Escape to the Movies: The Last Airbender

LaBambaMan

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Jul 13, 2009
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You know, I really enjoy the show. It was exciting with nice action scenes and deep and interesting characters. It's a rarity that a show aimed, primarily, at kids will grab my attention like Avatar did.

But you know what pissed me off most about this review? About a minute into it when Bob said the movie was only 90 minutes long. FUCK. THAT. NOISE. God damn it, you have millions upon millions of dollars at your disposal and you can't even make a proper 2 hour movie with all the shit that went on in Avatar? I can make a movie that's a hour and a half long, and I'm just some idiot radio major. 90 minutes is too damn short for a major Hollywood motion picture. Twilight's plot and characters have no depth but even that shit was two fucking hours. Are the attentions spans of the primary audience that fucking short these days?
 

The Great JT

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Oct 6, 2008
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I'm gonna have to pass on this one, lest the hand of fate intervene. Based on what I've heard, it's downright awful.
 
Apr 28, 2008
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meganmeave said:
That's too bad. The trailers looked so awesome, I kind of wanted this to be good.

Though, I think Shyamalan's career tanked with Signs tbh. I mean,

What kind of idiotic alien race that just so happens to have a deadly allergy to water lands on a planet that not only is more than 60% water, but the shit falls from the sky!!
The aliens can be defeated by deadly piss and saliva!

Send in the drunks!

OT: Shame, granted I kind of expected this to happen. Maybe if they split it up for multiple movies it could have worked.
 

dalek sec

Leader of the Cult of Skaro
Jul 20, 2008
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The Great JT said:
I'm gonna have to pass on this one, lest the hand of fate intervene. Based on what I've heard, it's downright awful.
Same here, I really wanted to have high hopes for it myself because the series was actually pretty kick ass. It's a shame because this godawful movie might scare off people who were thinking about giving the series a view sometime. Can someone please explain to me how they managed to cock this up so badly?
 

ZippyDSMlee

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Sep 1, 2007
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Ok so lets hope he extended directors cut will but all the filler in they left out...... but anyway they should have just tried to compress the first 10-15 eps into a film then do the next set as another film if they get enough funds...... a shame its not great but it dose look good enough!
 

TheEnglishman

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Jun 13, 2009
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I didn't watch the series so I'll probably give this a miss until it's out on TV.

Not that I mind, but there was no mention of the casting "white-wash" with the movie? I though MovieBob might mention that.
 

Jared

The British Paladin
Jul 14, 2009
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Intresting...I wasnt expecting that at all. Ill have to take a look at sometime now
 

wildcard9

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Aug 31, 2008
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Bob, care to respond on the recent controversy on how the film has a mostly white cast and the only Asian actor is playing the villain?

As I've stated before, this is the Starship Troopers clause: when a movie is based off a story with a mostly ethnic cast of characters, the director opts to have white actors play their roles. Just like how in Heinlein's novel Johnny was Filipino but Verhoeven opted to have him cast as a white character with vaguely Aryan features (blond, blue-eyed: I have a habit of using that with people with those features, sorry.)

As a Mexican-American, I sympathize with how the protesters are making a very valid point in how we minorities are misrepresented in the many mediums we know and love: film, video games, comics, etc. On the other hand, as a realist: I realize that this is nothing but a shallow cash grab by producers and not so much the director in getting a wide audience to watch said film (IE: white people). So in this case, it's not so much Shyamalan's fault as much as it is Paramount's fault.

Just my $0.02
 

Patient6

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Oct 28, 2009
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Wow, what the hell. He went way too easy on this movie. Maybe I'm overreacting because I was a fan of the tv series but this film was god awful. The fight scenes were terrible, the bending which normally is portrayed as dance like and fluid was instead this long series of hand gestures that did not sync up with the movement of the element in question, which instead makes it look like the characters are casting spells. This was just another one of those films whose selling points were CGI and 3D. And when its not showing off that crap it makes a half assed attempt to throw in plot and character development, both of which it failed at. Also if your going to make a live action version of a popular cartoon, don't change the damn names of the characters. His name was Aang not Ohng, Sokka not Soakah, and Iroh not EEROH!!
 

Abedeus

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Sep 14, 2008
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SilentHunter7 said:
Felis Leo said:
I would go so far as to say that it is the best American cartoon series since Batman: The Animated Series.
No offense to Batman, but IMO that should read the best American cartoon series since Samurai Jack. :)
If Samurai Jack was before Batman, I agree. SJ, while unfinished, was like... epic and stuff. Although he never caught Aku...

Still, I've got to catch up on Airbender as I have yet to see a single episode (yay, no cartoons like that in Poland till they started running Tsunami, by then I felt too old for cartoons).

Also, Shyala...Shama.. Shyamalan directed Signs? Cool movie, watched it with my cousin and we were both scared when the alien finally attacked. And she's like... 6 years older than me.
 

truant

Son, I am disappoint
Nov 22, 2007
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I've been really torn about seeing this, having loved the show. Every time I see a trailer, I'm really excited about the effects, but then they pan to characters. Casting destroys it for me.

The review helps a little, nice to know it's somewhat decent, but I still don't know if I can watch this.
 

NeutralDrow

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Mar 23, 2009
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...actually, I'm intrigued again. Frankly, the condensation of the entire first season of the cartoon into the movie was the one thing I pretty much expected to flop. Perhaps not to the apparent extent, but I wanted to be realistic.

Frankly, I already know what's happening in the story, so much like the Unlimited Blade Works movie, as long as it looks good I'll go see it.

...besides, I actually agree that the change to firebending and the apparent arrival time of the comet makes more sense in the movie...
 

Eric the Orange

Gone Gonzo
Apr 29, 2008
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This review reads out as some one who really, REALLY, wants to like this movie, but professionally can't lie about what he saw.
 

Calatar

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May 13, 2009
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meganmeave said:
That's too bad. The trailers looked so awesome, I kind of wanted this to be good.

Though, I think Shyamalan's career tanked with Signs tbh. I mean,

What kind of idiotic alien race that just so happens to have a deadly allergy to water lands on a planet that not only is more than 60% water, but the shit falls from the sky!!
Seriously, this. Movie started out pretty well, but...
near the end it filtered into pure absurdity. Allergy to WATER? What kind of dumbass aliens with technology capable of invading earth would choose to invade a planet whose surface is essentially over 70% covered in their allergen? How the hell did they move through the crops without getting WET? The tension built up nicely, but the conclusion let it all down.
"Oh the kid not liking old water was really just part of God's plan to save everyone in that house in the end. The purpose of that one dude's possession of a baseball bat was to murder an alien. Mel Gibson can regain his faith in Jesus now. Despite the aliens. Who were also clearly God's plan. Ignoring all conflicts between Christianity and the existence of aliens. And the fact that apparently the aliens killed lots of other people too. Maybe God hadn't made plans for them yet. Or even God knew they weren't on-screen characters, and thus expendable."
I did not appreciate the fallacious religious allegory whatsoever. It makes more sense when you reinterpret "God's plan" as "screenwriter's plan," but that still ruins immersion.
Also, Lady in the Water was absurd and had an incoherent storyline. I saw the Sixth Sense when I was young, so I was a bit scared by it, so I don't really know how good it was. But after LITW and Signs, I decided no more Shama-llama.
 

ShadowKatt

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Mar 19, 2009
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I never watched the cartoon since it was on nickelodeon and I swore off that network when they started airing crap, which was pretty much back in the mid 90s, but all the trailers I've seen I want to go see this movie. I have pretty high expectations of it. I like the lore behind it, and premise is interesting, but that's about all I have, which is a lot of room to be disappointed.