06-30-2010, 09:19 AM
Ouch, what a disappointment. This movie sucks.
NOTE: I am not a fan of the cartoon series, mostly because I've just never had the time to watch it. Also, as for all the complaints about whitewashing, Avatar has always been western for me as the elements are western: air, water, earth, fire. If it was Asian, it would be water, wood, fire, earth, metal. The fact that the fire nation all looked middle eastern, well, that's another issue entirely.
The movie races to try and cover the entire first season (Book One: Water) adding narration to try to pick up the slack, and completely sacrifices the humor and character development. All the actors completely phone in their performances. The effects are so-so, nothing we haven't seen before. The fights are kind of cool, at least the first few are, but they don't hold it together and the final siege scene is outright boring. How can you make a siege boring? The 3D was good for the opening slide telling us to put on our 3D glasses and the Paramount logo, but as soon as the film started rolling, I was wondering why I was wearing those stupid glasses. M. Night Shyamalan has been struggling to produce a mcgguffin on the level of Sixth Sense, but Airbender has no mcgguffin really, so there's just nothing, it's just flat, slow and ponderous with no suspense whatsoever. It really suffers from not being called Avatar. It's budget is 280 million, but it will be devoured by vampires this weekend, and I predict it will join the ranks of unfinished attempts to make a new kid franchise, the Harry Potter wannabes, like Golden Compass, City of Ember, Percy Jackson and Narnia.
On the upside, the wushu looks good and obviously I've been doing my forms all wrong as I can't bend nothing.
NOTE: I am not a fan of the cartoon series, mostly because I've just never had the time to watch it. Also, as for all the complaints about whitewashing, Avatar has always been western for me as the elements are western: air, water, earth, fire. If it was Asian, it would be water, wood, fire, earth, metal. The fact that the fire nation all looked middle eastern, well, that's another issue entirely.
The movie races to try and cover the entire first season (Book One: Water) adding narration to try to pick up the slack, and completely sacrifices the humor and character development. All the actors completely phone in their performances. The effects are so-so, nothing we haven't seen before. The fights are kind of cool, at least the first few are, but they don't hold it together and the final siege scene is outright boring. How can you make a siege boring? The 3D was good for the opening slide telling us to put on our 3D glasses and the Paramount logo, but as soon as the film started rolling, I was wondering why I was wearing those stupid glasses. M. Night Shyamalan has been struggling to produce a mcgguffin on the level of Sixth Sense, but Airbender has no mcgguffin really, so there's just nothing, it's just flat, slow and ponderous with no suspense whatsoever. It really suffers from not being called Avatar. It's budget is 280 million, but it will be devoured by vampires this weekend, and I predict it will join the ranks of unfinished attempts to make a new kid franchise, the Harry Potter wannabes, like Golden Compass, City of Ember, Percy Jackson and Narnia.
On the upside, the wushu looks good and obviously I've been doing my forms all wrong as I can't bend nothing.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse
![[Image: airbender2.jpg]](http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/randall/airbender2.jpg)
