'The Last Airbender' (film!)

Yeah, yeah, I know. Shooting fish in a barrel, exercise in pointlessness, why did I even watch this film when I knew how bad it was going to be?...but I thought it needed at least a mention.

'The Last Airbender' (not allowed the total title of the series, 'Avatar: the Last Airbender' because of a certain blue alien film that came out around the same time, which is, I will grudgingly admit, at least the better of the two films) was a movie that did not need to be made. At all. It's based on a wonderful animated TV series about a world in which the four nations utilise the four elements in 'bending', a martial arts/magic fighting style. The Avatar is the only person alive who can bend all four elements, and keeps the nations (and the elements) balanced, as well as being able to access the spirit world. When one Avatar dies, they are reincarnated as a member of a different nation. Aang, the hero of the series and film, is the Avatar who ran from his role and ended up frozen in ice for a century, but is discovered by a water bender named Katara and her brother Sokka, children of the Southern Water Tribe. Unfortunately, Zuko, the disgraced and scarred son of the Lord of the Fire Nation, Lord Ozai, can only regain his father's favour by capturing the Avatar, who is the only person who can stop Ozai's expansion and conquest of the four nations. Got it? It's a really, really good series, with surprising depth for what is ostensibly a kids' show, decent characters, great elemental action scenes and a fleshed-out spiritual and philosophical basis for the entire setting. If you haven't watched, go and do so right now.

Because this film is just a live-action remake of the first series, but with large chunks taken out and the good bits done again, worse, it brings precisely nothing new to fans, even annoying them with the changes made, and won't entice new fans because it completely fails to convey the wonder and beauty of the setting or the compelling dilemmas the characters face. The sad thing is, you can tell it was made with love, but that really doesn't translate to good film-making. M. Night Shyamalan can do good film-making. We've seen it, and now at least he's broken out of having to have a twist at the end. OK, apparently his more recent films were rubbish, but 'The Sixth Sense' and 'Unbreakable', while flawed, were still deeply enjoyable watching and will remain minor classics. So what happened? Well, some of this film's complete fail might be to do with the editing and the way the whole thing is fitted together. I mean, it jumps around like nobody's business, going from the antarctic wastes of the Southern Water Tribe to the Southern Air Temple in a matter of minutes, without even a travelling sequence in between. Then *poof*: they're in the Earth Kingdom. Then *bamf*: they're captured by Fire Nation. The pacing is awful too, as important bits of plot whiz by in a matter of seconds and a seriously annoying voiceover tells us things they couldn't be bothered to film. Sokka's girlfriend in the series, Yue, princess of the Northern Water Tribe, was the first chance we have to see a more serious, committed side to Sokka, as his infatuation becomes more like love. In the film, they have a gaze-a-thon across the throne room and then next thing we know, they're in a relationship! One which, emotionally, is the focus for one of the most tragic dilemmas in the series but in this is barely glanced over.

Well, I mean, there's some information in the voiceover, but this film is an example of what happens when someone gets confused about whether it's "show" or "tell" you're meant to do. The cinematography is, frankly, dreadful. I'm not a film student and even I know the extreme close-ups were a seriously bad idea. In the aforementioned courtship of Yue and Sokka, the only bit of development we get is where the film stops its frantic bouncing around long enough to give us a few minutes of bad dialogue between the two, which is of course intercut with preparations for war and unflatteringly shot. Due to getting Dev Patel to play Zuko (he tries hard, but unfortunately wasn't as complex as Zuko in the series), he's unrecognisable as the animated character. But y'know what the most recognisable quirk of Zuko's appearance is? That big old flame shaped scar that covers a good portion of his face and is the physical reminder of his disgrace and banishment by his father? Yeah, it's there, but only barely. It wasn't ever made a big deal of. Guess they didn't want to make a pretty guy less pretty. Plus Patel just looks really angrily at the camera without subtlety.

