#1 Frigid watched The Last Airbender
Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2010 8:23 pm
I went to see the Last Airbender last night, for free. I... Kinda want my money back.
This is a movie I wanted to like, despite an array of things that suggested bad news to me. An odd director choice to say the least, horrible casting decisions, a devastating short run time and a story choice I wouldn't have made (I would have made the movie set after season 3).
The movie all of a 100 minutes long was suppose to be a retelling of season one. It was a difficult task to shove 20 episodes into an hour and a half. One they shouldn't frankly have attempted, it should have been 2 hours at least. But for some reason they went with a short film with a long story.
The opening of the movie starts with the bending sequences that look alot like the cartoon ones, which I thought was a good choice. On the flip side, if you're gonna abandon your source material maybe you shouldn't remind me of it. We get a text crawl and voice over narration by Nicola Peltz get used to her voice because they won't show you anything, they'll just have you tell her.
The opening scene has some unimportant changes (they're on foot not on boat) but works as the cartoon does. Saddly though we don't get Aang seeing Katara first thing when he wakes up which had in the cartoon established the romance. Something that seems to have been done away with here. Instead all of that happens off screen.
Zuko finds them at the village quickly so we don't get to know the tribe (the movie is at a run here) and in a real bad editting decision they cut out Aang and Zuko making the deal.
For those of you who don't recall, it was Aang asking Zuko to spare the village if he left with Zuko. Zuko not only agreed but kept his word, something that elevated him quickly above your standard cartoon villain. Instead we get moody growling.
Let me talk about the racial breakdowns here. The water tribe is the most racial diverse group of long term isolationists I've ever seen. There are white tribespeople, Indian tribespeople and so on. Which is annoying and breaks my SoD. Look a group of people cut off from outside contact for a long period of time are going to start to blend together. It's how genetics work. Meanwhile the vast and diverse Earth Kingdom is all Chinese and our eval Fire Nation is all Indian... So the large scattered populations who interact alot with outsiders are homogeneous, while the isolated small populations are very, very heterogeneous...
Aang of course escapes after passing a test that proves he's the Avatar (it's a neat test that shows all the elements react to him standing nearby, which likely makes cooking difficult). The South Air Temple reminds me of the killing fields of Cambodia, those skulls survived a 100 years really well out in the open. Momo shows up but is really just a random effect. I pretty much ignored him. Kyoshi Island gets cut her in favor of the prison break which I thought was a poor decision at best. The Prison Break wasn't a major plot while Kyoshi Island introduced Sukki and Kyoshi the Avatar both of which became important later. Also instead of Earth Benders imprisoned on metal island which is cool, they're in a valley... made of dirt... With a metal gate and some guards they overpower real quick when Aang starts doing air stuff. The fight is also blurry due to 3d treatments on a 2d movie. No I didn't see it in 3d. Katara gets a water scroll here so the pirates are gone to.
We're told (not shown) that Aang does this in other earth villages to.
The North Air Temple is turned into a trap where he's captured by Commander Zhoa who is played really well. As you can guess the Blue Spirit rescues him. This is done really, really well but is damn dark and hard to follow. Our director seems to like having his big fights take place totally in the damn dark with everyone wearing dark colors. Zhoa is real close friend of the fire lord for some reason and a good 15 to 20 minutes of the movie is him and the fire lord talking things over. This was a dumb addition that should be thrown out to make more time for the main characters, why they felt they had to add in extra stuff while gutting the main story is beyond me.
Here we are narrated into the Northern Water Tribe. The engagement subplot is dropped (I'm okay with that) but the romance between Sokka and Yue is something we're told about and throw into full swing. The subplot about the Northern Water Tribe being anti-girl bending dicks is also dropped, (I'm not okay with that). This robs us of one of Katara's big moments. Later when Aang is meditating and Zuko attacks? They take that away from her to. Basically Katara is turned into talky girl with all her plots and big movements stolen or worse given to Aang. Given the fact that she's 12 years old or so in this movie (for some damn reason Sokka is aged up and placed in charge instead of Katara being in charge and near his age) she can't even be eye candy. She literally has nothing to do! The fight we get is when Aang wakes up and is ended when Katara ambushes Zuko. He is frozen but melts himself out to escape.
