Film: (Avatar) The Last Airbender

Director: M. Night Shamalyan

Plot: Air, Water, Earth, Fire. Four nations tied by destiny when the Fire Nation launches a brutal war against the others. A century has passed with no hope in sight to change the path of this destruction. Caught between combat and courage, Aang (Noah Ringer) discovers he is the lone Avatar with the power to manipulate all four elements. Aang teams with Katara (Nicola Peltz), a Waterbender, and her brother, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), to restore balance to their war-torn world.

Based on the hugely successful Nickelodeon animated TV series, the live-action feature film “The Last Airbender” is the opening chapter in Aang’s struggle to survive.

That’s right i called it Avatar, James Cameron can suck it, Avatar was overrated anyway. If you’ve ever seen the cartoon then you’ll immediatley know the character and plot of the three seasons or books, the movie version attempts to cover the first season from start to finish. I originally intended to do a full review with some minor spoilers but over the last week since i started writing this i realized that the majority of the people who would read this either watched the show or read another review about the movie. So i’m gonna break it down into good and bad sections, first up, the Good.

Good: The film is very epic in size and rivals things like The Chronicles of Narnia in sheer scale and production, despite what anyone might say about the content of the film itself the production value is spectacular. The special effects are very good, i understand its hard to make CG wind but it actually looked convincing (some of the reactions from stunt players seemed a little cheesy though), the firebending, earthbending, and waterbending all looked top notch.

Some of the acting was actually surprisingly good, Dev Patel stepped up here and made quite the convincing Zuko, he was actually the only cast member i was worried about in the beginning i loved him in Slumdog Millionare but i wasnt sure if he could manage to be as angry and emotional as season 1 Zuko was, I was pleasantly surprised. Shaun Toub as Uncle Iroh was another bright spot in the cast, his performance as the wise yet emotionally troubled uncle of Zuko was one of the best in the film, if only the rest of the cast could have followed his lead, but more on that later.

The costume design was also superb, they pretty much stuck exactly to the show, everything from Aang’s outfit to the Fire Nation uniforms and the Northern water tribe’s outfits.

Bad: Had enough of the good? Well then you’re in time for the bad, or really the less than good because it wasnt as bad as most critics have claimed, here goes. First off, the elephant in the room, the bad racial casting i dont mean casting an English guy to play an American and swapping accents i mean taking characters that are supposed to be from Inuit tribes and making them extremely caucasian, not even a little tan. This wouldnt be such an issue if they would have made all the Water tribe caucasion, instead for some reason they cast people who actually looked Inuit to play in the background shots, when the main stars stand in a group they look like adopted kids. Pretty much any water bender with a speaking role is caucasian with some kind of braided hair. A lot of people it found it controversial that the Fire Nation had been recast completely, in the show they were easily Japanese influenced while the Earth Nation appeared to be more Chinese influenced, well the producers thought it would make sense to recast the entire Fire Nation as Indian (like from India). Oddly the Earth Nation actually remained Asian (i think everyone was shocked). For the exception of Zuko and Uncle Iroh most of the cast seemed out of place, Aang specifically. Young Noah Ringer seemed very torn on how to play the character, he easily looked the part but he always seemed to be struggling with his delivery of lines, like he was over thinking them. This would have been fine, if he werent the lead character. His lacking performance brings me to my second biggest problem with the movie, its heart is gone.

In the show all of the main characters are very light hearted, and even though they all have serious moments theres a lot of comedy between them. In the big screen adaption pretty much all of the comedy is gone. This is a terrible crime because the characters like Sokka, Momo, and Appa are the main comedy relief in the show. Aside from two to three moments in the film there’s no real comedy, Sokka is serious most of the time, Momo only gets about 3 minutes of screen time, and Appa gets about the same with one joke toward the beginning. Its a shame because this is what made the show unique and beloved, it was a great adventure story but the characters were heavy on fun and heart.

