The Last Airbender Review

Director M. Night Shyamalan has always been a bit fascinating to me.  I can’t think of any other filmmaker that started his career with such promise, as he did back in 1999 with The Sixth Sense, only to make every subsequent film steadily worse than his previous.  It seems to be a mathematical formula at work.  Starting with Unbreakable, Night seems to have lost his way more and more until finally we have a dreadful film like The Happening, where the central conflict consisted of “Marky” Mark Wahlberg running from the wind.

I have watched, with a morbid sense of curiosity, where Shyamalan was is willing to go next in his quest to return to the good graces of the American movie going public.  To see the self-convinced genius flex his ego and show us all how he thinks it should be done is, in itself, a form of entertainment that can be taken with a grain of apathetic salt.  Until now, that is.

With his latest attempt, The Last Airbender, Shyamalan and his mediocre approach to filmmaking have gone too far by taking a beloved story and squeezing the life and joy right out of it.  Based on the popular animated series on Nickelodeon, “Airbender” is fruitful source material full of potential and capable of inspiring a live-action series to rival The Lord of the Rings trilogy (or at least The Chronicles of Narnia).  In the hands of Shyamalan, who wrote, produced and directed as he is wont to do, this version of the fantasy tale is limp and soulless, serving as a glaring illustration of why Shyamalan should leave other, more talented people’s good ideas alone.

The Last Airbender is set in a world that has forever been divided into four separate nations: Water, Earth, Fire and Air.  Citizens called “benders” possess the ability to control their nation’s element, but there is one, the Avatar, who can manipulate all four elements to maintain peace and balance between the nations.  When the Avatar vanishes, their world descends into turmoil and the Fire nation sparks a war to achieve global domination.

One hundred years have passed since the Avatar’s disappearance when a young Airbender nomad named Aang (Noah Ringer) is found buried in ice near a small Water village by Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone).  Aang is, of course, the missing Avatar who abandoned his responsibilities a century ago and returns to finds a world suffering due to his unwillingness to accept his destiny.  Aang ultimately decides that he must restore harmony to the world, but in order to do so he must first master all four elements before he can dethrone the malicious Fire Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis).

There has been an abundance of controversy surrounding the film’s casting from vocal circles pointing out that a handful of the lead characters are played by Caucasians while the cartoon has decidedly Asian sensibilities.  With all the flaws this movie bears, I don’t feel that this is a warranted observation.  The fictitious world is populated with all walks of life and it seems that Shyamalan made a concerted effort to integrate African Americans, Persians and Asian Indians into the same villages and among the various nations.  The fact that the entire cast does not consist of only minorities should not be an issue.

The film features some solid action sequences, and the special effects convincingly show us what fire and waterbending would look like in the real world.  Shyamalan stages some incredibly long shots that zip in and out of the violence, as director Zack Snyder did with his Spartans in 300.

The Last Airbender is fairly successful visually, but loses steam and focus once anyone starts talking.  Plus, the movie was converted into 3D in post-production and it shows.  Much like the awkward Clash of the Titans in March, the effect is minimal and comes across as a sad attempt to extract another three bucks from the paying audience.

In preparation for this film, I watched all three seasons of the animated series and I am a fan.  The show is very well written, the characters are fully realized, and the action is epic.  It is a strange sensation to watch an adaptation of material you are familiar with and have a connection to, yet feel nothing.  I wanted to feel invested and energized, but sitting through The Last Airbender was a hollow experience that frustrated more than anything else.

It will not be surprising if this is the only film made from the series and the story remains incomplete.  Shyamalan has proven he is unable to tell a good story, at least not anymore.  He was recently quoted as saying, “My hope is we broke so many rules, we created a new rule.”  In this he succeeded.  The new rule is that M. Night Shyamalan doesn’t get to make any more movies.  And if it isn’t a rule, it should be.

1.5 out of 5