Escape to the Movies: The Last Airbender

[crypt-creature]

Well, despite being a fan of the cartoon, I'm glad the movie failed. Any casting director that so blatantly racebends deserves a sunk picture.

Avatar set back the status of Asian American performers a good number of years.

Seconded! When I saw the casting, I gave up on this movie. Sokka and Katara look idiotic as white kids, and making the Fire Nation Indian is just flat out terrible.

Yeah, it's so interesting how the only 3 characters in the Water Tribe village with names and speaking parts are white...and the rest are Inuit.

Villains are brown, good guys are washed.

I'm a conservative and I don't usually pull race, but Hollywood invited it this time.

I don't think the movie really 'failed'. Personally I think some people are nit-picky over the stupidest things, though some have valid points.
I also don't think this movie is as bad as people want to make it out to be, but it's no gem either.

For example, the 'races' in Avatar the cartoon are all over the place. People saying they're all supposed to be asian are probably thinking such a thing because the cartoon 'looks like an anime'.

It is very possible that those who did try to audition for the parts, who were of the 'right race', just didn't have the right feel or look to them. There are many reason that could be perfectly valid, but people just want to cry racism when that might not have been the case. Not when the general audience lacks any sort fact.

 

[I am AFK]

I hated the show personaly it was awful and I have no hopes for the movie so its cool it fails. Also a three leged ant is beter then eclips

 

[Knight Templar]

Wait, he made Unbreakable? I love that movie, I keep teling my friends to watch it. I also love Avatar, but odds are I'll rent this one.

 

[DTWolfwood]

o dont waste extra money on the 3D. This movie was NOT made with 3D in mind!

Hardly notice any 3D except for when you got a view of the Fire-Nation Battle ship towards the end. Soooo pointless!

 

[Jorias]

o dont waste extra money on the 3D. This movie was NOT made with 3D in mind!

Hardly notice any 3D except for when you got a view of the Fire-Nation Battle ship towards the end. Soooo pointless!

Yeah if you do have the option to skip out on the 3D i say go ahead an skip it. I didn't have an option the Alamo Drafthouse i guess only carried the 3D version. But yeah, you're right i didnt see much of a difference between 3 and 2D.

 

[Anchupom]

I'm scared of being crushingly disappointed by this....

 

[chibiev]

It's insulting to say that Airbender is intended to "satisfy bored kiddies." The animated series, which Movie Bob obviously hasn't seen, is incredible. I happen to know a dozen adults who LOVE it, not to mention an entire fanbase. I know it's not Movie Bob's job to review the animated series, but don't talk as if this is a "kiddie film" or an "action blockbuster." The animated series is neither of those things and the film shouldn't have been, either.

Save your money and go rent or buy something good: the real Avatar The Last Airbender.

 

[chibiev]

I consider it mispronunciation to say established characters' names completely different from their source material. Why is he so hell-bent to pronounce the characters' names "the Asian way" if he's only going to use white and Indian actors in the film instead of Chinese, Japanese and Inuit actors? Racebending sucks.

 

[Twilight.falls]

I still have to wonder what goes through people's minds.

Let's condense a huge, highly regarded and very long running series into 90 minutes. There is no way this can back fire.

I respectfully disagree with Moviebob, the series isn't for bored children. It has everything you'd expect to see in a series. Hell, it's one of the only series I've ever seen that has a huge, constant plot as opposed to just a bunch of randomly strewn episodes. Characters develop and conflict occurs.

A lot of other cartoons can't say that.

 

[knight of zendikar]

dunno really, i always kind of thought the tv series was americans desperately trying to recreate the style of anime but with enough western sensibilities that the din't have to edit the shit out of the material, so the whole thing ended up coming across as a sub par naruto style show.

but i may check the film out, as i'm not nearly as offended by the casting as some.

Your comparing of avatar to a sub par naruto is honnestly insulting. Yeah it went to reacreate the japanese anime style and it did. In fact it did, it honnestly did it better than alot of jappanese anime. It had very deep characters who actualy had arcs and changed. It had a well paced narative that had many points that were amazing. And it never presented a character in one dimension, especialy Zuko who is probably one of the deepest characters ive ever seen in a cartoon series.

 

[Meggiepants]

snip

Your rant made me lmao.

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,

Spoiler

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!

Ha! Indeed!

Alright, this is something I just can't stand about how people look at M Night's films: THE ENTIRE MOVIE IS NOT THIS 5 SECOND ENDING BIT! The core of the movie, a tense thriller of a family clinging to bits of information during an invasion beyond their league worked.

Oh, and it's pretty much the 'War of the Worlds' ending...so, basically a classic Sci-Fi reference, not some "oh bad storytelling" problem.

Dude, it's the pivotal point to the movie. All that suspense and clinging on the edge of your seat is ruined by the big fluffy bunny ending. It was awful.

And actually, I believe M. Night infers that this twist is what makes his formula for blockbusters, this is from way back in his interview with Esquire in the early 2000's where he boasted that he figured out the formula for a blockbuster movie.

And I wouldn't consider War of the Worlds brilliant script writing either. So using that as a reason Signs is actually an excellent film does not work for me. Just because it's old, doesn't mean it's awesome. I should know. I'm old.

I was particularly disappointed because both Sixth Sense and Unbreakable had clever twists. He was reaching with Signs, and he grabbed a glass of water instead of something more plausible.

 

[Meggiepants]

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,

Spoiler

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 same ones that come to a planet without space suits so they wouldnt die in the enviroment(war of the worlds)
and the ones that have computer systems millions of years ahead of us but seem to be compatible with windows (independance day)

Ha! Yeah the virus felt like a reach in Independence Day, too. I don't know how any of these aliens make it to earth. It seems they should have accidentally decompressed their space ships trying to flush the toilet or something before they got here.

And how sad is it that they manage to kill a whole bunch of us before we manage to "conquer" them. I guess the script writers don't think much of human intelligence either...

 

[Necromancer1991]

Hmm... interesting, so the movie is good from a technical viewpoint but at the same time spends too much time explaining itself, so pretty much what would happen if you tried to pigeon-hole a big story like LoTR into a short movie.

 

[Turtleboy1017]

As usual I disagree with MovieBob.

M. Night Shyamalan should be banned from directing and writing films. I liked the Sixth Sense... THAT WAS IT.

Also The Last Airbender HAS no redeeming moments. It's complete ass from the actors, to the story, to the direction. It all just blew. Actually, the visuals were OKAY. SOMETIMES.

I strongly suggest you DON'T WATCH IT. SERIOUSLY. DON'T WATCH IT.

 

[ezeroast]

Maybe it would of been best leaving some thing unexplained until future sequels. Just to cut down on the "tutorial"

 

[Jadak]

Wait wait wait, did he just say Signs was good? That was the movie at which it truly came into my awareness that M. Night Shayamalan is a moron, and every, single production since then has only solidified that opinion.

 

[Zing]

It's quite sad how Shyamalan is failing, he's quite brilliant, but he needed to stop making thrillers with obscure twists that everyone sees coming because it's his signature, and focus more on the narrative.

He stopped it for Avatar(i'm assuming), but the movie is a failure from what I can see.

It's sad because Signs it's one of my favourite films, and The Six Sense is one of the best films ever made.

 

[CK76]

I would argue that The Village was M. Knight's best film with 6th Sense being its main competition. I don't get why it gets the grief it does, I found it to be 10x the film Signs was.

On this film, it shows one shortcoming of film. 90 minutes cannot tell the same story that is allowed to happen over hours and hours. I might check this out on DVD.