Review: The Last Airbender

My first problem came about when this movie was announced and couldn't be called Avatar: The Last Airbender because of that movie with the blue aliens.

Next came the issues with casting. The cartoon has characters of mostly Asian races, this is after all an Anime type cartoon. Two of the main characters are an Eskimo type group of people with dark skin. The three main characters cast were all of Caucasian ethnicity. Now, the little boy who was cast as Aang did look a lot like the character in the cartoon, so I was kind of okay with that. But Saka and Kitara were nothing at all like the original characters and that could have been forgiven if their acting was any good, but it really really wasn't.
Then the Fire Nation somehow became Indian when they were obviously Japanese in the cartoon, but at least it was consistent throughout the cast of Fire Nation people. In the other nations there were a weird mix of people that just didn't seem to go. Anyway, the point is the casting was terrible for the most part.

The main thing that annoyed me watching the movie was the way the characters names were completely mispronounced. As a fan of the show I just didn't understand why the director would do something like that. Anyone going to see this movie who was a fan of the show would be confused and annoyed by this blatant neglect of the integrity if the show.

The movie ran at a weird pace, it dragged a lot and then all of sudden it rushed through a montage of weeks passing to get to the next point. It didn't flow well at all, like they wanted to get in a lot of stuff but weren't sure what was really important.
The bending effects were pretty cool for the most part, though they did have the characters doing prolonged movements before the effect. No one is going to stand around in a battle while someone does a minute of Tai Chi movements for each bending tactic.

Overall, I was quite disappointed. There was a lot of potential for this film and tons of material to work with. However the dialogue was terrible and the directing was worse. I would complain about being forced to watch it in 3D, as there was no other option at the theater I went to, but I can save that angry for a whole separate posting. Instead I will just recommend you don't waste your time on this movie and wait for it to be $5.99 on the clearance DVD rack.


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