Raspberry Choosing: The Final Airbender (2010)

So what occurred, precisely? Properly, if I might inform you that, I’d be wealthy, as a result of I’d in all probability even have solved local weather change or received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Sure, Shyamalan had made a number of overwrought duds in a row at this level in his tumultuous profession, however even within the ironic chuckle manufacturing unit The Occurring, there was no indication that he had merely forgotten what a film was. The forged and crew have been annoyingly mum on the matter, universally preferring to maintain it tightly closed within the outdated disgrace dumpster. Our major (unverified) supply of insider data on the movie’s manufacturing is a submit on an Avatar fan discussion board by somebody claiming to have labored on it, which paints Shyamalan largely as a sufferer of producers who didn’t perceive the venture. Alternatively, Konietzko and DiMartino have gone on report saying that Shyamalan had loads of management over the ultimate product, and that a lot of his choices led on to the movie’s disastrous reception.

So allow us to be the ultimate choose right here: who’s proper, if anybody? And is the film actually all that unhealthy within the first place?

THE STORY

I’m going to actively resist turning this into one more Ninety-five Theses itemizing all of the methods through which The Final Airbender is laughably inferior to its supply materials. We don’t want extra of these. You can learn these all over the Web if you need. For our functions, The Final Airbender exists in a vacuum and should sink or swim by itself. And relaxation assured, sink it shall.

So let’s get began: why don’t I let Katara (Nicola Peltz)’s opening narrative crawl do that for me?

100 years in the past all was proper with our world. Peace and prosperity stuffed our days. The 4 Nations: Water, Earth, Fireplace and Air Nomads lived amongst one another in concord. Nice respect was afforded to all those that might bend their pure component. The Avatar was the one individual amongst all of the nations who might bend all 4 parts. He was the one one who might talk with the Spirit World. With the Spirits’ steering the Avatar saved steadiness on the planet.  After which, 100 years in the past…he simply disappeared!

What’s “our world”? What does it imply to “bend” your “pure component”? What’s the Spirit World? Why does it matter that the Avatar “simply” disappeared? What the hell is occurring with the punctuation in that third sentence? Don’t you are worried your fairly heads about it. I’m positive all will probably be made clear in good time.

We then meet our viewpoint characters, siblings Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) of the Southern Water Tribe, “which was as soon as a giant metropolis.” They “usually go looking for meals, however sadly, my brother isn’t the perfect hunter,” Katara helpfully informs us, as a result of if we didn’t have her, the film might need to indicate one thing apart from the 2 youngsters wandering by way of snow. She is going to proceed all through the film to elucidate the numerous, many, many, many elements of the story they’ve chosen to not present us. I’m unsure I’ve ever seen one other film so depending on momentum-killing voiceovers as this one, and for no clear cause.

Oh, additionally, Katara is among the aforementioned “benders.” She will be able to manipulate water. Type of.

Water. Or possibly gelatin. Or Kevin Bacon from Hole Man.

Anyway, whereas they’re out searching or no matter, Katara and Sokka uncover an odd presence underneath the ice: a preteen boy (Noah Ringer) and a The place the Wild Issues Are reject frozen inside an iceberg.

Much less horrifying as soon as I noticed these are people holding onto its toes, and never its misshapen toes.

As a result of Katara and Sokka are socially awkward jerks, they whack the child with their spears a number of occasions till he wakes up, then take him again to their village. However after they broke him out of the iceberg, they set off a magical gentle plume that additionally attracted the eye of Fireplace Prince Zuko (Dev Patel), who’s looking for the Avatar (which everybody retains announcing “Ah-vatar” to make it extra critical), a spirit-human hybrid who’s born repeatedly into every of the 4 nations in a cycle and is able to bending all 4 parts. Zuko is doing this with the intention to show to his father, Fireplace Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis) that he’s honorable and worthy of sooner or later ascending to the throne. Please word that I’m barely fifteen minutes into the film at this level, and that numerous this I solely know due to the present.

Hey, his tattoos look fairly neat! I’m attempting over right here!

Zuko and his uncle, Fireplace Nation Normal Iroh (Shaun Toub) seize the child and decide that he’s each an airbender and the Ah-vatar, however he escapes and joins up with Katara and Sokka to go discover the world and work out what’s been happening since he received frozen in that ice ball. A go to to his outdated hangout on the Southern Air Temple reveals that he’s been frozen for 100 years and that the Fireplace Nation exterminated his folks, so he resolves to make up for misplaced time by becoming a member of the warfare. However with the intention to do this, he wants to seek out bending masters who can train him to bend the opposite non-air parts parts, beginning with water. BUT ALSO, the depraved Commander Zhao (Aasif Mandvi) of the Fireplace Nation additionally has his sights set on the Northern Water Tribe, for mysterious depraved causes that he narrates to us inside moments of his clunky introduction.

