THE LAST
AIRBENDER
 
STARRING: Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz,
Jackson Rathbone, Dev Patel, Jessica Jade Andres, Aasif Mandvi, Shaun Toub,
Cliff Curtis, Keong Sim
2010, 103 Minutes, Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
 After
a trio of missteps (The Village,
The Happening and
Lady in the Water), Sixth Sense
writer / director M. Night Shyamalan tackles an adaptation of someone else's
work for the first time in his career. The Last Airbender, a hokey
live-action retelling of the animated television show, continues Shyamalan's
slide toward total irrelevance.
Full of lazy dialogue,
unconvincing performances, and lackluster action sequences (made nearly
incomprehensible if you have the misfortune to see the movie in its 3-D version,
inarguably the worst conversion to stereoscopic imaging since the trend began
anew), The Last Airbender is an unintentional laugh riot.
After explaining the history of
the movie's fictional world in an opening text crawl (redundantly recited by the
blasé narrator), the movie then continues to tells us the main points.
Basically, the world is made of four nations based on the four elements: fire,
earth, water, and air. Some members of the tribes can manipulate their
respective element, and they are dubbed "benders." They do this by moving their
bodies in ways that are not connected in any way to the movement of the element
in question but that look impressive.
The Fire Nation is waging a war
against the others for dominance and suppressing anyone who can bend any element
other than fire.
There's also a spiritual world,
which, well, contains spirits for things like the moon and the ocean, while a
giant spirit dragon represents a giant spirit dragon. It gets a bit hazy here.
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"A new low point in Shyamalan's crumbling career . . ." |
Bringing balance to the world
is the reincarnated form of the Avatar, a master of all four elements, who has
been missing for a century. Brother and sister Katara (a bland Nicola Peltz) and
Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) from the Water Nation stumble upon a boy named Aang
(Noah Ringer, either looking Zen or concerned) trapped in the ice with a giant,
flying bison-like creature. As it turns out, he is the Avatar, who shirked his
responsibilities because it would involve too much sacrifice but quickly changes
his mind to live up to his title now that he's had a hundred years of frozen
unconsciousness to think about it.
Shyamalan presents a travelogue
of this New Age world, showing us such locales as Northern Water Kingdom and
Southern Air Temple, all of which serve primarily as pretty digital paintings in
wide shots before heading back to the repetitive storyline. Aang never had the
chance to learn how to influence any other element than air, so now he must take
things one step at a time, learning water-bending from Katara and a hippie
teacher who kicks water globules around like hacky sacks. Meanwhile, he avoids
the Fire Nation's disgraced son Prince Zuko (a hammy Dev Patel), who wants to
capture the Avatar before Commander Zhao (a whiny Aasif Mandvi).
The script offers a lot of
roundabout dialogue, primarily composed of characters asking questions to which
they should already know the answer. Why, when Aang and his bending friends
control air, water, or earth, do the fire-benders ask what is happening? They
live in a world in which people—themselves included—can do such things; it's not
an issue to them.
The most circular of these
scenes takes place between Zhao and Zuko's uncle Iroh (Shaun Toub). Before
invading the Water Kingdom, Iroh tells Zhao that the army will have to worry
about moon power, to which Zhao responds that they don't have to worry about
moon power, to which Iroh wonders why they don't have to worry about moon power.
Then Zhao explains why moon power isn't an issue, and yes, they do say "moon
power" that often. In fact, they say it more than that.
Other scenes are simply
pointless, restating key points of the plot that have been firmly established.
The most obvious example of this comes when Zhao tells Fire Lord Ozai (Cliff
Curtis) that his son attempted to kidnap Aang from imprisonment, even though
everyone knows Zuko's goal is to capture the Avatar for his own ends (which, by
the way, are never actually clarified). After repeating what Zhao has already
said with a few pauses in between, Ozai receives an emphatic assertion of what
both have now firmly stated in a "yes" that somehow makes the word three
syllables long.
At least The Last Airbender
is funny in its overblown, underperformed, substandard, and superficial way. It
is a new low point in Shyamalan's crumbling career.
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