Dear World,
It’s been awhile since my last post, but I wanted to post my review of The Last Airbender somewhere. Since I couldn’t do it on www.scaddistrict.com
Noah Ringer (L) Dev Patel (R)
Photo by Photo Credit: Industrial Light a – © Copyright2010 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. All Rights Reserved
The Last Airbender had redeeming qualities, yet the mistakes out weigh them. M. Night Shamalym had potential to be a great director. With this film we see his failure. People seem to come to his movies based on the reputation of the product or actor. Not for his directing.
Airbender takes you on a journey with Aang played by Noah Ringer, who has to give up his childhood in order to save humanity. He discovers he's the last and only Avatar and he posses power to Earth, Wind, Fire and Water, but in his reincarnated state he hasn't been trained in the elements. His task is to learn enough to defeat the powerful Fire nation. The Fire nation is out to rid the other airbenders and find and kill the Avatar.
Some of the redeeming qualities were the costumes, locations and the cultures of people that were used as extras. This movie truly goes around the world with New Zealand, Vietnam, Iceland and Pennsylvania. Exotic locations are appealing to the eye which is helpful with the bad acting. Each nation had their own distinct type of clothing. Of course the fire nation looked like war heros with vests that were invincible.
The Fire nation seems to be compared to the devils work because they are the evil forces trying to take over the world and rid the nation of all the other forces that are benders. Fire is also associated with Hell. These Fire nation is portrayed that way as well.
With this recent wave of fantasy type movies coming out this picture stole ideas from Lord of the Rings. Just because you shoot in similar locations as Peter Jackson, doesn't mean you get to copy him. Such as, the Northern Iberian Waters Tribe has a solid ice fortress and a huge wall. Replace water for dirt and you got the land of Rivendell. The battle at Helm's Deep also seems to be referenced. Now, that might be just my imagination, or just love of Lord of the Rings, but I definitely saw the connection.
This is the other water nation. See doesn’t it look like Lord of the Rings?
Dev Patel known for his role in Slumdog Millionaire plays the angsty teenager who acts as of one of the villains has a few good moments. Most of the time he's over acting to compensate for bad directing. Fortunately, for him, I know he's a good actor and I'm glad this isn't his debut film. This doesn't show his strengths as an actor, so hopefully if he does make another film with Airbender his skills will improve with this character. Now on the other hand Noah Ringer who plays Aang does a fabulous job of portraying this character. At least I could enjoy the movie whenever he was talking. Being his first film, this was a great one to debut in. Putting all criticism aside from the rest of the film I can sit back and watch him. He portrays an innocent child, until he finds out the truth. Portions of the film, I could tell he lost focus in what he was doing, but if that's my only critique of him. I'm just getting super specific with it. It seems like Shyamalan cared only about his acting, because everyone else including the adults were two dimensional.
Although, I've never seen the animated series, I feel like that fans should just stick this one out. Most adaptations are decent enough to look the other way with what was either cut out or done wrongly. Fans will be disappointed and leave the theater with a bad taste in their mouths.
Love,
The disappointed writer
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