Matt Vs. The Last Airbender

M Night Shamaylan's live action adaptation of the hit Nickelodeon show Avatar the Last Airbender was released in 2010 to poor commercial and critical reception. Being a fan of the show, I saw The Last Airbender in theaters and held a reasonable level of expectations. I did not expect to be blown away by any means and for the first 30 seconds i was thrilled. It was simply the intro to the show done in live action. However after that, the whole film fell apart. 

The film follows the story of a young monk Aang who must master all four elements (air, water, fire, earth) and stop the warmongering Fire Nation from taking over the world. He is the Avatar which is a person who can control four elements in a world where everyone else can master only one. The plot roughly  follows a stripped down version of the first season of the show where he is freed from a hundred year slumber in an iceberg by siblings Katara and Sokka  and is being chased by Zuko, the son of the Fire Nation leader. Aang, Katara, & Sokka, travel the world on a giant flying bison meeting both enemies and allies on their way to complete Aang's waterbending training at the north pole. The movie concludes with the Nation invading the Water Tribe city at the North Pole and Aang using his Avatar powers to defeat them. There is even a tease for a sequel which was never to come.

Ultimately this movie  failed on multiple levels as both an entertaining piece of cinema and a faithful adaptation. The movie stripped put much of the humor of the original show and both the character's diversity and inter-relationships. The pacing was uneven and Too the films credit, they did a great amount of work on the costume designs and it shows.  In a world where the elements are being used often, the special effects were quite poor. In fact they were only equaled by the poor level of acting who's only stand out was Dev Patel's Zuko who also starred in the hit Slumdog Millionaire. I haven't been this disappointed in an piece of entertainment media since I played the original Sonic the Hedgehog years after playing Sonic 2 & 3. Instead of watching this slap in the face, please watch the original series or its still good sequel, Legend of Korra. 4 years later and I still want my money back.

Images from avatar.wikia & wikipedia