Sokka doesn't fare much better. His jokes? Gone. His funny behavior? Gone! His love of meat and boomrangs? GONE! Instead I get this older teen boy who is serious business! For that matter Aang has been replaced with a dour and emo doppelganger as well. His whole role is to make serious faces and say lines at the camera.
The big fight in the city is well done expect for everyone wearing dark colors in a badly lit scene so things tend to blur. Koh the face stealer was cut in favor of a dragon that tells Aang not to hurt people (WHAT THE FUCK!?! HE'S TRYING TO WIN A WAR!). Zhou kills the moon and Yueh throws herself into the pool to bring back the moon. With that Aang runs up to the wall and by himself in Avatar state pulls a huge wall of water and... does fuck all with it. To be fair, if I was in a firefight in NYC and a wall of water taller then the skyscrapers appeared.... I would stop shooting to. The Fire Nation runs away while Zhou and Zuko confront each other, Iroh pulls Zuko away so they can escpae on Zuko's row boat and 4 water tribe guys execute Zhou by drowning him in a floating ball of water which was cool to see.
The movie ends with everyone bowing to Aang and he does a air bending move.
The actors I felt were trying their best but they were given a huge shit sandwhich. The writing sucked, the special effects were about average, the best fights are in the dark and well, I'm starting to think Shammy can't direct either. Whenever there's a huge conservation the camera jumps from face to face so we can't see them interact! I'm being constantly told what is happening instead of shown. Best I can say is that the actors were clearly trying their best, the fire nation guys practically stole the movie and the costumes were amazing. Seriously if they had put in as much effort on the rest of the movie as the costumes, this would have been the greatest movie of the summer.
Frigid gives this one a D-. Watch the cartoon instead and bask in the warm memories of goodness, avoid the horror.
This is a movie I wanted to like, despite an array of things that suggested bad news to me. An odd director choice to say the least, horrible casting decisions, a devastating short run time and a story choice I wouldn't have made (I would have made the movie set after season 3).
The movie all of a 100 minutes long was suppose to be a retelling of season one. It was a difficult task to shove 20 episodes into an hour and a half. One they shouldn't frankly have attempted, it should have been 2 hours at least. But for some reason they went with a short film with a long story.
The opening of the movie starts with the bending sequences that look alot like the cartoon ones, which I thought was a good choice. On the flip side, if you're gonna abandon your source material maybe you shouldn't remind me of it. We get a text crawl and voice over narration by Nicola Peltz get used to her voice because they won't show you anything, they'll just have you tell her.
The opening scene has some unimportant changes (they're on foot not on boat) but works as the cartoon does. Saddly though we don't get Aang seeing Katara first thing when he wakes up which had in the cartoon established the romance. Something that seems to have been done away with here. Instead all of that happens off screen.
Zuko finds them at the village quickly so we don't get to know the tribe (the movie is at a run here) and in a real bad editting decision they cut out Aang and Zuko making the deal.
For those of you who don't recall, it was Aang asking Zuko to spare the village if he left with Zuko. Zuko not only agreed but kept his word, something that elevated him quickly above your standard cartoon villain. Instead we get moody growling.
Let me talk about the racial breakdowns here. The water tribe is the most racial diverse group of long term isolationists I've ever seen. There are white tribespeople, Indian tribespeople and so on. Which is annoying and breaks my SoD. Look a group of people cut off from outside contact for a long period of time are going to start to blend together. It's how genetics work. Meanwhile the vast and diverse Earth Kingdom is all Chinese and our eval Fire Nation is all Indian... So the large scattered populations who interact alot with outsiders are homogeneous, while the isolated small populations are very, very heterogeneous...
