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I first saw the trailer of The Last Airbender in 3D when I saw Toy Story 3 in 3D and, quite frankly, I thought it looked quite good and a load of fun but after the very negative criticism it received, I put it aside and decided not to see it until the DVD release. However, when it was nominated for Worst Picture and is the probable favourite to win the top awards at the Razzies, I did decide to check out whether it really is that bad but bloody hell! It really is one bad film! It is based on the first season of the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. I mean, there are many films like this that have succeeded admirably but this was just an absolute failure in almost every way. What I truly hate about some films like this is that the budget is really high so the films are simply overloaded with effects but there is just no solid direction, script, character development or acting and now that this is the era of 3D effects that'll pop the audience's eyes, we see that almost every single month for at least one film.
There are many ways where this could have been great. Why the hell was this adapted into a live-action CGI film when it originally is an anime series?! I mean, that’s like making a Star Wars animated film (well, they did that and look how that turned out), the legendary anime series Pokémon into a live-action CGI adaptation, a Toy Story live-action CGI film and even Lord Of The Rings or Harry Potter into animation! The director choice was totally wrong as well and if they had experienced screenwriters who have written scripts for fantasy films before and have succeeded well. I mean, now that this is the first of a planned trilogy and received such a negative reception, it doesn't deserve to be made into a franchise so they should work on the Northern Lights trilogy where they started off with The Golden Compass and how the sequels were somehow abandoned.
The world is divided into four kingdoms, each represented by the element they harness, and peace has lasted throughout the realms of Water, Air, Earth, and Fire under the supervision of the Avatar, a link to the spirit world and the only being capable of mastering the use of all four elements. When young Avatar Aang disappears, the Fire Nation launches an attack to eradicate all members of the Air Nomads to prevent interference in their future plans for world domination. 100 years pass and current Fire Lord Ozai continues to conquer and imprison anyone with elemental "bending" abilities in the Earth and Water Kingdoms, while siblings Katara and Sokka from a Southern Water Tribe find a mysterious boy trapped beneath the ice outside their village. Upon rescuing him, he reveals himself to be Aang, Avatar and last of the Air Nomads. Swearing to protect the Avatar, Katara and Sokka journey with him to the Northern Water Kingdom in his quest to master "Waterbending" and eventually fulfill his destiny of once again restoring peace to the world. But as they inch nearer to their goal, the group must evade Prince Zuko, the exiled son of Lord Ozai, Commander Zhao, the Fire Nation's military leader, and the tyrannical onslaught of the evil Fire Lord himself.
The acting was just appalling! Noah Ringer must have been a young man who had to perform oral sex on Shyamalan to cast him in the leading role and he just didn't bring us anything new that we hadn't seen time and time again with other films over the years. Dev Patel, I am almost disgusted with you! You go from giving a great leading performance in a Best Picture Academy Award winning film Slumdog Millionaire and goes to do something as bad as this where his acting was just nowhere and played a pretty lousy villain and he showed us his worst. I don't know what he thought of the film during filming or when he watched it at the premiere, at home on DVD or anything but I am pretty sure he didn't think it was a masterpiece because there's nothing masterful about this at all. The rest of the cast did a pretty shit job at 'acting' aswell and they all deserve Razzie nominations to open their eyes (if they have any).
I need to ask this question, personally, to M. Night Shyamalan unless he will read or is reading this review: are you seriously trying to be a bad filmmaker on purpose? Although, I will give you credit for The Sixth Sense because I loved that film! For future references, anybody who considers hiring M. Night Shyamalan as director, producer and/or writer, they are creating a great risk and would probably want to slap themselves in the face for choosing him. I mean, they might as well make Michael Bay or someone as bad as Uwe Boll as the director for the sequel if they decide to make one. Shyamalan really can be such a great director as he proved with The Sixth Sense but he just chooses to write and direct the wrong films.
Overall, The Last Airbender is an absolutely atrocious film that could have been great in a lot of ways but decided to stick with the peasants and weaklings of cinema so chose live-action CGI over its original type of film: anime. If they are planning on the rest of the trilogy, there are three things that need adjusting: director selection, actor selection and most importantly: make it an anime film, not live-action CGI because we see too much of that! It is the front-runner for the Razzies with The Twilight Saga: Eclipse so is almost guaranteed to sweep through those awards and win at being failures.
