Saw The Last Airbender last night.  Now, I’m a big fan of the original cartoon and it was just great!  I was hoping for a lot from this movie going in until the reviews started piling up. Even my brother walked out of the movie half way.  So when I got there my standards were set very very low for the movie.

It was a 2 hour movie which from the get-go I saw as a problem as it was supposed to be the whole Season one of the cartoon.  The show as long enough that there is no way they could fit the whole season in one movie without cutting a lot which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if done correctly.

The people I was with expected it to be a bad movie and I think overall hated it with a passion. I didn’t see anyone in the theater walk out though.

Let’s start with the problems:

  • The special effects (although great looking) were sometimes off. They would do a move and the effect would be delayed till after they already threw it.  There was a scene were a group of earthbenders did one of their group stomps and nothing happened. wtf?
  • Pronunciation. Throughout the movie they kept miss-pronouncing  Aang, Sokka and Avatar. Is it that hard to say those right? I mean there were times where Katara would say Avatar right and then in the next scene say it wrong again
  • The writing wasn’t great but I have scene worse (Episode 1,2 and 3!)
  • They took a whole season and tried to cram it down into 2 hours which just didn’t work. There was no time for the needed character development.
  • No Humor.  The cartoon was FULL of humor but this had none. Aang was more kinda-crying the whole time and didn’t do anything funny. Sokka was not as stupid as the cartoon and so it didn’t have any slapstick (that worked)
  • Although not as big of a deal to me, but Commander Zhao died in a different way (although it looked pretty cool)
  • Aang’s big ending in season one where he turned into a giant water monster and washed away the fire ships didn’t happen. He just scared them with a big wall of water.
  • The acting of the 3 main stars was really horrid. Even a good actor can make a bad line look good. (example: Harrison Ford in Star Wars ep. 5) They just kept saying the lines without any feeling. I did notice that Aang got better as he went along and since this was his first movie, at least he had an excuse.
  • Uncle Iroh was not a fat happy man like in the cartoon. I think they got his personally right however.
  • Although this one didn’t bug me as much, the fire nation had to have fire to shoot it. In the cartoon they could summon it out of the air.
  • The Editing was pretty bad.  There were scenes were the lines sounded pretty bad but it was due to holding on a shot too long.  With some quicker cuts I think it would have sold the scene better.

and the strengths:

  • The Costuming was Great! They were very accurate to the cartoon!
  • I think Aang actually looked pretty close to the part.
  • The plot was 90% accurate to the show which amazed me. Usually they take a lot more liberties!
  • The specially effects were great most of the time! (see above)
  • They let Aang do some of his signature moves (like walking behind a guy when he moved) which was cool to see.
  • The fight scenes overall were pretty good. Specially the fight at the end with Aang and the fire nation when he was flipping over them and freezing them.

So in summary, overall it was better than I thought it was going to be. I was expecting total garbage.  They had the right idea but made some rookie mistakes that hurt the piece.  If they are doing this in a trilogy, I hope they can fix the issues from the first one in the second one.  I think if they do, It will turn out to be a pretty good movie adaption from the cartoon.

If i had to rate the movie I would probably give it a 2.5 out of 5.  Not a total abomination but I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone (especially if they haven’t seen the series first!!)