Aang of course escapes after passing a test that proves he's the Avatar (it's a neat test that shows all the elements react to him standing nearby, which likely makes cooking difficult). The South Air Temple reminds me of the killing fields of Cambodia, those skulls survived a 100 years really well out in the open. Momo shows up but is really just a random effect. I pretty much ignored him. Kyoshi Island gets cut her in favor of the prison break which I thought was a poor decision at best. The Prison Break wasn't a major plot while Kyoshi Island introduced Sukki and Kyoshi the Avatar both of which became important later. Also instead of Earth Benders imprisoned on metal island which is cool, they're in a valley... made of dirt... With a metal gate and some guards they overpower real quick when Aang starts doing air stuff. The fight is also blurry due to 3d treatments on a 2d movie. No I didn't see it in 3d. Katara gets a water scroll here so the pirates are gone to.
We're told (not shown) that Aang does this in other earth villages to.
The North Air Temple is turned into a trap where he's captured by Commander Zhoa who is played really well. As you can guess the Blue Spirit rescues him. This is done really, really well but is damn dark and hard to follow. Our director seems to like having his big fights take place totally in the damn dark with everyone wearing dark colors. Zhoa is real close friend of the fire lord for some reason and a good 15 to 20 minutes of the movie is him and the fire lord talking things over. This was a dumb addition that should be thrown out to make more time for the main characters, why they felt they had to add in extra stuff while gutting the main story is beyond me.
Here we are narrated into the Northern Water Tribe. The engagement subplot is dropped (I'm okay with that) but the romance between Sokka and Yue is something we're told about and throw into full swing. The subplot about the Northern Water Tribe being anti-girl bending dicks is also dropped, (I'm not okay with that). This robs us of one of Katara's big moments. Later when Aang is meditating and Zuko attacks? They take that away from her to. Basically Katara is turned into talky girl with all her plots and big movements stolen or worse given to Aang. Given the fact that she's 12 years old or so in this movie (for some damn reason Sokka is aged up and placed in charge instead of Katara being in charge and near his age) she can't even be eye candy. She literally has nothing to do! The fight we get is when Aang wakes up and is ended when Katara ambushes Zuko. He is frozen but melts himself out to escape.
Sokka doesn't fare much better. His jokes? Gone. His funny behavior? Gone! His love of meat and boomrangs? GONE! Instead I get this older teen boy who is serious business! For that matter Aang has been replaced with a dour and emo doppelganger as well. His whole role is to make serious faces and say lines at the camera.
The big fight in the city is well done expect for everyone wearing dark colors in a badly lit scene so things tend to blur. Koh the face stealer was cut in favor of a dragon that tells Aang not to hurt people (WHAT THE FUCK!?! HE'S TRYING TO WIN A WAR!). Zhou kills the moon and Yueh throws herself into the pool to bring back the moon. With that Aang runs up to the wall and by himself in Avatar state pulls a huge wall of water and... does fuck all with it. To be fair, if I was in a firefight in NYC and a wall of water taller then the skyscrapers appeared.... I would stop shooting to. The Fire Nation runs away while Zhou and Zuko confront each other, Iroh pulls Zuko away so they can escpae on Zuko's row boat and 4 water tribe guys execute Zhou by drowning him in a floating ball of water which was cool to see.
The movie ends with everyone bowing to Aang and he does a air bending move.
The actors I felt were trying their best but they were given a huge shit sandwhich. The writing sucked, the special effects were about average, the best fights are in the dark and well, I'm starting to think Shammy can't direct either. Whenever there's a huge conservation the camera jumps from face to face so we can't see them interact! I'm being constantly told what is happening instead of shown. Best I can say is that the actors were clearly trying their best, the fire nation guys practically stole the movie and the costumes were amazing. Seriously if they had put in as much effort on the rest of the movie as the costumes, this would have been the greatest movie of the summer.
Frigid gives this one a D-. Watch the cartoon instead and bask in the warm memories of goodness, avoid the horror.
