Yeah, I know this is late. I just caught it on DVD after missing it in the theater (boy did that turn out to be a good decision)
Dear God. How did this happen? How did M. Night Shyamalan, the once acclaimed director who dazzled the world with The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs fall so far? He was supposed to be the next Spielberg or Serling. With The Last Airbender he would seem likely to be the next Wiseau or Boll. As a onetime fan, then defender, then apologist for Shyamalan I had approached this film with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Could Shyamalan, working for the first time with a property that didn’t originate with him, break out of his rut that began with 2004’s The Village and seemed to reach its nadir in 2008’s legendarily bad The Happening? The answer is surprising not because it’s a no, but because it is a resounding, emphatic no. This is a film to end careers, and should prove useful in finally dispelling any hope for Shyamalan as a director to watch.
The Last Airbender is set in a world populated with “benders”, people who have the ability to magically manipulate the elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water. The diabolical Fire Nation has enslaved all the other ones because…well, they’re evil I guess. And brown. That’s a pretty good indicator of whether or not someone is supposed to be evil in this film. The darker and swarthier the character, the more treacherous they are. Before the film’s release their was a minor controversy about the racial politics of the film, but it died down soon after people actually saw the film, where their suspicions were not necessarily dispelled but rather put into perspective amongst Shyamalan’s myriad failures.
Anyways, the Fire nation has everyone under their brown, swarthy thumbs and their tyrannical rule has cowed the rest of the nations into submission. One day two bad actors standing in front of a green screen discover Aang, a young bald boy frozen in ice along with a giant CGI flying Bison-thing called Appa (incidentally, the coolest character in the film by a considerable margin). They discover through heaps and heaps of clunky exposition that Aang is the Avatar (or the Ah-vatar as the characters keep calling him). This means that he is the only one who can master all four elements and communicate with the poorly defined “Spirit Realm”. He must use all his abilities to learn the elements so that he can defeat the Fire Nation, return balance to the world zzzzzzzz. This hero’s quest thing has been done to death and the film does nothing to make it seem fresh or interesting. Understand, I’m not against these types of familiar stories as a matter of course. Just recently I have defended James Cameron’s Avatar (not to be confused with Shyamalan’s Ah-vatar) as an example of a conventional story told incredibly well. It’s just that there is no pleasure in watching Shyamalan joylessly beat this dead horse into the ground.
But the standard plot is the least of the film’s worries. Special mention must be made of the acting, or rather the “acting”. The three main leads are all black holes of screen presence, leaving absolutely no lasting impression. Dev Patel, the hero of Slumdog Millionaire is at least memorable in that he’s really terrible. He plays everything so dramatically that it becomes funny, then sad, then funny, then sad again. Here’s hoping he finds a project better suited to his limited range after this. Aasif Mandvi is, well, I’m not sure. He acts as if the whole thing is a big joke (actually he’s right), playing everything the same way he does weekly on The Daily Show. Mandvi is a talented guy, so I’d like to think he knew the whole project stunk and decided to have fun with it. Shaun Toub’s performance is the closest to quality of anyone in the film, but it’s all to no avail. Some of these actors have turned in good work in the past, so maybe we should blame it on Shyamalan’s direction. Yes, actually, we definitely can.
The whole film reeks of being directed by someone with almost no capacity for what makes a film work. Oh sure, it certainly looks nice for the most part. The shots are framed well I guess, and the film is in focus the whole time. Good work Manoj! But everything else is in shambles. The pacing of the film is bizarre, never really settling in to a flow but rather moving in fits and starts as seemingly unconnected scenes are unceremoniously stitched together with narration that simultaneously explains too much and explains nothing at all. The fighting, contrary to what I’d heard before watching, is extremely poorly shot, with none of the fluid grace or visceral impact that Western action directors such as The Wachowskis or Edgar Wright have been able to achieve. Watching the film is an excruciating experience as embarrassed (or embarrassing) actors mumble bad dialogue and stare portentously into the camera while much more interesting things (the aforementioned Appa, the interesting world design) seem to be purposefully sabotaged by the leaden direction and terrible writing.
I don’t know where Shyamalan goes from here, honestly. Even after The Happening (which remains a joy to behold and a bad movie classic), I had hope for the once promising director. After witnessing the depths to which he sinks in this film however, I find it hard to believe that he could recover his filmmaking talents at all. A painful experience on every level, The Last Airbender proves to be the final nail in the coffin for a man whose every film I once eagerly anticipated. Worst film of 2010? By every conceivable measurement, yes.
