The Last Airbender

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The Last Airbender

Postby JaddziaDax » Mon Jul 05, 2010 2:45 pm

I went to see it last night, and well I really am kinda half and half on it.

While the butchering of the names was completely stupid, I think I had more issues with how specific characters were portrayed. Sokka was not hammy or funny. He was as bland as a Twilight "vampire" *cough*. Aang was not happy-go-lucky at all and pouted way too much for my taste. Katara was too soft and lacked any real stubbornness. Iroh wasn't Santa Claus enough... he was neither fat or jolly. Ozai wasn't nearly as menacing as he should have been.

I'd read all the complaints about the racial issues long before but I was willing to give the movie a chance anyway, seeing as the director claimed to be a fan of the show, and that is why he was making the film.

The one thing I think ruined the movie the most was the one thing I was worried about the most as well: the total lack of humor. There was slight humor right at the beginning but then nothing for the rest of the movie. While Avatar: The Last Airbender did have a lot of serious times in it, I really think that it was the humor that carried the show. This movie was too serious business.

However the costuming, fight scenes and the effects were very fun to watch, and seems to be the only value I got out of the film.

I'm curious to know the thoughts of people who saw this movie, who don't know the cartoon series. However I'd also like to read other people's reactions as well...
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby CodeZTM » Mon Jul 05, 2010 3:02 pm

I really thought a lot of what you said. It was wAY too serious for its own good, and the actors were completely unbelieveable as their cartoon counterparts. Really, Sokka is probably my favorite character, and I thought that they really butchered his personality. Aang was butchered far worse, however.

REally, when it came down to it, I knew that it could never be as good as the original series. One, because marketing directors want to reach out to non fans and have to have it a little more "adult/teenager afied" for those that thought of it as a cartoon. Two, because anime movies are NEVER as good as the original series [it's just a fact of life, but I will give honorable mention to the death note movie for being VERY close]. And three, because I have unreasonably high expectations of films. Films are on the bottom latter rung of what I consider "entertaining". Books, video games, music, anime/manga, ect, ect, Movies. And when movies try to take something from the top rungs and make it entertaining, it really just falls flat onits face for me, because movies aren't as immersive as other means of entertainment, especially when they mess with story arcs and characters.

It wasn't... Terrible. No, I can't say it was bad, because I can see an "attempt" to make it great. It was still entertaining as well, but as a hard-core fan, it was kind of like a slap in the face. A softer slap in the fact than say... Sparkly vampire pregnancy and pedophile werewolves, but still a slap in the face.
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby kireblue » Mon Jul 05, 2010 4:45 pm

I don't think that I've ever been as disappointed in a film. There was just too many things that I just can't overlook. The whole "Earth Benders, there is dirt underneath you" scene was really hard to watch. Especially when Aang started to get on guard and held his hand out to keep back the fire nation guards. It would have made sense for him to do this......if the guards were actually within 20 feet of him or possibly surrounding him. And then, the earth benders could clearly beat the guards even without Aang's help. It looked like they outnumbered the guards at least 3-1. And some of them weren't even fire benders! It was a really big WTF moment for me when even Sokka started to beat the shit out of them.

And then, the script was so repetitive. It like the scriptwriter decided that he just wasn't going to use any pronouns at certain points of the movie. Oh and, Sokka's actor murdered so many lines. There were times when he didn't even pause between completely unrelated sentences.

Oh and the 3d text on the screen looked god awful. I'm not sure how I feel about the 3d crossfades though. At first, I was like "woah, was that a 3d crossfade?". But they never lasted ling enough for me to decide if I liked them or not.............yes.....I know I need help. I'm just slightly obsessed with crossfades.

If the sequel ever gets made, I'm confident that they would do a better job, but the one was such a let down.
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby BasharOfTheAges » Mon Jul 05, 2010 7:08 pm

From a conversation with a friend:

jms: so uh.
jms: I went to see last airbender opening night
jms: it... was not a pleasent experience :(
jms: like, it was really really really excruciatingly not good
jms: the last, say, half hour+ I was just waiting for it to hurry up and end.
jms: take the cartoon, compress the first season into 90 minutes or whatever, but during compression, extract every single element that made avatar awesome.
jms: then, change up pronounciations of some stuff, aang becomes ong, sokka becomes soh-ka, avatar becomes ahhhvatar etc.
jms: The, have a deaf blind guy do the casting for half the characters.
jms: eliminate emotion, character development and believability from the script
jms: and you'd still be left with a better film than what m night put out.
jms: generic epic quest #69234, this time with elemental powers
jms: so, I'd advise you to avoid it.
basharoftheages: i will follow this advice
basharoftheages: i had heard from some critic review on the news that it was pretty bad. that they took it and made it into a generic kiddy movie that lacks any appeal to adults and people with taste
jms: there was an 11 yearold with us, and even he thought it was bad.
jms: so yeah, super generic crap with fairly nonsensical plot
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby aesling » Mon Jul 05, 2010 8:28 pm

