Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
7/4/10
“Bring me your elderly!”
-Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) in The Last Airbender
“We have to show The Fire Nation that
we believe in our beliefs just as much as they believe in their beliefs.”
-Princess Yue (Seychelle Gabriel), later
in the same movie
Holy Mother of God, where
do I begin? I've counted myself as a pretty big fan of Pennsylvania's
reigning genre auteur, M. Night Shayamalan, since he burst onto the scene
with the Oscar-nominated blockbuster The Sixth Sense. I joined
pretty much everybody in supporting his other massive hit, Signs,
was a huge admirer of the more divisive films Unbreakable and The
Happening, had room in my heart for the generally disliked The Village
and, well, Lady in the Water wasn't very good. But no
matter how much contempt you may have for the low points of Shayamalan's
very distinctive body of work (and I will grant you, no man should cast
himself as a genius writer the greatness of whose work will not be appreciated
until after his death), none of it can prepare you for the horror of The
Last Airbender. It's an out-of-left field attempt by a guy who
specializes in deliberately paced Twilight Zone horror to make the
kind of FX-filled, based-on-an-animated series summer blockbuster we all
praised his work as the antidote to, and I am hard-pressed to imaging a
less successful marriage of filmmaker and subject. Simultaneously,
it is impossible to imagine a worse marriage of writer and subject.
Shayamalan's Airbender screenplay would make Menahem Golan demand
rewrites: for a shade over 100 minutes, his characters hammer away
at the same list of powers, names and national affiliations over and over,
often two to three times in the same sentence. Not an artful word
is spoken, and a cast that mixes veteran character actors and spunky newcomers
is powerless in the face of their dialog's unnatural flow. Narration
papers over storytelling gaps and footage is swiss cheesed into a combination
of flashbacks and dream sequences in a way that screams “heavy reediting”,
but there's just nothing here to save. The Last Airbender
is one of the worst movies I have ever paid to see.
As Don LaFontaine would say
“In a world where some are born with the power to control a single element,
the people have diverged into four Nations. The Fire Nation has waged
a relentless war that has destroyed the Air Nation and brought the Nations
of Earth and Water to their knees.” The Fire Nation and Their Machines
have conquered many Small Villages (but not the Major Cities) of Earth
and Water and oppress all who have the power of Bending. Katara (Nicola
Peltz) is a Waterbender: she narrates when footage telling us vital
information was mercifully cut. She and her brother Sokka (Jackson
Rathbone) come upon a giant ball of ice which she cracks open, revealing
a small boy named Aang (Noah Ringer) and his huge, flying caterpillar/beaver
pet Aapa. Aang's tattoos make it pretty clear he's the long-lost
Avatar, the spiritual leader of this world who is reincarnated again and
again and inspires all with his power to Bend all four elements, bringing
order to a world otherwise dominated by Fire. Aang rebelled against
his destiny and wound up frozen underwater for a hundred years while The
Fire Nation massacred The Air Nation, leaving him as The Last Airbender.
Vicious Fire Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) shows up at their village and seizes
the boy. His Uncle Iroh (Shaun Toub) gives Aang a test of his elemental
powers and he passes: now they have the captive Zuko must return
to his father Fire Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis) to be welcomed back into his
good graces. But Aang escapes and reunites with Katara and Sokka.
They roust a camp where Fire Nation goons hold Earth Nation hostages and
go from Small Village to Small Village (not to the Major Cities, as there's
no need) inciting rebellion against The Fire Nation and Their Machines.
Trouble is, Aang had not yet learned how to manipulate the other elements
before his hissy fit doomed his people, and our heroes must find him teachers
to instruct him in the other elements in a preordained order, starting
with Water. They travel to The Northern Water Tribe, where Sokka
falls for Princess Yue (Seychelle Gabriel) and Aang trains under Master
Pakku (Francis Guinan). But Zuko and foppish Commander Zhao (Aasif
Mandvi) are closing in, the later with an armada of Machines that will
crush the Water Tribe unless Aang can learn how to stop them from the spirits
to whom only he can speak. Let the Bending begin.
The opening titles helpfully
inform us that we're watching “Book 1: Water”, and the final moments
provide the least welcome cliffhanger ending since John Malkovich decided
it was time to go get his dragon at the end of Eragon.
The Last Airbender is one of those modern movies that isn't content
to merely be awful on its own, but to herald the coming of an awful trilogy.
Don't let me see you buying stock in "Book 2: Earth", though, because
no matter how much money The Last Airbender might make, this is
far more Planet of the Apes than Lord of the Rings.
