Avatar: The Last Airbender (Movie)

It's been a while, hasn't it peasants? This is the almighty Rinrei back with a new review. This time it's on the monstrosity known as The Last Airbender Movie. This was created in 2012 by M. Night Shyamalan based off the cartoon series Avatar which is known as probably one of the best animated series of American culture, and with good reason. The characters are well-rounded, the comedy is brilliant, the music is fantastic, and the episodes are so intense you're either crying because it's so blinking sad or you're shaking because it's so intense. It's just that great a series. It was unavoidable there would be a live-action movie based on it.

First of all, I'm going to list what is good about the movie. Firstly, the costumes. Amazing work was put into it, costumes and they still maintain an Asian look whilst looking out of this world and just plain wazaam! Secondly, the SFX. I have never seen such good SFX in a movie before and the fact that the fight scenes are so skillfully done really do accomplish that factor in the fights. Thirdly, the sets. They look so realistic that one can't help but become absorbed into the series. The one thing I enjoyed from this movie was looking at the sets. It was done amazingly and deserves appreciation for that much.

Now... onto the bad part. While the creative side of things had been done wonderfully, the other half, including acting and the script itself... not so much. The people who played the roles of Aang and Sokka upset me especially.

Anyone who knows about Aang in the cartoon series knows that he's a happy-go-lucky, goofy little kid, as expected of anyone his age. He may appear childish, and generally carefree for a large majority of the series, but he does have a sense of maturity that later develops in the series whilst maintaining his cheerful attitude. The movie pushed this sense of maturity into a sense of cynicism with us almost never seeing him smile and him never goofing off. This, of course, upsets me for the fact that they completely got rid of the one thing that made Aang Aang.

They're even worse when it comes to Sokka. You can see that the actor tries to maintain his sarcastic role, but the thing is that Sokka is funny in his sarcasm. The actor... not so much. If there was one thing I would ask of the director in order to make the movie at least a little bit better, it would be to put in Sokka's goofiness. He may be serious at times, but overall Sokka is a typical teenage boy who acts stupid and goofy like everyone else. This was the one character that disappointed me the most.

Then there is Iroh. Seriously people he's my favourite character; what did you do to him? Not only has his appearance been altered, but his entire attitude. What happened to him?

I feel that if this film is to have any way of maintaining an audience in the slightest, it needs to at least consider fixing the characters. As a writer of scripts myself, the first thing I do is I keep the characters in character! This movie is like a terribly written fan-fiction! The characters have been mauled and the script writing has hacked up whatever good was in the series. Allow me to elaborate with just one scene and one alone.

The village. I feel that in this scene they attempted to combine Katara being stuck in an earth-bending prison and the Kyoshi Island. If you were going to combine the two, then at least stick it on an island! The whole purpose is that they are isolated from the outside world and thus have to battle on their own! Worst of all, the Kyoshi Warriors weren't even seen, and they are vital to the later series. Especially Tsuki. He will probably include her in the next movie, but the fact that he forgot about the Kyoshi Warriors here means that people will presume they were excluded from the series, and will result in just plain anger towards him.

The dialogue is clunky and this makes the acting wooden. Before he even considers writing the sequel (which he is interested in doing), the director better get his act together and work on his scriptwriting skills. If this sequel is to ever make us forgive him, he better fix it. And Toph better be her usual blind self. And Bumi better be crazy and have his funny snort. And... you know what? Just watch the series again. Watch the series again and realize what you did wrong, and fix it. And please, for the sake of the population, get the Kyoshi Warriors in there somewhere.

I give this a 3/10. This was a very disappointing movie, and the dialogue as well as the acting requires immediate attention.

That's Rinrei out!