What Bashar's friend said fairly well sums it up. The writing for this movie was just horrible, at least half the people in it had no acting ability, and the fight scenes were unintentionally funny/ridiculous. Some shining examples of the dialogue include: "Then the Fire Nation came, with their machines...made of metal!" and "We must show them we believe our beliefs just as strongly as they believe theirs."

I cannot count the number of times I literally facepalmed during this movie.
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby guy07 » Mon Jul 05, 2010 11:37 pm

I heard it was really rushed. Probably won't see it. Series was ok but I don't see the movie wowing me in any way.
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby Elcalavero » Tue Jul 06, 2010 1:01 pm

Watched the movie and it sucked. :|
End of Story.
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby CodeZTM » Tue Jul 06, 2010 1:05 pm

Really, some big video game critic needs to use this movie to write a review and use it and say "MOVIES CAN NEVER BE ART". STICK THAT IN YOUR CRAW EBERT!
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby JaddziaDax » Tue Jul 06, 2010 1:54 pm

aesling wrote:Some shining examples of the dialogue include: "Then the Fire Nation came, with their machines...made of metal!" and "We must show them we believe our beliefs just as strongly as they believe theirs."


I was wondering if they could get more repetitive myself... I nearly facepalmed on the line about how "[Katara's] brother became friends with the princess right away" and they didn't show anything of the sort... Being someone who has seen the series I know how it happens, but it seems like such a bullshit line to save time.

One of my friends said that it would have been a bit better if it had been split into two movies. I know that there's tons of complaints about leaving out Jett and the Kyoshi Warriors.
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby Ishbalan » Wed Jul 07, 2010 1:46 am

I was never a fan of the show and am not planning to see the movie, but this review is so awesome it has to be accurate.
http://io9.com/5576076/m-night-shyamala ... e-a-comedy

/thread
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby dokidoki » Wed Jul 07, 2010 9:22 am

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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby Niotex » Fri Jul 09, 2010 12:34 am

I'm just curious about what they did with the particle physics. Apparently they've tried using a completely new proprietary particle system for the fire/air [same system just rendered differently] as well as the water. So that is honestly the only thing I'm remotely interested in in regards to that movie. So for me its just another random movie that I'll watch because some of the tech behind it.
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Re: The Last Airbender

Postby SQ » Fri Jul 09, 2010 10:05 am

I watched the series as it was coming out before it got to be super popular. I managed to finish all of season 1 and most of season 2 but after that I lacked a TV and wasn't obsessed enough to try and download it or anything.
I and my parents went to go see the movie. My parents have no knowledge of Avatar at all. My mom liked it and cried at the the fish/gods scene. My dad thought it was okay, and seemed interested in taking up the series.

My personal opinion of the movie is "It's not terrible." I've seen far worse, and I had little expectation of Avatar from the start. After the initial "OMG THEY'RE ONLY CASTING WHITE PEOPLE!!" I decided to not follow any avatar news at all. So I was fairly level-headed in not expecting too much or too little in that regard, I think.

The 3D in Avatar was stupid. It's a sad, sad day when the movie previews pop out more than your damn movie does. Wuwu told me the day before that Avatar was not meant to be 3d and they added it last minute to make more money. I should've took his advice and not seen it in 3d, because it was basically false advertising. I figured that since the bending was cg, at least that would be 3d. It wasn't. Sigh.

The butchering of the names wasn't too bad either, I just kind of wish the picked one way to say things and stuck with it. Katara starts out saying Aaahvatar but by the end of the movie she says it normally. Other characters have different pronunciations as well. I guess I could chalk it up to "accents" but that's giving them too much credit.

I could tell the movie was trying to be funny, but ultimately the humor failed for me. "Don't do water bending near me, I always get wet" was shallow and when it happened in the middle of the movie it was like.... "Wtf, that was pointless and not funny at all." But maybe I'm strange because my parents laughed at it. :/

I understand the need for this movie to be serious. You have to cut a lot out in order to get the basis of the series down to movie length. At times I thought it was too serious, other times I thought it needed a few more things cut in order to make sense. The whole movie just seemed like a rushed prologue and I was wondering when the "real" story would start.

tl;dr I think the movie would've fared better if it was simply based on the series rather than a translation.
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