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Page 1 of 2  It seems poor Mr. Shyamalan cannot walk across the street without some lovin' his steps, and some downright hatin'. The debate extends well beyond the street, however -- curling its talons deep into the meat of his films. In a stunning turn of events, Wayne Spencer disses, and Zombie Boy actually liked something, for a change.
Wayne Spencer:
| The Last Airbender" is a mirthless, plodding and unlovable affair. Nothing about it seems like an adventure and nothing about it seems like something anyone would willingly want to expose one's self to.
Asians, you dodged a bullet here.
Nobody in the theater was happy. Least of all the characters onscreen.
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Have you ever been taken unaware by an unbelievable sense of dread, when you felt like you were supposed to be having fun? That's what this movie's like. Every character has one speed, and that speed is 'tormented by some unseen force'. Aang, (pronounced Ong in the movie) is a junior level messiah, who's supposed to save the world by talking to some ghosts, but he's so terrified and conflicted by the idea of saving the world WITH NO APPARENT CONSEQUENCE to himself that he toddles through the movie with this look on his face, as if he's about to be burned alive. We never quite understand what he'd rather be doing than saving the world, but I guess it must be pretty important. In the "Avatar: The Last Airbender" television show, Aang is something like the personification of childhood. He's a fun-loving and adventure seeking kid with super-powers, thrust into this position of being in charge of the world. Something that threatens to steal away said childhood rashness. There is no joy in this movie. There are one or two clumsy attempts at humor, which fall pretty flat, in such a way that a couple of times I had to actually pause and wonder whether or not something that happened might have been some sort of joke.
I think that my good buddy M. Night, might've been trying to approach the source material with some kind of earnestness and sincerity, but he might've tried approaching the original material with reverence instead. I can see where it might look to an outsider like broad comedy or happy characters could seem to cheapen a situation with real gravity, but by taking the joviality out of the movie, and especially from Aang's character, the movie fell out of balance. So instead of a kid who just wants to live his life as a kid having fun, surfing on penguins and avoiding the responsibility that being the avatar entails, you just have a kid avoiding responsibility out of some vague notion of dread. Aang's happy-go-lucky attitude is the counter to the seriousness of the situation. It gives context to his actions (i.e. not wanting to hurt anyone, or being afraid of becoming the avatar and saying good-bye to the carefree ways of a child.) and more importantly, it lets us feel like we need to root for this somewhat hapless kid, who's in over his head and in a situation he can't control. | To add to this. No one solved any problem with ingenuity or even any will of their own. Everytime we needed to figure something out, somebody just told us what to do (Katara/Sokka and their grandma, Aang and the dragon, Zuko and Iroh at the end). For this reason there's no cycle of try-fail-try succeed. | 
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The protagonists just do what they're told and succeed, we don't feel like we need to see them triumph over the insurmountable, because the odds don't really seem all that stacked against them -- oh and also, the ghost dragon, or your grandma gave you the answer already, so it'll all work out. This serves to kill any tension before it can mount, and it really just feels like we're watching some kind of outline, rather than a story where people make choices that may be wrong or right.
A part of me wondered if Night had ever actually watched the show, or just read an outline/treatment of it. Everything is so wrong in such drastic ways as to transform the whole substance of the thing into something else. Katara is a strong, motherly figure who can often move from strong into bossy. In the film she's a somewhat helpless girl that gets a black-eye the minute she DARES stand up for herself. Sokka is a man-child in training. Funny and cynical but with an almost devious, strategic mind lurking somewhere under the surface. In the movie he's... he's just this guy, y'know? He falls in love with some lady he only just met just in time to feel tormented about her. None of the characters really have any connections, like real on-screen moments that we have with them, which gives those moments an emotional context. If somebody is supposed to have a certain relationship with someone else, then they just say that they do and that's the end of that.
I always thought Night was a good director and very good at framing shots/pacing, but after this, I seriously doubt his abilities. Part of being great (or shit, just being in charge) is knowing where you're weak and finding people/ways to cover those weaknesses so that they don't show. He really needed to hire somebody (or somebody else) to choreograph those fight scenes and let someone besides himself handle the editing.
If you love Avatar, parts of this movie will be like torture. If you've never seen Avatar, you're probably just going to get bored.
Don't recommend.
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