The movie drips flop sweat from its every pore as footage is compressed,
glossed over, narrated away and referred to in retrospect so much it challenges
the records of Coleman Francis for sheer volume of time when the characters
speaking are not pictured onscreen. Not that I can say I had any
desire to see any of what I missed: the dialog sounds awkwardly translated
from another language, and already the scenes beat us down again and again
with the same exposition. Of course, some characters are simply lucky
to speak: Sokka tells Yue how much he's enjoyed spending the last
few weeks with her before she speaks a line. The Last Airbender
includes a positively perverse number of characters who don't speak on-screen,
including four Waterbenders who show up, have a climactic fight with a
major character and then leave, all without saying a word. Ditto
all the Airbenders who weren't last: Aang's fellow students sure
do smile a lot, and his Master (Damon Gupton) is practically in a silent
movie, but don't let them catch you speaking on-screen, they'll have to
play you more!
From beginning to end, The
Last Airbender is filled with MST3K howler scenes, particularly
whenever Zuko is on-screen. At one point, he calls over a small boy
at a port to tell his own Uncle the backstory they both know. At
another, Aang meditates himself into a conversation with one of the spirits
and awakens to find Zuko staring out the window going on and on about how
his father always liked his sister better than him. Guess he'll never
be over Macho Grande. Then there's a hilarious moment when Zhao (played
for maximum prissy bastard looserhood by Mandvi: whether intentionally
or not, only he knows for sure) invites Zuko and his Uncle onto his ship
so he can hold a dinner in his honor at which the Commander explains to
his assembled crew that Zuko is wearing an official Fire Nation costume
when he's not allowed to. That Zuko gets up and storms out without
breaking Zhao's nose and leaving him to cry like a little girl is one of
the movie's great missed opportunities. And then there's the fight
choreography: the characters seem to control the elements by doing
martial arts routines while the elements act all controlled behind them.
Apparently, Shayamalan thought actually matching the effects to the characters'
motions was all played out. While Aang Waterbends his way through
the assembled Fire Nation forces at the climax, at one point he Airbends
them into two columns by his side while he runs between them with his arms
outstreched like he was winding up to slide into the camera and break into
song. I thought we'd agreed that the next time he does Fosse! Fosse!
Fosse!, Martha Graham! Martha Graham! Martha Graham!, he was going to keep
it all inside.
I would also be remiss to
not point out that Aapa may well be the most absurd fantasy animal sidekick
in the long, dismal annals of fantasy animal sidekicks. Clash
of the Titans' robotic owl Bobo thinks he looks ridiculous.
There's no point hammering
the actors here, although only Toub gives an acceptable performance.
We've seen Curtis do good work many times, even in an abomination like
10,000 BC, and Patel was the friggin Slumdog
Millionaire, but here they're both playing to the street on the other side
of the wall behind the back row. God only knows what Mandvi's doing,
although it sure is funny. Gabriel made a huge impression on me in
a small role in The Spirit, but really, what
are you going to do with that “believe our beliefs” line, or a flirty exchange
with Sokka where he and Yue have a conversation through his imaginary Grandmother?
Ringer, Peltz and Rathbone all try to compensate for their dreadful material
by cranking their energy up to 11: it has the effect of making you
root for the actors even as their characters are crashing on the runway.
Peltz in particular seems to have no idea what to do with Shayamalan's
repetition of the same words in the same sentences over and over, but putting
exactly the same inflection on them both times is the absolute worst choice.
But how does a man who directed
Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson and Samuel L. Jackson to some of their most memorable
performances allow such things to go on on his watch? Truth be told,
pretty much everything you associate with Shayamalan as a director is missing
here. Tempo and mood are nonexistent, and he doesn't seem to have
much of a sense of where to point the camera (pull back on some of those
EXTREME close-ups, please). The special effects don't suck, but they
don't do much to add to the proceedings either, in part because Shayamalan
doesn't frame the shots to draw our attention to them. The big finish,
ripped off from/inspired by the director's cut of The Abyss, occurs
entirely too much in the upper range of the frame. Of course, none
of the bad guys speak while it's happening and James Newton's Howard's
score blares on futilely the same way it does throughout, so the sequence
just laying there is a team effort. I opted for the 2D version of
the movie since it wasn't shot in 3D: you can pretty easily tell
where 3D was inserted, and it seems to be entirely the elements' show.
The Last Airbender
is bad. It's very, very bad. Coupled with the far better, but
previously career-worst Lady in the Water, it suggests that M. Night
Shayamalan needs to stay far, far away from complex epic fantasy stories.
Also FX blockbusters, inexperienced casts, and most of all, Last Airbender
Book 2: Earth and Book 3: Fire. That's a belief
we can all believe in. |