My other big problem with the film, the pacing. Looking at other big budget epics like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter or Chronicles of Narnia, these films are between two and three hours allowing them to flesh out the details, establish characters, create enemies, and allow the viewers to better understand the source material. In The Last Airbender the entire movie is cut to be just about 100 minutes or about an hour and forty five minutes. Trying to fit the contents of a twenty episode season into that time is near impossible and the end result comes out painfully rushed. Entire story arcs like Sokka and Princess Yue’s courtship are crushed from 3 episodes down to about 5 minutes so if you’ve never seen the show you wont develop a relationship to Princess Yue’s character who becomes a big part of the film and a major story point for Sokka. The pacing of the entire film just felt overly rushed as if they didnt think kids and adults seeing this film in theaters would have the attention span to sit through a two and a half hour film, its because of this that the film suffers as they rush through places not even giving a mention to minor characters, instead providing barely a montage of events before they reach the Northern Water tribe.

Bottom Line: If you were a fan of the show and can look past the obvious Racebending (my new favorite online term to describe the whitewashing of characters in the film) you’ll find a film thats almost halfway decent, sadly the more you start to think about it as a fan the more its gonna piss you off.

If you werent a fan of the series or hadnt even heard of it then you’re gonna have a pretty hard time understanding it, partly because of the nature of the source material, but mostly because of the films badly rushed pacing.

-My final verdict on Avatar: The Last Airbender

2 out of 5

        *DISCLAIMER: Dont take it personal, I might piss you off*

Twi-Hard: A human being who is a fan of Stephenie Meyer‘s ‘Twilight Series’, consisting of ‘Twilight’, ‘New Moon’, ‘Eclipse’, and ‘Breaking Dawn’. Twi-Hards are usually quite addicted to the series, and would be considered ‘obsessed’ by some. (Formerly known as ‘Twilighters’)

I seem to be ranting alot lately, maybe the world should stop pissing me off. Have you had the pleasure of encountering a Twi-Hard? You’ve no doubt seen them on tv or read an article about them, they’re fans of the Twilight franchise of books and films. Typically they range from 8-30 and beyond, you’ll see them on the news waiting to see a midnight showing of one of the Twilight movies with sparkling glitter on their faces (the vampires in the Twilight books sparkle in the sunlight instead of burning up) and screaming like insane women in anticipation and declaring their love for Robert Pattinson or Taylor Lautner (the two male leads in the series). Crazy huh? Not really.

These girls and sometimes guys get a pretty bad rap from the media and the rest of the internet, mostly from guys like me who hate the franchise. Here’s the problem, do guys like me really have any room to talk? I mean, sure we are entitled to our opinions to hate something but are we as nerds and fanboys really any different? Dont we camp out for Star Wars tickets anytime Darth Lucas puts out a new film, dont we dress up in Star Fleet uniforms for every Trek Con, dont we wait for days in line to get the latest gadgets, dont we have Thanksgiving day light saber battles on the front lawn after dinner? That last one might only be a tradition in my house but i’m sure i’m not the only retard who does something stupid because we love a franchise.

The biggest problem that i see with fanboys hating on Twilight is that it takes the existing notion of vampires and werewolves that were glorified as bad asses in things like Underworld and True Blood and makes them a little girly. Sure the idea of sparkling vampires and werewolves that can change whenever they like is kinda dumb when placed against the normal rules applied to such creatures, but the thing that draws the Twilight fans is the allure of everlasting love …and love triangles. Not to mention ridiculously good looking actors.

All i’m saying is that we should respect a new generation’s obsession, its really no different than Harry Potter, hell we should be happy that kids are reading again. They’re romance novels for tweens, get over it. I’ve watched the first two films without being bribed and yeah they aren’t great but i’ve seen worse. The best case scenario for haters of the franchise is that this will all go away over the next couple of years and the biggest fans will soon be denying they even liked it (not unlike Star Wars nerds when Phantom Menace came out).

Here’s the lowdown, you can hate on the series all you want but you should at least try to be respectful of something someone else loves, it doesnt feel good to be made fun of, especially when you are devoted to something that the general public thinks is stupid. Also, if this Twilight thing really takes off we’ll have to accept the fact that this generations Han Solo is a sparkly vampire with commitment issues. Get it together nerds, we’re all on the same team.

*DISCLAIMER: Dont take it personal, i might piss you off*

Its a new day and something else has pissed me off. If you come to my site you’ve no doubt played a video game or watched a movie at some point in your life, well this rant is about both. We all know games based off of films are generally shit (with the exception of Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay), but why cant Hollywood make me a decent film based off of a game?

