Skip to main content

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
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Matt VS. Non-Stop

Liam Neeson has had career arc, starring in films such as as Schindler's List, Star Wars, and Taken. His latest film Non-Stop is a high flying thriller that banks off of his popularity from the Taken films. Neeson stars as Bill Marks, an alcoholic Air Marshall on a trans-Atlantic flight who receives cryptic messages from someone on board claiming that someone will die every twenty minutes. As the deaths mount, he is forced to turn to desperate measures which then leads the majority of the flight to believe that he is the one hijacking the plane. The movie's release is further complicated by real world events like the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370 This contributed to the film being a bit more chilling than it in normal circumstances. Julianne Moore is also a major character in the film and recent Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong'o also has a role. While I predicted a fair amount of the plot twists, I felt that a major one at the end really set the film ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Matt Vs. IndeGo/ Philly Bike Share.

Over the last decade, the bicycle riding scene in Philadelphia has been growing leaps and bounds. This has paralleled the rise of neighborhoods such as Fishtown that are near adjacent to Center City Philadelphia. Philadelphia tight grid street layout and system of bike lanes makes bicycling a rather convenient mode of travel. Last April, Philadelphia deepened its relationship with biking culture with the launch of its bike share program called Indego . Indego is the newest bike share program created by a partnership between the City of  Philadelphia and Independence Blue Cross. The program features many stations spread across Central Philadelphia where riders can rent out bikes using either cash or credit cards. When I was in Washington, DC I was sorely attempted to test their bike share program but could not due to time constraints. When IndeGo Bike Share opened Philadelphia I jumped at the chance to give it a go. The ride itself was rather smooth but it was hard t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Matt and the Joker's Five Way Revenge

    Last year saw the passing of acclaimed comic book writer Denny O'Neill. O'Neill had a long history with many DC Comics superheroes as a writer and editor and is best known for revitalizing the character of Batman among others starting in the 1970s. I decided to pick up a copy of one of the more famous Batman issues of this era, Joker's Five Way Revenge which was written by O'Neill and drawn by Neal Adams. The story featured in Batman # 251, was released in November, 1973. While I am gaining a better appreciation for 1990s comics, I largely avoided avidly reading 1970s issues due to their seemingly dated nature and tropes. After reading this issue, I had some thoughts on both how the character and mythos of Batman has evolved over time and a greater appreciation for a more grounded Dark Knight. In Joker's Five Way Revenge, the Joker is seeking revenge for a presumed betrayal by killing members of his former gang and Batman is striving to stop him. By the time t...
Post a Comment
Read more