The Last Airbender

So for my first movie review I decided to pick M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender.

Now, I am a huge fan of the Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender and I was excited when I found out it was going to be made into a movie. I was also somewhat excited when I found out that it would be directed by M. Night Shyamalan. I'm a fan of his movies except for Lady in the Water and The Happening. So, with his last two movies not doing so well I was also a little nervous. Then again, he wasn't coming up with this movie from scratch. It was an existing source that he couldn't change too dramatically.

I read the reviews of the people who were able to see it before opening day and was shocked to see how terrible the reviews were. 9 out of 10 reviews were saying "Don't go see it." Well, of course, I have a mind of my own so I still went and saw the movie. I would also like to point out that I went to the midnight premier of a movie for the first time when I saw this one. That's how excited I was to see it.

What did I think of M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender? I liked it.

M. Night has a style of directing that captured a feeling in the tv show that no one else could've done. Of course there were some things that bothered me about it. I'll talk about them first.

The Bad
Dialogue: Poor dialogue between characters is something that has always bothered me. The worst thing about bad dialogue is when it feels like two characters are reading directly from the script to each other (which is also part of the acting). Katara's (Nicola Peltz) character and dialogue was, in a word, annoying. She was kind of whiny and too soft compared to the show's Katara (at the end of season 1 that is).

Acting: As I already mentioned, the acting was kind of bad. Then again that's what you get for using Nicola Peltz (I don't have anything against her she just couldn't seem able to get in to character), one of the Twilight cast (Jackson Rathbone who played Sokka), and a kid based solely on his martial arts abilities (Noah Ringer who played Aang).

Pacing: Oh my gosh the movie was fast-paced. That's all I have to say about that.

Appa and Momo: Creepy... Enough said.

In-Between: These are the things that I didn't really like but I was ok with.
Fire Lord Ozai: He didn't seem to be the give off the evil overlord vibe that was given during the tv show, but at the same time you could see him as a fire lord. He was calm, cool, and collected and maybe he'll be more evil in a sequel.

Pacing: Yes I'm bringing this up again. The movie was fast but something was always happening. I. Hate. Long. Boring. Movies. You know, the kind of movies where you're sitting there forever just either waiting for the movie to end or for something exciting to happen. This movie was faster than planned because of the fact that a lot was cut out at the last minute. For example: the Kyoshi Warriors were casted, filmed, and even shown before the movie was made. However they weren't in the movie because they made it too long for the age group they were targeting.

Name Pronunciation: This thing has been blown way out of proportion. I've seen/heard people say the movie sucked and this was the only reason they could come up with. The name pronunciations are as follows:

Aang: Aang with a long A sound (TV Show). Ong (Movie).
Sokka: Sock-a (TV Show). Soak-a (Movie).
Iroh: Eye-roh (TV Show). Ear-roh (Movie).
Avatar: Avatar with a short A sound (TV Show). Ovatar (Movie).

Now, Aang was the only one I was really bothered by, and it still didn't bother me that much. I knew going in to the movie that the names would be pronounced differently than the American version of the TV show. It was just weird hearing it at first, but by the end of the movie I had gotten used to it. Sokka sounded cool to me. Plus, since Katara was always soaking him with her waterbending it kinda fits (yes I know that was a bad pun). Iroh... I have no comment. Avatar... That's the way it should be pronounced if you ask me.

Slow Bending: I really don't have much of a comment on this "problem" either. The benders looked to cool to worry about the fact that their elements weren't corresponding that well with their bending.

The Good
Storyline: Great story. In the show Aang had trouble accepting his role as the Avatar but that was resolved and then brought back up and then resolved over and over again. That was one of the main stories in the movie. Then, of course, there was the "get Aang to the north pole so he can learn waterbending storyline." But the Avatar-acceptance plot was a nice touch and I think M. Night did an amazing job at it.

Noah Ringer - Aang: Like I already mentioned, Noah isn't that good of an actor, yet. He is, however, amazing at martial arts. Holy crap was he awesome! That totally made up for his inexperience with acting. Again, that's kind of what you get for casting someone because you saw them at a martial arts tournament.

Dev Patel - Zuko: Ok. So Dev Patel is pretty much my favorite actor now. Zuko was my favorite character in the show. He was such a deep and complex character that during his roller coaster of character development you just had to connect with him at some point. Well, I did. So seeing Dev Patel as Zuko was awesome. I mean, he was Zuko. This was probably my favorite part actually. I saw Slumdog Millionaire before this so that I could see Dev Patel's acting. He's phenomenal.

Bending/Special Effects: The special effects of the movie were really cool. Some of the problems that M. Night was trying to avoid was having firebending look like someone was holding a flamethrower or that it just looked like fake fire. Both of these problems were avoided. Well done.

Ok. So here are just some of my opinions for The Last Airbender. Please do not over-analyze both the movie and my review. I do want to address, now, the concern that people had about the movie not being as goofy as the TV Show was. I guarantee that the movie would've been torn apart worse by critics. The setting of the movie is in a time of war. The silliness worked for the TV Show but it wouldn't have worked for a movie.

If you are on the fence about seeing this movie I recommend at least giving it a chance. I, for one, can't wait to buy this movie when it comes out. Hopefully it will have an extended edition to it slowing the pacing down a little bit.

Thanks for reading!