Think back, find one …got it? Now think about the fourteen others that sucked astroballs (thats right, balls from space). How hard is it to pull off? The game is basically the plot, casting, locations, and design! Just copy that and put it on the big screen. Seems easy right? Here’s a list of some of the “winners” that have decided to go another route

• Resident Evil (all of them)
• Super Mario Bros
• Dungeon Seige
• Farcry
• Doom
• Street Fighter
• Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li
• Mortal Kombat
• Bloodrayne
• Double Dragon
• Wing Commander
• Dead or Alive
• Alone in the Dark
• Hitman
• Max Payne
• Prince of Persia
• House of the Dead
• Tomb Raider
• Tekken

Pretty long list right, and thats not even all of them. Now take a look at that list again, have you noticed a patern? I’ll point it out for you, at least four of those movies are directed by Uwe Boll. For those not familiar with Dr. Boll, he’s pretty much the cinematic anti-Christ, now i dont mean to pick on just him but he’s the perfect example with whats wrong with video game movies, they are being made by people who dont play or care about the games!

This isnt the same argument that people make when they remake a show or movie from the past (we all know those are usually shit), i’m not saying that Hollywood is raping my childhood as soo many other nerds have exclaimed, but is it really that hard to transfer something to another media when its completely laid out for you?

Now the trained eye will notice the one exception to the list above of shitty video game adaptaions was Silent Hill, as a person who played the Silent Hill games i thought the film was almost perfect. The main reason for this is because of director Christophe Gans. He played the games, he loved them, so much so that he practically begged Konami for the rights to the film, and after they gave him the rights he involved Konami and Team Silent (the game’s creative team) in every aspect of the filming and post production. After that we were presented with a film that used the games plot, location, characters, and even music directly from the games. What happened? Movie critics hated it, but the fans of the game loved it and it opened at number one that weekend because of it. Its what happens when a fan is given the rights to make something based off of something they love, Robert Rodriguez did the same with Sin City and again, the critics hated it but the fans loved it!

Sadly for every Christophe Gans and Robert Rodriguez we get five Uwe Boll and Paul WS Andersons. Anderson is responsible for ruining one of the simplest franchises to film, Resident Evil. What he’s done for the last three movies (with a fourth opening in September) is make big budget fan fiction, he took an existing universe, added his own characters, and made his own little story for his characters while picking and choosing plot points and characters from within the existing universe. If you’ve ever played a Resident Evil game you’ll notice that the Alice character does not exist ANYWHERE, Anderson then takes Milla Jovovich and tosses her in skimpy outfits gives her lots of weapons and attempts to make everyone forget this fact by making her a cool tough female character.

Maybe i’m overlooking something but the Resident Evil universe is chock full of strong female characters (Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield, Ada Wong, Sheva Alomar). Did we really need another one when we have soo many other good choices? If you cant tell, this rant was brought about by the fact that Resident Evil: Afterlife is coming out in the fall and the american public just keeps eating it up.

I’ve never walked out of a movie in my entire life (you cant pass judgement on a film unless you watch the entire thing), but i came the closest during Resident Evil: Extinction, i even remember telling my best friend and fellow game nerd who saw it with me that my soul hurt after watching it.

Another point i’d like to throw out there, whats wrong with CG adaptations? After watching Final Fantasy: Advent Children i’d gladly pay full price to see some of my favorite games made into full length CG movies on the big screen. Someone at Capcom must have thought the same thing when they made Resident Evil: Degeneration (the only RE movie i’m proud to own). They’re cheaper to make, faster to produce, and the fans get something directly related to the games they love and feature the voice actors they’ve played hours with. Give me a CG Gears of War movie over a live action version anyday.  

Get it together Hollywood, i understand that you see a property that looks like it could make some cash, you decide “hey lets buy the rights and make this!”. Now before you get all excited about it, find a director that knows the source material and loves it and actually wants to make it because its a movie they’d like to see.

We all know George Lucas will pimp out his characters for a few bucks, today he seems to have done it right for once. Check out this Adidas commercial for the World Cup featuring an all star cast including Daft Punk, Snoop Dogg, and Jay Baruchel.