‘The Last Airbender’ Review
The Last Airbender is based upon the outstanding Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender. Drawing on martial arts, anime, and eastern mythologies, the show was a brilliant epic and legendary piece of television disguised as a children’s show. The series was all at once was witty, exciting, beautiful to look at, and deeply moving. Sadly, this film is none of those things. Unless dramatic changes are made before the inevitable sequels, fans should abandon all hope of witnessing even a mediocre retelling.
Plot Summary (Spoilers included, review continues after picture)
The world is divided into four nations. Each nation represents an element: water, earth, fire, air which the denizens of that nation can manipulate or “bend”. Only the Avatar can master all four elements and can enter the spirit world. The Avatar is also charged by the spirits with maintaining the balance of the world. However, the Avatar vanished 100 years ago. Since then, the Fire Nation has launched an all out war to conquer the planet.
Two members of the Southern Water Tribe, a young bender named Katara (Nicola Peltz) and her brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) discover a young boy named Aang (Noah Ringer) in an iceberg. Aang is covered in tattoos, indicating that he is an airbender. Aang’s release from the iceberg leads the disgraced Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) of the Fire Nation to raid the village and take Aang prisoner. Zuko has been banished by his father, Fire Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis) until he can bring the Avatar back as a prisoner.
Tests administered by Iroh, Zuko’s uncle, (Shaun Toub) indicate Aang is the Avatar. He escapes Zuko’s clutches just as Katara and Sokka arrive to rescue him. The three fly to the Aang’s home at the Southern Air Temple. Here, Aang learns that his people were exterminated by the Fire Nation because it was known that the next Avatar would be an airbender. Consumed by rage, Aang enters the spirit realm, where he encounters a dragon spirit. Meanwhile, Zuko and Iroh encounter the cocky Commander Zhao (Aasif Mandvi), who mocks the exiled prince.
Aang’s group travels to the Earth Kingdom, where they begin a rebellion against the Fire Nation occupation. Katara discovers a waterbending scroll, which teaches her and Aang advanced waterbending. However, Aang cannot master the technique. Seeking guidance, he travels to the Northern Air Temple, where he is captured by Zhao. However, a masked bandit called “the Blue Spirit” arrives and rescues Aang. As they escape, the spirit is knocked unconscious and Aang discovers that his rescuer is actually Zuko. Suspecting this, Zhao arranges for Zuko to be killed. The prince survives and stows away on Zhao’s command ship. The ship is leading an armada to attack the Northern Water Tribe, armed with secret knowledge Zhao stole from an ancient library.
Hoping to master waterbending, Aang’s group arrives at the North Pole first, where Sokka falls in love Princess Yue (Seychelle Gabriel). Zhao soon arrives and launches an all out attack, while Zuko infiltrates the city and captures Aang while he is in the spirit world seeking guidance from the dragon spirit. Coming to, Aang and Katara battle Zuko. Meanwhile, Zhao arrives at the sacred pool in the heart of the city and despite Iroh’s warning slays the moon spirit Tui, which causes the waterbenders to loose their powers. However, Yue, who had been given life by the spirit as a child, sacrifices herself to revive the Moon. Iroh and Zuko leave Zhao to his fate, and he is killed by waterbenders. Aang, realizing his power and accepting his role as the Avatar, uses the ocean to drive the armada back. Informed of Zhao’s death and Iroh and Zuko’s betrayal, the firelord orders his daughter Azula (Summer Bishil) to pursue Aang and distract him before Sozin’s Comet, which will give every Firebender incredible powers, passes near the planet in three years.
The insurmountable problem with this film is the script, which Shyamalan authored himself. Why the script was not left in the capable hands of series creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, someone on the writing staff, or a drunken chimp for that matter, is a mysterious tragedy. The characters manner of speaking is repetitive, awkward and unnecessarily complex. Another unforgivable flaw is Shyamalan’s tendency for his characters to philosophize, which results in the ejaculation of vague, nonsensical monologues every few minutes. Thus, one hesitates to call the interactions between the characters dialogue, as none of them seem to interact with each other.
However, it would be unfair to hold the actors responsible for their wooden and one dimensional portrayals. Indeed, one might commend them to keeping straight faces while delivering Shyamalan’s stilted gibberish. Yet it must be noted that we are never given any insight into who these characters are. For fans of the original animation, this will be particularly disappointing, as the complex undertones of the characters are completely gone. With the exception of Aasif Mandvi’s mercifully decent performance, none of these characters seems to be capable of showing more than one default emotion. While parsing a season of television in two hours is bound to entail some details and character development to be sacrificed, there is no character development or growth at all. Forced to show all the events of the film in a runtime that is too short, the pacing feels rushed and the characters are left undeveloped. Another hour in the theater would have been worth the viewer’s time rather than leaving these bland figures dancing aimlessly on the screen.
Another particular disappointment is the fight scenes. Whereas the four elements could have been artfully blended into an extension of the characters movements, bending combat has been reduced to the actors standing still, flinging different colored CGI projectiles at each other. Unlike other films with surrealistic martial arts, there is no grace to this fighting. Perhaps acknowledging this, the film’s most memorable fight is an effectless catfight between Aang and Zuko. However, the greatest disappointment comes at the climax, when Aang realizes his purpose and masters waterbending. Instead of the climatic fight we are all expecting, we are treated to a slow paced exposition of CGI tidal waves, at which point the villains seem to calmly decide to leave. This anti-climax extends well beyond the suspension of disbelief, and constitutes the bottom falling out on the viewer’s willingness to bare witness to these terribly thought out scenes.
Whether dedicated fans of the cartoon or first time viewers, this movie will fill viewers with a mixture of anger and disappointment. Although the film is advertised as a kids movie, parents would do well by their children to save their money and purchase a used copy of this venerable and enjoyable series on DVD instead.
