John’s Movie Musings

That’s it.  I’m done with Shyamalan.  The cred he earned from The Sixth Sense, Signs, and Unbreakable (well I liked it), has been obliterated by Lady in the Water, The Village, The Happening, and now The Last Airbender.  He’s the only director I know that has consistently released a film that’s worse than the one before it.  Even Uwe Boll (a man financed by corporations looking for a tax write-off) manages to show some growth between releases.

I’m late with this review because I really didn’t want to talk about it.  With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 8%, I figured it would die a merciful death and we could all forget it ever happened.  Party conversations would be like, “Hey, remember The Last Airbender?”  “What? … … Wanna see me stick this quarter up my nose again?”  It would be bliss.  But no, the film’s made over $100M so far and looks to make a profit after all is said and done.  That means the sequel will get made.  People, for all that is Good and Right, we cannot let this happen.  Stop paying money to see this.  You’re destroying humanity.

If there’s to be one good thing to come of this aberration, some of you might get introduced to the cartoon.  Called Avatar: The Last Airbender (before James Cameron started filming with two cameras and stole the name), the three-season story arc explored themes of love, death, friendship, vengeance, jealousy, and family wounds.  But ultimately, the story centered around a 12-yr old boy struggling to accept a burden he never asked to carry.  All of these heavy themes were written perfectly and delicately wrapped in a kid’s cartoon.  It had no business being as good as it was.

You’d think with all of that powerful source material, making a movie would be simple.  But M Night made the decision (or lacked the mental faculty) and stripped the emotional weight from every scene.  He changed the character name pronunciations (Aang rhymes with bang, not hung), and his actors couldn’t decide on how to say ‘avatar’ – even in the same scene, by the same character.  And as one final, fecal-shaped exclamation point, M Night changed the ending, proving he had completely missed the point of the story he was telling.

If this blog shows anything, it’s that I’ve seen a lot of bad movies.  The Last Airbender is easily in my top five worst of all time.  It even made me angry.  The cartoon was like a vintage automobile, full of memories.  Shyamalan bought that car, gutted it, replaced the original seats with a La-Z-Boy, and set the whole thing on blocks in the front yard.  Most infuriatingly, he was proud of his work.

Grade: F-