The original Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series is the rare kind of fantasy fiction ostensibly aimed at kids which can also be enjoyed by adults - like The Hobbit (the book, not the tiresome movie trilogy). The Nickelodeon saga ran for three seasons full of compelling storylines and vivid characters.
So, how does a director whose increasingly shaky reputation hinged on thrillers adapt in 90 minutes the entire first season of an adventure/fantasy series?
Badly.
I have never been a huge fan of M. Night (although I really liked Unbreakable), but usually even his flawed films (say, Signs or The Village) have something interesting about them. This one is worthless though.
Writing is leaden and ponderous; the voice-over by Katara (Nicola Peltz), in particular, is one of the most overwritten, insufferable narrations I recall in a major production. In spite of all the yammering, the exposition is so inefficient that the series' rich lore and world-building are mercilessly castrated: the result is a generic, shallow fantasy setting.
(To be fair, the first season was challenging to adapt because of its episodic structure; the second and third have more forward momentum).
While M. Night has never been a great writer (The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable notwithstanding), he does have visual talent. Unfortunately, he is not a strong ACTION director - a limit he is probably smart enough to realize, since both his superhero movie (Unbreakable) and his alien invasion movie (Signs) featured *one* fight scene each. He could not write around this limit here, since The Last Airbender relies heavily on action. The result is a string of set-pieces ranging from bland to ridiculous.
In the series, "bending" - a mix between martial arts and magic employed to command elements (water, earth, fire, air) - was visually effective and precise, with each elemental effect corresponding to a quick, clear body movement. This connection is lost in the movie, where characters gesticulate wildly and flail limbs around to produce comically tiny results; it takes six people performing a choreographed dance to make a medium-sized rock float (in the animated series, characters toss boulders around with a flick of the wrist). It's pathetic, the kind of stuff which gives fantasy a bad name.
Still, the original sin of this film is how the story is better fit for animation rather than live-action and for a series rather than a movie. I can understand the appeal of adapting, say, a book into a film... but here the story has *already* been told in a visual medium, very well and with more time for subplots and character arcs than you can possibly have in a movie. So... what was the point, again?
4/10
So, how does a director whose increasingly shaky reputation hinged on thrillers adapt in 90 minutes the entire first season of an adventure/fantasy series?
Badly.
I have never been a huge fan of M. Night (although I really liked Unbreakable), but usually even his flawed films (say, Signs or The Village) have something interesting about them. This one is worthless though.
Writing is leaden and ponderous; the voice-over by Katara (Nicola Peltz), in particular, is one of the most overwritten, insufferable narrations I recall in a major production. In spite of all the yammering, the exposition is so inefficient that the series' rich lore and world-building are mercilessly castrated: the result is a generic, shallow fantasy setting.
(To be fair, the first season was challenging to adapt because of its episodic structure; the second and third have more forward momentum).
While M. Night has never been a great writer (The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable notwithstanding), he does have visual talent. Unfortunately, he is not a strong ACTION director - a limit he is probably smart enough to realize, since both his superhero movie (Unbreakable) and his alien invasion movie (Signs) featured *one* fight scene each. He could not write around this limit here, since The Last Airbender relies heavily on action. The result is a string of set-pieces ranging from bland to ridiculous.
In the series, "bending" - a mix between martial arts and magic employed to command elements (water, earth, fire, air) - was visually effective and precise, with each elemental effect corresponding to a quick, clear body movement. This connection is lost in the movie, where characters gesticulate wildly and flail limbs around to produce comically tiny results; it takes six people performing a choreographed dance to make a medium-sized rock float (in the animated series, characters toss boulders around with a flick of the wrist). It's pathetic, the kind of stuff which gives fantasy a bad name.
Still, the original sin of this film is how the story is better fit for animation rather than live-action and for a series rather than a movie. I can understand the appeal of adapting, say, a book into a film... but here the story has *already* been told in a visual medium, very well and with more time for subplots and character arcs than you can possibly have in a movie. So... what was the point, again?
4/10