Avatar: The Last Airbender

A comparison:


So as you all know when Avatar (the TV show, not the movie about blue aliens) came out on nickelodeon, I became a quick fan and soon got my older brother Matt into it as well. Then at first when I heard that there was going to be a movie called Avatar I got excited. However it turned out to be about blue aliens which was kind of disappointing but that movie was pretty good, so I let it slide.
Well turns out they were making the cartoon into a movie. YAY!
How wrong I was to be excited.


The Cartoon



The Movie




         VS








Okay, first things first. Let's talk about the original.

For those of you who don't know Avatar: The Last Airbender is a cartoon series about a boy who is the last of the 'Airbenders' and just so happens to be the 'Avatar.' Aka the one person relied upon by the whole world to keep the four nations at peace. Anyways, when Aang discovers this, he is upset about shouldering the responsibility, gets lost in a storm and basically hibernates for 100 years. When he wakes up, he is found by Katara, the last 'Waterbender' in the Southern Water Tribe, and her brother Sokka. The series begins here and follows Aang through his journey to accept his responsibility, learn to master the elements (which is what the Avatar can do, setting them apart), and save the world. Along the way he meets many people and goes on little adventures and is learning valuable life lessons all along the way.
So I loved this show. I was pretty obsessed, although I was quiet about it because not many other people watched it. It was cute and fun but could be serious and insightful a the same time. The artists and writers clearly put a lot of thought into the work and the end product was a fascinating rare gem for Nickelodeon these days.
The duration of the show was three seasons from 2005 to 2008. It was broken into four parts; Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. Each of the characters goes through some sort of personal growth. Well except some of the villains, like Azula, who just goes crazy... so I would have to say that is more of decay rather than growth...
Anyways. Yeah, Show=awesome.
Movie? Not so much.
Actually, not at all.
So here we are. Time to talk about the movie.
It was bad. Lets break this into two parts. First as an adaptation, then as a movie independently.
So as an adaptation we have to think about things such as role portrayal and casting. Casting is one of those things that you can't really control as a fan. That is, unless you are the casting director. Now don't get me wrong, I am sure that the actors aren't all that bad. Dev Patel, who plays Zuko, was also the lead in Slumdog Millionaire. That was a really good movie. Jackson Rathbone, who plays Sokka, is Jasper in The Twilight saga...
(I'm not even going to go into how much I dislike Twilight)
Right, so it can't be the actors who are making this movie bad, so what is it? The writing. Yeah, a person can only do so much with a big pile of shit. The IMDB review of this movie sates that:
     "It'd be easy to take the script and scenes word-for-word from the source material and simply plug in actors to say the lines. Unfortunately, Shymalan's The Last Airbender fails at even the simplest of tasks such as this."
Good point. There was a point in the movie, that was probably supposed to be dramatic, but Matt and I literally just laughed. The lines are written so poorly that it seems a fifth-grader would have written a better script (and they might just have put a few of the lines from the cartoon in there).
Now, who is the writer, you may ask. None other than M. Night Shymalan himself. Oh, but guess what, he is the director too. So when you hear these stupid as fuck lines being delivered so poorly he's to blame for that too. I can just imagine Dev Patel delivering a perfect true-to-Zuko line and Shymalan coming back and telling him to change it. Oh this man.
M. Night Shymalan has brought us some great movies, but he is a little too obsessed with the twist ending. The Sixth Sense and Signs were legendary movies and pretty great. But he has put twist endings on like every movie he has made. It worked 2/11 times. That's 18%. Less than an F. An F-----! For Christ's sake! STOP IT!
He does this in The Last Airbender too. Since the movie only covers the first season, I fail to understand how introducing Azula as the new chaser of Aang and the gang, and as Zuko's sister as a surprise. Yeah, I already knew these things from seeing the show, but even if I hadn't... We see her a few times throughout the movie. By this time, with Shymalan's record, it's the most obvious thing ever.
Now, I have to touch on these few little nit-picky things because they just bothered me so much. Why is Katara so annoying? She is constantly whining to Aang about how much the world needs him. Blah blah blah. In the cartoon, she is this fiery strong young woman who is a major support pillar for our hero throughout (and the love interest). In the movie, she just appears. No really, she might as well be doing nothing but standing there for all the difference she makes.
Next, the begging of the movie goes by SUPER fast, as if someone were jsut giving a synopsis of the first 18 episodes and then it spends FOR-EV-ER on the last (two-part) season finale. And for how long they spend in the Northern Water Tribe, they miss almost all of the important details. It kind-of goes over the relationship between Sokka and Princess Yue. Oh, but they totally forget all about Katara's struggle to make the water-bending master accept her as a pupil (female integrity), the fact that Yue is betrothed (love triangle), and Sokka coming into his own as a military strategist.
Not only that, but they totally reverse Aang's struggle. In the TV series, his issue is that he can't control his emotions, so when he is pushed to the limit, he enters the Avatar Stage, something he can not yet deal with. However, in the movie, this wasn't acceptable, so they needed it to be the exact opposite. Aang is actually told to let his emotions run free and is portrayed as bottling them up. WTF.
Then, the most annoying thing of all in the entire movie. The way they pronounce things.
1. Aang is pronounced with a long a, as if you were saying 'ahhh.'
2. Sokka is pronounced with a short o, as if you were saying 'go.'
3. Ihro is pronounced with and e, as if you were saying 'city.'
Was it so hard to watch ONE FUCKING EPISODE and learn the correct way THE CREATORS wanted the names to be said?
Aang is with a long a sound, as in 'gorilla.' Sokka with a long o, as in fucking 'sock.' and Ihro is with a long i, and in 'I.' Then they pull this off. Near the end of the movie, when Commander Zaho is taking about the two swimming koi, who are the physical representations of the ocean and moon spirits, he says Yin and Yang with a long a. Yin and Yaaaaaaaaang. Seriously? I'm sorry but this movie was trying so hard to miss pronounce words that it even said yang wrong.
Okay
I think I will be okay now.
Hope you enjoyed my tirade.