Review: The Last Airbender

The first thing I have to mention, because it bothered me from the opening title scroll, is the complete and utter mispronunciation of names that were well established in the series. They mispronounced “avatar” for crying out loud! (Before you think it’s just an accent thing, one character pronounced it two different ways within the first five minutes.) And Aang, Sokka and Iroh can’t even pronounce their own names! Sure, this wouldn’t be an issue for someone new to the franchise, but someone with even a passing knowledge of the series would be able to pick up on the names. It makes me think one of two things of Shyamalan: either he has never even bothered to WATCH the series he based his movie on or he is trying to put his own stamp on the characters by subtly altering something as intrinsic as their names. Regardless of the reason, getting such basic details wrong is inexcusable.

There has been a LOT of talk regarding race in “The Last Airbender”. To be honest, I never really gave it that much thought (please don’t flame me) until today. The most that race affected my opinion of the movie was the initial casting of Jesse McCartney as Prince Zuko. I can’t even begin to fathom that decision. I could go with Sokka, Katara and even Aang as fairly Caucasian because that’s how they always seemed to me in the series, but not when you compare them to dozens of Inuit extras portraying the Southern Water Tribe and Monk Gyatso being (perhaps multi-racially) African-looking. Having Sokka, Katara and “Grandma” (not GranGran) looking European in the midst of First Nations people is pretty odd, even if you explain it away by saying that Grandma came from the Northern Water Tribe (who all look pretty European, too.) But we don’t know that because the whole subplot about Katara’s necklace and Master Pakku is gone.

Speaking of missing subplots, I know it’s impossible to condense nearly 10 hours of the cartoon into an hour and forty-three minutes, but to leave out the Kyoshi Warriors? That’s like leaving the house elves out of the Harry Potter movies! Okay, that sounded better in my head, but the point is they’re going to be important later on so why not at least give us a cursory introduction to them? And I was very disappointed to see two important battles left out of the Northern Water Tribe section: Katara’s duel with Master Pakku and Aang’s dispatching of Commander/Admiral Zhao. The duel would have gone a long way toward explaining differences between the Northern and Southern Water Tribes, not to mention how awesome it would be to see the creative use of Waterbending that establishes Katara’s mastery and to have someone to cheer for, which is sadly lacking throughout the film. Aang’s Avatar State gestalt with the Ocean Spirit was left out too, and I think the climax of the movie suffered for it. In the series, Commander/Admiral Zhao suffers overwhelming defeat (and is presumably killed off screen) at the hands of the Avatar/Ocean Spirit, letting Aang have the final say in Zhao’s fate. In the movie, four anonymous Waterbenders basically ambush Zhao and drown him in a water bubble, then leave his sodden corpse as they run off to find someone else to gang up on and drown. That completely changes the whole tone of what should have been an important moment and made Zhao just another casualty of war.

Quite honestly, “The Last Airbender” is boring, plodding along until the plodding is interrupted by an action scene. It takes itself far too seriously and none of the humor from the series makes it through the Shyamalan filter. While I am glad Appa and Momo were pictured and mentioned (correctly) by name, neither is rendered in a way that gives suspension of disbelief half a chance. The amount of exposition by all the characters (Katara, Zhao and Grandma especially) makes Fountain of Exposition Albus Dumbledore look positively taciturn. (What is it with me and Harry Potter references tonight?) The rest of the dialogue is wooden and poorly written, leaving even the experienced actors in the cast nothing with which to flesh out their characters. And let’s just gloss over the glaring plot holes (like imprisoning Earthbenders in what is essentially a stone canyon) or we’ll be here all night.

But lest you think “The Last Airbender” has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, there were some things I really enjoyed. I liked the costumes, especially how they all corresponded with their nation colors like in the cartoon. The Northern Water Tribe clothes hinted at Renaissance Venice, which seemed appropriate for the canals prominent in the city (at least in the cartoon.) And Iroh, even if he couldn’t pronounce his name, was awesome as always. We don’t get as much of a chance to see his honorable heart and generous nature in book one and even less in the movie, but he still shines, especially near the end. I also enjoyed how they rendered Aang’s glider and the addition of a print on the cloth was nice. Last but not least, I loved how they did Aang’s tattoos. The solid blue works for the cartoon, but for the live action, the tiny dots, swirls and Air Nomad symbols clustered together to make the arrows seemed much more elaborate and, dare I say it? Realistic.