newnumber6 | The Last Crapbender

So, I finally got around to watching "The Last Airbender", the movie 'adaptation' of the animated series.

Since I'm a positive guy, let's talk about the positives first.

1) Locations/Set/Costumes, the whole Visual side of productions: Quite well done, really evoked the world. Lovely.

2) Effects: More or less, looked pretty cool. How they chose to have some of the effect-causing elements to work in plot maybe not as much, but what they had was good. And it was nice to see creatures like Appa and Momo, even if the latter was barely in it and the former looked a little too CGI-y.

3) Multicultural Casting: I mean, look how diverse everything was. There were loads of Asians, all over the place. And talk about minorities! Why, Katara/Sohka's family were practically the ONLY white family in the whole Southern Water Tribe, just like Ong was the only White Airbender! And, in a triumph of diversity, somehow, the whole movie CENTERED ON THOSE MINORITIES. The white people! Awesome, isn't it?

You may have guessed that there was a snarky tone underlying that last paragraph, and that we've thereby left the positive portion of the review. But even aside from the Racefail, the movie was just plain BAD.

But jumping back to the racefail for a moment, it was pretty blatant. The worst of it was... okay, let's say for the sake of argument, that we completely give in to their standard line, that they cast the best people they could find, regardless of race. If that was the case, then the directing fail in general is so much worse, because they were, uniformly awful.

The leads, I mean. The best of them was Zuko's actor, I guess, he got a little whiny-kid at times, but that WAS Zuko, so we could forgive it, and at least he gave off depth. Eeyroh's actor also did an okay job for any other movie, but he's no Iroh. Asif Mandvi, although playing a lesser role, also was enjoyable, he played a smug bastard pretty well at least.

But everyone else seemed to have no sense of good delivery and most felt like they were high school grade level.

Now, I can't say for sure whether it's the actors, or the director/writing. I'll be kind to them and lay a lot of it on the other side, because so much else on the directing/writing side was lame.

Plot, I was willing to be generous on - they're trying to compress a whole season of half hour episodes down into one movie, naturally they can't fit everything and it's going to be rushed (I personally, would have thought it a much better idea to have each movie take up about HALF a season of episodes). I was willing to forgive some issues of pace. I was not willing to forgive awful, awful exposition ("The spirit world isn't like our world, not a world you can touch, but it's real all the less". YOU DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN IT, EVEN KIDS CAN PICK UP PRETTY QUICKLY WHAT A SPIRIT WORLD IS). Not to mention that Katara-narration, where she explains how Sohka and the Northern Princess became very attached. I guess she had to because there was no way the two blocks of wood could convey that without telling anybody. But then she goes on to describe how Ong demonstrated that he was an airbender... and then showed him doing it. If you're going to use narration to cover the gaps in the plot, DON'T ALSO SHOW THE SCENES YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT.

So much wasted time that could have been spent on better things.

Lots of really lame dialog, too. For example:
Zuko: Who are you?
Katara: I am Katara. The only water-bender of the southern water tribe. (fight begins)

HELLO EXTRANEOUS INFORMATION NO ONE NEEDS. I mean, really, how does that bit after her name help the scene in any way? Does Katara think Zuko needs to know? Does she think it makes her sound kickass? Does she think the audience forgot that point and needed it to be reinforced (possibly, considering how many times the Fire Nation guys repeated about the scroll being taken from The Great Library). Might as well say, "I'm Katara, and I think prices for lion-seal furs at Earth Nation markets are set too low!" (speaking of markets, no Cabbage Seller? THIS MOVIE IS DEAD TO ME). See the whole "who are you bit" exchange a bit lame and unneeded in general, but if you're going to do it, at least have it an opportunity to be a cool scene by making the second line MATTER. Like: "I'm Katara. You killed my mother. Prepare to die." or
"I'm Katara. And I'm about to open up a can of liquid whoopass on you!"

... Okay, maybe not those, but you get the idea.

Virtually every time anybody said anything, I cringed. Part of that was because they kept pronouncing everything wrong.

Let's talk about that for a moment. I can accept there are going to be changes in translating something from cartoon to movie. I can even go along with pronouncing it "Ahvatar" instead of "Av-atar". But you DO NOT MESS WITH THE NAMES OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS. Even in the name of making it sound more 'proper Asian'. The characters are who they've grown attached to, they're the ones who are popular enough for you to do the movie on them. All changing the names does is piss off fans even more, and believe me, this movie needed ALL THE FAN GOODWILL IT COULD MANAGE TO SCRAPE UP. I suppose on the plus side, it makes it easier for us to pretend these aren't the same characters at all - even the names are different, which is why I'm spelling them differently when I refer to the movie versions (except Katara).

Speaking of character changes, everyone was so grim in this. Sohka barely cracked a joke (or did anything other than stand square-jawed), Ong had maybe one or two moments of cheer. Hell, Katara was cheerier than either of them. I guess you could chalk that up to 'creative changes', but it made the movie very dull, with little humor.

Now, onto the last concern I think I need to rant on. The fights and bending-in-general. In most cases, they didn't seem like an energetic fight, they felt like people running around with play weapons, dancing.
They made Earth-bending a lot slower (with stamping of feet), and Fire-bending require a source of flame (which then turns everybody else into idiots, because not one person ever thinks of using water bending to PUT OUT THE DAMN FIRES OF THE ENEMIES). There was a LOT of slow-motion used. Here's my problem with that. The movie's slow and ponderous as it is, and you have a lot of material to get through, why not speed up the fights and kick up the energy, instead of slowing down to really focus on one not-very-dramatic-flip. Hell, in some cases, they could have probably done better to do FAST MOTION (well, probably not really, but a lot of the 'running on walls' scenes, and other airbending-assisted-action scenes in general, seemed remarkably low-energy). But the fights should have been breakneck pace, not just fighting, but bending, too. Earthbenders were SLOW, and if they have to Riverdance every time they toss a rock, well, they're not going to be much of a threat to the Fire Nation, are they?

I really don't think I'm saying this just as a disappointed fan, that they didn't do it justice and therefore I hate it. I think it is actually, dramatically, BAD.

Oh, and, uh, spoilers above, if anyone cares.