The one thing I would say is that I find the accusations of whitewashing a bit extreme. Yeah, OK, they did get white actors for Aang, Katara and Sokka, and went with a non Inuit set of actors for the Water Tribes, but Shyamalan has clearly designed a racial spread for the nations, with the Fire Nation as Indian and the Earth Nation as East Asian. In contrast to most Hollywood films, it has a surprisingly diverse cast. Still, that's only in comparison and not really addressing the wider issue that gives rise to the problem, and it did annoy me that they went for Nicola Peltz and Jason Rathbone for Katara and Sokka, but that's mainly because they sucked at playing characters I care about. Noah Ringer was actually pretty good as Aang, and though my fellow viewers were complaining a lot about the martial arts, he was the only person who looked at all convincing, given as he studied Taekwondo for quite a long time before auditioning for the part of Aang. Maybe it's my affection for Taekwondo showing through, but at least Ringer had the right sense of balance and rhythm for martial arts, whereas Peltz clearly had no clue whatsoever and just looked awkward, despite having supposedly had a martial arts boot camp for six months. Sadly, much as I like Dev Patel, he clearly wasn't particularly confident about the fire-bending fight scenes (probably quite difficult to do, to be fair) and the way they were filmed almost looked like it was designed to obscure the lack of competance. However, the fight scene at the end between Aang and Zuko was actually quite well done. And the Blue Spirit looked great - whoever did that stunt work was wonderful, but the big fight where they held off a whole load of Fire Nation was both creative and disappointing. It's a cool idea having them in a training room, but Aang basically seemed to be using his airbending to play with the dummies while the Blue Spirit single-handedly held off an entire freaking army. This was mostly because it was very confusingly shot, but it could have been good.

By the way, this film was made for kids, right? So...there's this bit near the end where an undeniably nasty Fire Nation guy has wrought havoc but the fight has turned against him and he's turned tail and run. Guess what the heroic (faceless) waterbender army does? Drowns him. Seriously. They trap him in a bubble of water until he stops moving. We even see him drop to the ground and just lie there. I'm all for a touch of darkness in kids' films, but we're just going to let that go? Just...killing people is OK if they're bad people? Especially if they're running away like cowardly custards? Wow. Great message, Shyamalan.

So...good points...good points...well, Uncle Iroh was pretty cool. I mean, he wasn't played by Mako, for obvious reasons, and they had him getting foot massages instead of drinking tea and playing chess, but he wasn't that out of character. They actually started introducing Zuko's strained relationship with his ambitious sister Azula much earlier than in the series. They got the same voice actor to do Appa and Momo, though Appa just looks weird. Why are his paws hanging down like long child-catching fingers? They actually bother to go to the Northern Air Temple (in the series, the technological modification of the Air Temple by a group of refugees was a really big personal dilemma Aang had to negotiate) but they only spend a couple of minutes there. They did bother to cover Aang's backstory and his awesome mentor, Monk Gyatso, but for some reason they change Gyatso's final stand (he was sitting cross-legged surrounded by the skeletons of his enemies in the series) so it wasn't as iconic, or as badass. Almost every good thing I have to say about this series has a caveat. The set and production design was incredible, but it's rarely used effectively, especially as the low light levels of most of the film makes it insanely difficult to see (apparently even worse in 3D). The martial styles connected with the bending styles were well thought out, but badly performed and the CGI seriously didn't back it up. I know it's difficult to animate water and fire, but that's no excuse for laziness in making it respond to the bender's martial arts moves.

Oh yes, and 'bender' is indeed inherently hilarious to British people. I always assumed that was the joke of Bender's name in 'Futurama' (apparently not, actually a pun on his job and a reference to a character from 'The Breakfast Club'). I kind of became immune to it due to watching the 'Avatar' series, but it is pretty funny to hear people say, "You're a bender!" It's falling out of use, but don't call people benders in Britain unless you want a thump.


Factoid, since there were no quotable lines: the guy who voices Zuko in the TV series (Dante Basco) is the guy who played Rufio (RUFI-O, RUFI-O!) in 'Hook'.