I’m out of breath simply attempting to elucidate all that. Are you starting to know why the movie might need had a number of points with its storytelling? Oh, we additionally be taught that his identify is Aang. Significantly after we be taught that he’s the Ah-vatar.

 

THE BAD

Yikes. Simply…yikes. Generally, as with The Love Guru, itemizing the ways in which I used to be personally harmed by a film feels therapeutic and purifying, a cathartic purge of digital toxins infecting my life power. With The Final Airbender, it feels extra like watching a bunch of individuals repeatedly stroll into lampposts and step on rakes. It’s not hurting you, nevertheless it’s complicated and uncomfortable, and you’re feeling unhealthy for everybody participating till it goes on for therefore lengthy that it’s a must to conclude that they need to get pleasure from self-afflicted head wounds. Attempting too laborious to determine why they’re doing it is going to solely result in you discovering your self within the brigade of rake-steppers.

Dev simply setting himself on fireplace wouldn’t be misplaced right here.

Allow us to start with the construction of the factor. In condensing a complete season of TV right into a 100-minute film, stripping the story all the way down to the necessities was going to be crucial, however Shyamalan and whoever the hell doctored his script have gone approach previous the necessities. We’re fifteen minutes into the film, full with a number of standoffs, earlier than we be taught that the Fireplace Nation is attempting to overcome the world. We’re almost twenty minutes into the film earlier than we be taught Aang’s identify. We’re greater than midway achieved with the film earlier than we get a coherent clarification of how being the Ah-vatar is even purported to work. However within the meantime, we have now loads of time for 3 or 4 “as you already know” exposition dumps about Commander Zhao’s expeditions to some unexplained Nice Library.

Talking of “as you already know” exposition dumps: as a author, M. Night time Shyamalan has by no means precisely been recognized for the naturalism of his dialogue. Even his celebrated motion pictures comprise some clunkers that seasoned actors like Samuel L. Jackson needed to climb over somewhat than ship (“You recognize what the scariest factor is? To not know your home on this world. To not know why you’re right here… That’s… That’s simply an terrible feeling.”). The Final Airbender incorporates howlers that rival essentially the most well-known strains from Troll 2, a film written by individuals who solely form of spoke English. Check out simply this change, the primary strains delivered by Aang and Katara to one another, and persuade me Bette Davis or Laurence Olivier might have rescued them:

KATARA: How’d you get all the best way out right here?

AANG: I ran away from residence. We received in a storm. We had been pressured underneath the water of the ocean.

KATARA: Oh, I see.

AANG: It wasn’t very good. I used to be simply upset. Thanks for saving me.

KATARA: Fortunate.

AANG: I in all probability ought to get residence. They’ll all be nervous.

KATARA: You’re not nonetheless upset?

AANG: Not as a lot as I used to be.

Speak about a dialog that conveys no feeling, no character, no relationship, and barely any coherent data (“I used to be simply upset” about what, Mr. Exposition Fairy?), and even that pales compared to Northern Water Tribe Princess Yue (Seychelle Gabriel)’s tear-choked declaration that “it’s time to present the Fireplace Nation that we consider in our beliefs as a lot as they consider in theirs!” Shyamalan took a number of classes on the John Derek Faculty of Passing as an Earthling and didn’t even have the decency to make it needlessly sexual.

However we might tolerate all of this if the film delivered on its motion, proper? No person has ever watched Pace or Die Laborious or Prime Gun for his or her dense characters or nuanced dialogue. I’ve unhealthy information for you on that entrance too. The motion scenes are a lot, a lot worse than the conversations. For the important thing instance of this, look no additional than the notorious “Pebble Dance” within the Earth Kingdom jail camp.

My favourite half is the dude within the entrance proper, doing this kata with depth applicable for D-Day.

Different analyses of this film have already obsessively documented how little sense this scene makes – why would you place a bunch of people that can use grime and rocks as magical weapons in a jail product of grime and rocks? – however much more essential is simply how boring and sluggish the bending is. It takes a minimal of 5 seconds, and generally as many as ten, for a bender to “construct up the chi” crucial for one easy transfer. The water and fireplace each look terrible, particularly the hearth, which neither illuminates nor burns something round it. You marvel why they don’t simply use fists or swords to combat; so, clearly, do the filmmakers, as a result of ultimately the fighters begin utilizing largely fists and swords. However the worst a part of the motion scenes is how stuffed with folks standing round doing nothing they at all times are. It’s Loopy Samurai Musashi however with out the gimmick that makes that film form of compelling. There isn’t a level to speaking about “choreography” right here. Shyamalan would possibly as nicely have led a number of actors into the center of a campground within the Poconos and yelled “motion!”

