The Last Airbender

Man was I pumped for this movie. Not for the reasons you may think either. I love the TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender. It is much more deserving of the name Avatar then that Smurfs/Pocahontas crossover. Also, I'm not a big M. Night fan. 6th Sense is classinc, unbreakable is good, The Village is mediocre and from what I've heard the movies he writes are just getting boring. Anyways, onto the movie!

The 1st thing I want to say is that, this movie suffers horribly from stale acting and poor writing. I wasn't expecting much from a Twilight Vampire, a girl that's been in one other movie, and a 12 year old martial artists. They were better than expected I must say. Especially Noah Ringer (Aang) I think that Rathbone is an okay actor but like I said, the dialog in this movie is just well, awkward.

The scenery was just right for this movie. It is an adventure film and you get to see many different places in this fantasy world. From Arctic to woods and plains, all the colors are vibrant. It really is a beautifully shot film. The clothing and syles of bending are another thing that is great about the film. The clothing makes the movie stick to it Asian culture, but it doesn't force ASIAN down our throats. Except for the constant mispronunciation of names to make them sound Asian, that is.

The coolest thing of the whole movie for me is the bending of the elements. Not only are the special effects top notch, each bending style is modeled after a different type of martial arts. Firebending a more aggressive style, air a quick style, ans water a smooth flowing style. It really adds to the movie and make for some cool action scenes. Firebending easily looks the coolest, just to see peoples hand on fire and shooting it everywhere is really cool.

The plot, while sticking as close as it can to the source material makes it all the better for me. Though it is really hard to shove a 12 hour season into a hour 45 minute long movie. They did take out some things, but generally those were unimportant. The beginning is faced paced however, and there really is no bonding of the 3 main characters that the show gave.

While it does have a lot of references to the series, a non watcher can still enjoy this movie. Generally they don't. I have heard it called "The worst movie of our Generation" which is of course ridiculous. The changes to the plot from the TV series are appropriate I think and made more sense in a movie context.

Overall, cheesy acting, poor writing, great plot, good CGI and scenery, and beautifully directed make a 6.5/10 film.