Hi! I would like to start off by saying that I watched the Last Airbender during it's original run on T.V. and loved it!
When the show officially ended I found myself wishing that it wouldn't. After all: I had grown to love the characters. Why would I want to say goodbye?
When the Last Airbender came to theaters I looked it up and read the reviews. My expectations were dropped in the mud.
80% or so rated it as being somewhere between totally heretical and just plain abysmal. You can imagine my disappointment.
Even after that stark dose of reality I was hopeful and so with a cloud over my head I ventured to my local cinema to experience either an extreme disaster or a surprising revival of a loved cartoon. Thankfully the latter met me at the theater.
I've not seen any of Shyamalan's other films so I don't know how to rate it against them but on It's own I give it a 7 out of 10.
I thoroughly enjoyed the acting (even though it was a little substandard at times), the humor, the choreography and the special effects. Nothing bad about any of it. I do, however feel that whoever gave the script the final O.K. should have gone through it again and given it a good streamlining. A few more pronouns would have gone a long way toward making it sound more intelligent.
The changed pronunciation of some the names didn't bother me much. After all, America is one of the few (if not the only) countries in the world that actually uses the hard 'A' sound. How likely would it be that they would in the Last Airbender universe?
All in all I think the movie accomplished very nicely what it set out to do. It took a whole season of a hit cartoon show and condensed it down to just under 2 hours.
If they had chosen to make it twenty minutes longer they could have worked in some more character development and made the segue from scene to scene less abrupt.
All in all, it is a highly enjoyable movie that I - a stead fast fan of the original series - would love to watch again.
If you choose to see it I recommend doing so with an open mind and perhaps this thought in the back of your head: No adaptation is ever the same as the original work. Otherwise, what would be the point?
When the show officially ended I found myself wishing that it wouldn't. After all: I had grown to love the characters. Why would I want to say goodbye?
When the Last Airbender came to theaters I looked it up and read the reviews. My expectations were dropped in the mud.
80% or so rated it as being somewhere between totally heretical and just plain abysmal. You can imagine my disappointment.
Even after that stark dose of reality I was hopeful and so with a cloud over my head I ventured to my local cinema to experience either an extreme disaster or a surprising revival of a loved cartoon. Thankfully the latter met me at the theater.
I've not seen any of Shyamalan's other films so I don't know how to rate it against them but on It's own I give it a 7 out of 10.
I thoroughly enjoyed the acting (even though it was a little substandard at times), the humor, the choreography and the special effects. Nothing bad about any of it. I do, however feel that whoever gave the script the final O.K. should have gone through it again and given it a good streamlining. A few more pronouns would have gone a long way toward making it sound more intelligent.
The changed pronunciation of some the names didn't bother me much. After all, America is one of the few (if not the only) countries in the world that actually uses the hard 'A' sound. How likely would it be that they would in the Last Airbender universe?
All in all I think the movie accomplished very nicely what it set out to do. It took a whole season of a hit cartoon show and condensed it down to just under 2 hours.
If they had chosen to make it twenty minutes longer they could have worked in some more character development and made the segue from scene to scene less abrupt.
All in all, it is a highly enjoyable movie that I - a stead fast fan of the original series - would love to watch again.
If you choose to see it I recommend doing so with an open mind and perhaps this thought in the back of your head: No adaptation is ever the same as the original work. Otherwise, what would be the point?