Opening Statements: If you are a fan of the series, you will have no doubt heard how awful this movie is. I was rather shcoked to find that all the harsh critics are completely right. It was like M. Night took everything that was fun, joyful, and exciting about the original series, put it down on a list, and said "let's get rid of this stuff".
The Good: The only good thing I can say about this movie is that the special effects were superb. Appa, the large flying, six-legged bison they ride upon, looks absolutely stunning. The animated for all their different elemental powers looks exactly like one would imagine it to look in real life. I think I would have enjoyed this movie a million-fold if it were a tech demo.
The Bad: First off, the acting was horrendous. I always feel a bit guilty criticizing child actors, but I have seen good child actors. Hell, I would have settled for decent child actors. These kids are bad. Everytime one of them would open their mouths, I felt myself cringe. It was like if a bunch of little kids got hold of several million dollars and decided to do a fan movie on youtube.
Now the idea of "Racebending". This has been a controversial since the movie was fist cast. Dark-skinned, Inuit people(water benders) were cast as white people. And oddly enough, the fair-light skinned, pale people(fire-benders) were re-cast as all Indians. How very odd, considering that the firebenders are probably the most bad-ass, and M. Night himself is Indian.
*Now here is something I simply cannot forgive. Almost EVERY name and EVERY term within this movie is mispronounced. Aang(Ae-n-g) is pronounced Ong, the Avatar (ah-va-tar) was pronounced (Ae-va-tar ), Sokka (Sock-ah) is pronoucned (Soak-ah) and many many more. Some people seem to think this is not a big deal, but imagine if a character was named Jim, and everyone called him (Jeem). Most of these names are two or three sylables long. How flippin' hard is it to get your actors to pronounce a name right?! It boggles my mind.
Closing Thoughts: The original series this movie is based on is absolutely amazing. How M. Night managed to make such a horrible movie with such great source material is beyond me. I would suggest checking out the original series, particularly seasons 2 and 3, and if you are ready to have your dreams crushed, watch this when it comes out on DVD. Everything about this movie just feels unpolished, poorly-cut, horribly-cast, and lazy; which I find to be a great shame, because with the special effects that were used, under a different director, this could have been absolutely amazing. With two planned sequals, I can only pray that this movie really is "The LAST airbender".
1/2 out of *****
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