giving one care in the world. They’re either gloomy, a plank of wood, or both.
As for the plot, what plot? It’s rushed. Exposition is thrown everywhere. We’re constantly told what’s going on instead of properly experiencing the scenes. No one has an actual conversation. It’s none stop, “hey, let me tell you about this important plot device” and “hey, we must travel to this specific location before we can go to another specific location, and we must do it quickly instead of focusing on character development.”
The film is trying to cram in so many hours of television into a two hour flick, and so everything is a jumbled mess. Characters aren’t given time to relax, the audience isn’t given time to relax. We’re constantly moving to one scene to another and I can’t recall one that’s properly paced.
Getting back to poor exposition, the worst example is when we learn the backstory of the exiled prince, Zuko (Dev Patel). Zuko, for some dumb reason, asks a random kid to recall what happened to him in the past. Zuko’s in disguise, so the kid doesn’t know that he’s the prince, but this was such a weird and unnecessary scene. There are better ways to tell a backstory without, y’know, asking some unknown kid to tell it. Like, what? Why? Another strange thing about it is, considering that Zuko has such a tragic backstory, why in the world would he want to be reminded of it?
There are so many stupid scenes in this movie, if I counted every one of them, we would be here all day. It’s not a ‘so bad it’s good’ kind of film, it’s a special kind of bad that’ll leave you in a bad mood afterwards.
Overall, The Last Airbender is a terrible adaptation of a beloved television show. It does the characters dirty. It does the story dirty. It does everything dirty. If you’ve never seen the show and only the movie, then you’ll get the wrong impression of its source material. Avatar the Last Airbender is a great show that everyone should see. I wrote an article about it here, actually. As for the movie, it’s best to avoid it at all costs.