After which he filmed them in a collection of interminable monitoring pictures. Please word the shortage of any “bending” by any means.

The forged…ugh. I don’t like beating useless horses, and I like beating useless child horses even much less. M. Night time Shyamalan is a famously hands-off director of actors, which may work very nicely with skilled performers on a film with robust bones. Right here he had neither, and each Ringer and Peltz wanted a variety of path that nobody gave them; because of this they’ve each been cruelly left to flounder in opposition to greenscreens in shot after shot. Peltz suffers particularly as a result of she lacks Ringer’s martial arts coaching and isn’t almost as snug with stylized motion as he’s, and it’s fairly apparent that nobody on set gave a shit about serving to her with it. I do know I’m not supposed to stay up for her as a result of, if the tales are to be believed, she was a nepo child whose casting led on to the film’s notorious whitewashing, however no matter her dad might need achieved, she was only a child attempting to play an unattainable half. That might be unhealthy sufficient in a highschool auditorium, not to mention in a wide-release blockbuster. And the much less we do to contribute to the Jake Lloyd-ing of Noah Ringer, the higher.

The grownup actors are largely victims of horrible choices made by folks not them. Cliff Curtis is horribly forged as a personality who may very well be largely faraway from the movie with out consequence. Aasif Mandvi is usually cited as one of many “good” issues concerning the movie as a result of he delivers his strains with some gusto, however the film’s stakes depend upon his being a reputable menace to Aang, the Northern Water Tribe, and the world at massive. He’s so goofy that he doesn’t even come throughout as a reputable menace to ice, regardless of having firepower in his fingers.

Just lately found footage from Mandvi’s Nosferatu display check?

However even a wretched film may be elevated by a fantastic rating, and plenty of viewers have claimed that James Newton Howard’s rating does precisely that. I don’t know what film these viewers had been listening to. Bolero has a fantastic rating. Mac and Me has a fantastic rating. Robotic Monster has a fantastic rating. The Final Airbender has a boilerplate fantasy rating, plodding and dour, heavy on the mournful strings and almost as devoid of power because the motion scenes. Since The Final Airbender was purported to be a summer time blockbuster and self-awareness isn’t allowed in these, Howard was by no means going to handle a fantastic unhealthy film rating, however he might have no less than had just a little enjoyable now and again.

In fact, it’s totally doable Howard wrote such a generic rating as a result of he couldn’t inform what was happening within the film, as a result of, as has develop into normal trade observe in tentpole moviemaking, nobody bothered to buy lights. The dearth of sunshine is satisfactory within the Earth Kingdom, the place the whole lot merely seems brown and dingy. It’s worthy of a class-action lawsuit on the Northern Water Tribe, the place the whole lot, together with fireplace, is bathed in an impenetrable blue-gray. The massive third-act battle scene is so darkish that I’m unsure whether or not the extras are preventing or tripping over one another. I’ve been to highschool proms with higher lighting.

This can be a daytime shot, for Pete’s sake!

I’m advised that the sloppy, after-the-fact addition of 3D made the lighting issues even worse. I’ve by no means seen The Final Airbender in 3D, and I intend to maintain it that approach. Life’s too brief.

 

THE GOOD

However in fact, the film’s nearly by no means as unhealthy as everybody says it’s. Okay, this one’s fairly shut. However sometimes, we get a short flicker of sunshine and life, indicating that somebody, someplace, could have had an excellent filmmaking intuition.

For one factor, the performances listed below are not universally horrible. Others have singled out Dev Patel and Shaun Toub for managing to cobble collectively the closest factor the movie reveals to an emotional relationship between two characters, and Toub particularly for showing to get pleasure from himself now and again. I, nonetheless, am going to throw some long-withheld and much-deserved sunshine to Jackson Rathbone as Sokka. Everybody hates Film Sokka as a result of he’s not Present Sokka, the previous being grouchy and self-serious the place the latter was a intelligent jokester, however the writing just isn’t Rathbone’s fault, and his efficiency of the character as written is first rate sufficient. He’s greatest in his scenes with Sokka’s love curiosity Princess Yue, the place he and Gabriel bask within the awkward-yet-kind-of-adorable posturing acquainted to anybody who has been or watched a teen nurse a crush.

Wanna go see me in Twilight after this?

He additionally refuses to permit his character to be sapped of all his earlier good humor; his supply of “(o)kay, everybody can assist us now!” after Aang and Katara decide a combat within the Earthbender jail is likely to be my favourite line studying within the film.

