The Last Airbender (2010)

Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan, the poor devil
Starring: Noah Ringer, Aasif Mandvi, Shaun Toub

Not as bad as it could’ve been, which is more than I expected.

Honestly, it’s pretty bad, but everything outside of the actors was ... all right. The scenery looked GREAT, the costumes looked GREAT, the CGI looked GREAT - it’s just that as a loyal adaptation of existing material, it’s terrible. The original feels like a magical kung fu action film, like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This feels like ... an adequate Hollywood fantasy film. It’s not trying to be its source material, and people were HOPING for its source material, so it’s bad.

Its trying to be Hollywood instead of Hong Kong also explains a lot of its poor choices - why are most of the actors random white actors instead of Asian ones? Hollywood. Why didn’t they hire martial artist choreographers for the fight scenes instead of the people who did The Bourne Ultimatum and Casino Royale? Hollywood. Why didn’t they pick a good action director for a film that’s 40% fighting? Hollywood. Why did they reveal the Fire Lord early and thus remove all menace from his appearance? They needed to pad out runtime; Hollywood. Throw in the usual pack of quirks and jokes that Shyamalan films are infamous for having, and it’s no wonder this movie got meme’d up and down the street even before release.

I’ll give it props - it had the decency to only be an hour and forty two minutes, which is more than I can say for some bad films I’ve watched; the AUDACITY of a bad film to be over two hours...

It also got a good actor for Aang; he’s not Asian like he’s supposed to be, but he is part-Native American, so a step in the right direction, and he did a genuinely good job with his action scenes. Being the face and lead of a major Hollywood action blockbuster at age twelve could NOT have been easy, but he did a good job. Even Daniel Radcliffe didn’t have to do any action scenes at twelve.

2 out of 5. If you want it to be the original, 0 out of 5. It’s on Netflix for free, which is the main reason I watched it.