The Last Airbender (2010)

Release Date: 07/01/2010
Rating: PG
Runtime: 1 hr 43 mins
Genre: Adventure, Children's/family
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Dev Patel, Jackson Rathbone

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By Sam Morgan

I really wanted to give The Last Airbender a fair chance. I managed to not see it in theaters because many and most of the reviews totally trashed it. Additionally, a fair amount of the critiques of the film complained about the lackluster 3D conversion. So I decided to wait on it for Blu Ray to give it a shot.

And holy hell did it not make a difference.

I’m a casual fan of the show. Not a die-hard by any stretch of the term, but I had seen enough to know the look and feel of the world it takes place in. I’m also a casual fan of anime and Japanese culture and am a fairly optimistic individual, so the movie had that going for it as well. But man, M. Night Shyamalan really messed up everything that made the Nickelodeon hit so good.

First off, the film didn’t look too bad on Blu-ray, which was a surprise. Most of the complaints about the 3D version are gone from this delivery because the 2D version allows the picture to be brighter and seeing it flat makes me wonder why it was even considered to be given the third dimension in the first place. It would’ve only helped in a handful of scenes and even then the 2D was adequate. And the elemental effects were fairly cool anyway. The water and fire seemed to have real depth, weight and heat and considering that this was Shyamalan’s first foray into effects-heavy filmmaking, he did a good job.

But as a writer he completely failed. The show was rich in humo and Shyamalan ripped all of that out. Instead, all we have are the “dramatic” moments from the first season, but since we don’t have the light stuff to contrast, the constant melancholy falls flat. And don’t even get me started how he condensed the whole mythology into the worst expository dialogue known to man.

Where did he go wrong? Judging from the behind the scenes extras, it was from the beginning. The Blu-ray comes with a modest amount of extras that are incredibly difficult to tell apart. Everything feels fake and stylized, like the entire crew knew that the cameras were there to capture content for the DVD, so everybody looks happy and does cute things! The camera movements are too slick, the editing too crisp, and the moments they capture seem forced. Then we get to actual interviews and everyone seems to be talking like they were trained by publicists (which they probably were) or seem to be “acting” like “normal” “kids.” The worst of the bunch was Jackson Rathbone, who I didn’t realize was playing Sokka until the special features. His interviews always felt the greasiest to me, but that was probably because of his hair.

It’s best noticed in all the talking heads. No one talks directly to the camera at any point. Everyone is staring at someone off screen to the left which creates a very impersonal feel to everything on top of the fact that everyone seems to be “on.” I mean, they don’t even include a commentary on the disc. All we get is a picture-in-picture “mode” which is basically more prerecorded documentary style footage that never really adds anything to the film. And the stuff that they are talking about “in shot” doesn’t really follow any coherent theme or style. It switches from actors talking about their character to Shyamalan talking about making the film to visual effects guys discussing shots to actor’s mothers. It's very disjointed and when it pops up randomly it covers up key lines in the film that makes watching either the movie or the PiP impossible.

M Night Shyamalan

One thing suspiciously missing from all these features are everyone's reactions to being a part of a film with a Rotten Tomato score of 6%. Shyamalan flies close to mentioning it but he never comes straight out and says “Man, everyone hated this film but I thought it was good!” Instead what he basically said is “Man, I had some trouble making some of these shots but in the end it turned out well.” No one mentions the fact that this movie existed in a world that didn’t like it. The original creators of the show get a subtle jab at the film when they say “we’ll always have the series the way we wanted it. The film is in someone else's hands right now” but everything else is completely positive about the film.

Also Shyamalan says in one of his many, many, many talking head moments that he made this movie because his daughters and their friends all thought it was the coolest thing ever and they pretended they were the characters at leisure. He even states that he made this movie for preteen girls, which makes me wonder if that was the fundamental flaw in realizing The Last Airbender because nothing about the movie suggests that it was made for kids, let alone the special features, but then again it has been a long time since I was a preteen girl.

In conclusion, Blu-ray technology does nothing to help the movie. Its too slick and self absorbed for its own good. Unless you have no emotional investment in the series and you don’t mind the worst dialogue ever written/recorded, I would skip this. Otherwise, you’ll just wind up disappointed.