The Final Airbender additionally has a few particular person scenes that work. For no matter cause – coincidence, possibly – the one two scenes that rise to the extent of “kinda good really” each happen at Air Temples. For one factor, they’re the one two units the place the “screw it, simply use the solar” strategy to lighting isn’t a complete legal responsibility: the chilly vacancy of the deserted temples contrasts properly with Aang’s warm-toned flashbacks of his cloistered childhood within the care of Monk Gyatso (Damon Gupton).

House of the colorbenders, tragically exterminated by the point of the remainder of the film.

A scene on the Northern Air Temple through which a seemingly kindly Earth Kingdom villager (Randall Duk Kim) helps Commander Zhao ambush Aang is the perfect factor within the film. The backdrop, a rotunda containing statues of all of the earlier Ah-vatars trying fairly imposing in comparison with the pre-pubescent, chubby-cheeked Aang, is the movie’s greatest illustration of how a lot stress and expectation come baked into this position pressured upon unwitting youngsters. They’re additionally serving as helpful covers for Fireplace Nation troopers lurking within the shadow with bows and arrows. And in what I really take into account an enchancment over the Northern Air Temple episode storyline within the present, the outdated man helps the Fireplace Nation as a result of he has an precise private beef with the Ah-vatar: Aang’s failure to just accept his position and assist hold the Fireplace Nation in verify led to his dropping his household and village, and rattling all of it, he needs to see the little shit face some penalties for that. It’s a tense, human second in a movie largely missing stress or humanity, and I feel it’s very telling that it was not lifted straight from the supply materials.

Right here’s my not-very-exciting try at a Grand Unified Principle of The Final Airbender: it was made by two distinct camps of individuals with two fully incompatible visions. Imaginative and prescient 1 was of a devoted adaptation of Avatar: The Final Airbender by and for followers of the present. Imaginative and prescient 2 was of an enormous, technologically spectacular moneymaker that will attract individuals who hadn’t already seen the present. And the factor is, irrespective of which a kind of visions received out, the film was going to suck. It was going to suck for a similar cause nearly all live-action variations of animated fantasy suck: you are able to do issues in animation with our bodies, faces, locations, and feelings that you just can’t do in the actual world, and once you attempt to replicate these issues, you will inevitably shoot your self within the ass. The truth that nobody might agree on how they had been going to strategy the film meant that the ass-shooting was additionally offended and adversarial. The truth that they had been additionally doing this with a 12-hour season of TV meant that they didn’t actually have a half-decent construction to lean in opposition to as soon as everybody’s ass was bleeding. Attempting tougher solely made it worse. The one doable approach this might have labored is that if they’d created an unique story set within the Avatar universe, they usually’re not almost courageous sufficient to both make or market that.

Might need additionally been higher in the event that they’d saved extra price range for Greenland.

That’s a crap deal for everybody who labored on the film. However it doesn’t need to be a crap deal for you, the viewer. In case you can go into The Final Airbender divorced from any attachment it’s a must to the dad or mum materials and with the total understanding that this was a doomed venture from the beginning, you may have an excellent ironic time at everybody’s expense. There’s loads of unintentional hilarity scattered all through that trash aficionados ought to actually expertise firsthand. And in case you can’t handle any of that, you may no less than recognize the sadder however wiser post-Final Airbender world, through which everybody has realized an enduring and beneficial lesson concerning the limitations of various storytelling mediums and the uniquely treasured qualities of 2D animation.

Properly. A few of us, anyway.

High quality of Film: 1 / 5. Greenland’s actually fairly. Perhaps I’ll go sometime.

High quality of Expertise: 3 / 5. Most likely a 1 in case you’re a diehard of the present, and probably as much as a 3.5 or 4 in case you’re not.

Did the Razzies Get it Proper? Most likely, however whereas The Final Airbender is unquestionably a worse movie than Vampires Suck, it’s a a lot much less hateful movie, so I in all probability would have given Vampires Suck the sting. The Bounty Hunter was a innocent, forgettable romcom nominated as a result of the Razzies don’t like Jennifer Aniston, and Eclipse was solely within the dialog as a result of the Razzies don’t like girls or issues marketed at girls on the whole. I’ve not seen and won’t be seeing Intercourse and the Metropolis 2 for additional affirmation of this.

You may learn Tim’s assessment of The Final Airbender right here!

Need to decide extra Raspberries? Take a look at the remainder of the columns on this collection!

Mandy Albert teaches highschool English and watches motion pictures – largely unhealthy, sometimes good – within the psychedelic swamplands of South Florida. She is very keen on Seventies horror and high-sincerity, low-talent vainness tasks. You may hearken to her and her husband discuss Star Trek: Enterprise on their podcast At Least There’s a Canine! You too can observe Mandy on Letterboxd.