Danger Reviews: The Last Airbender

I went to the movie The Last Airbender expecting to see a bad movie. Critics, friends, and family members had already seen and panned the movie. However, the film I saw was much worse than I had imagined.

Oh, the special effects were well done, the camera shots intriguing, and use of color appropriately symbolic. But, several absolute essentials were missing, and they caused me to wonder how M. Night Shyamalan was ever allowed to make this film, let alone be given the amount of budget he received without any oversight. He made such gross errors that any film rookie ought to know not to commit. I cannot think of any reason that might explain that sorry excuse for a production that I sat through for an hour and a half.

Because I am a devoted fan of the series, and I do want the live-action films to be made, I've decided to detail out for Mr. Shyamalan some of these classic mistakes. Hopefully, they can be rectified in subsequent films.

Mistake #1: Allowing M. Night Shyamalan to write the script, direct actors, and edit/produce the film.

Stories are not travel logs or resumessays. Stories have exposition, rising action, a climax, denouement (falling action), and conclusion (resolution). Stories have shape, movement, development of character, hooks that make those characters sympathetic to the audience. The audience wants, nay NEEDS to care about the characters in the movie, about their failures and successes, and above all about their journeys. The cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender has those elements, but the movie does not.

A seasoned professional, Mr. Shyamalan should have tattooed on his forehead that the first rule of storytelling (including moviemaking) is SHOW, don't tell. And for heaven's sake, if you're showing something, don't yammer about it over and over again. If the audience sees it, the audience can get it.

Less is more. When a character opens a water scroll, and the audience sees blue sketches of kung fu forms, that character doesn't need to narrate the fact that he is opening a water-bending scroll. The film also doesn't need to have another character reiterate that. Or another character after that. Should a movie include such redundancy, the dialog becomes stilted, the acting wooden, and the pace of the film is retarded.

Minimize the amount of narration. Shakespeare wrote that "brevity is the soul of wit." Not much has changed in that regard during the last several hundred years. Be clear about the purpose of the narration. Only use narration for that specific purpose. Make sure the narration is structurally consistent, i.e., used at similar places during key transitions.

The series needs a director who can coax life and emotion for the actors--not turn even the seasoned actors into morose automatons.

Do enough recording sessions to have good takes. Sound recording is relatively cheap. Katara sounds like mush. She's an actress. She should know how to enunciate clearly. If she doesn't, it's time she learned.

Please, please, please, I beg of you, at least USE AN EDITOR! Scripts need editors, films need editors, post-production needs editors.

Mistake #2: Changing the Rules of a Fantasy World

The TV series already established the rules of the fantasy world for Avatar. When a moviemaker decides to radically shift the core underpinnings of that fantasy world while telling a story that condenses 9 hours of plot into 1.5 hours, he ends up unnecessarily spending time defining instead of moving through the story.

Don't fight the world. Go with it. Don't waste valuable time.

Mistake #3: Compared to the animated series, the movie's main themes and conflicts differ dramatically and are contradictory, burdensome, and unrecoverable.

In the animated series produced by Nickelodeon, Aang's main objective is to master the Avatar state. Mastering the four elements is a secondary concern, and the order in which they are mastered is irrelevant.

Aang needs to master the Avatar state for several reasons. He needs to avoid being killed while in the Avatar state, because THAT (being killed in the Avatar state, not having a family) is what would prevent the reincarnation of the Avatar and destroy balance. Mastering the Avatar state enables him to control his abilities instead of being controlled by them. By mastering the Avatar state, Aang can avoid hurting those around him, especially his friends.

Mr. Shyamalan seems to have missed this key supreme conflict and substituted it with a lower-level, far less compelling one: mastering bending the four elements in the correct order. Why? Well, because they have to be done in that order, that's why. Well, but why? Um... well,... Let's just say it's nothing we haven't heard before: because they just have to be done in THAT order.

Not in the series. Not compelling. Not even well thought through. So... why add it to an already PACKED movie that reads like a highly narrated resumessay? But I digress...

Conflict. So, Mr. Shyamalan introduces some of what I can only believe are personal, agendized biases to the main conflict--for example, the rule that the Avatar has to sacrifice having personal relationships in order to be the Avatar.

Hmm. Well, that really flies in the face of the series. Avatar Roku had a wife. In fact, Zuko is one of the Avatar's descendants via his maternal line. Knowing that this is a key piece of the character's back story, I can only suppose that such a shift in worldview is due to Mr. Shyamalan's prejudices. Unfortunate, since the TV series was one of few shows, movies, or stories that showed a member of the "clergy" or a "superhero" who could manage having a personal relationship and fairly normal family life.

So, what to me was a HUGE selling point of the animated series, more intriguing because of its rarity in today's media, Mr. Shyamalan sacrificed to political correctness, dogma, or other personal agenda.

Overall, the movie lost much and gained not at all.

My advice to Nick and M. Night: stick to the main tenets of the world established in the series. Don't reinvent key elements, particularly ones that your customers value. That way, you have more time to DEVELOP THE STORY.

Due to this same shift in major theme, M. Night introduces an additional catastrophic problem. When Aang dies and the Avatar is reincarnated as Water, then as Earth, then as Fire, what happens after that? Aang is the LAST AIRBENDER, as the title says. If he's not allowed to have a family, then there is no feasible way for air to continue to be one of the major spirit elements, and their world is completely and unavoidably thrown out of whack by the fourth generation from the time of the show. That goes against the basic premise of elemental balance, inherent to both the live-action film and to the Nickelodeon series.

At least the animated series left open the possibility that Aang and Katara would get together, have kids, and somehow produce both little Airbenders and little Waterbenders. Mr. Shyamalan, in his infinite wisdom, has made even that impossible. So, how does he resolve the apparent conundrum that he has singlehandedly introduced? My guess is that he doesn't think that far ahead. Ever.

Mistake #4: Using the story to heavy-handedly promote an anti-war, anti-violence political agenda.

The climax of the movie The Last Airbender is yet another place where Mr. Shyamalan let his worldview color the design, script, and story with less-than-stellar results. I understand that you're anti-war/violence (except artistic violence, apparently), Mr. Shyamalan, but your treatment of the topic in this film was rather heavy-handed and not aligned with the series nor with critical wartime practices. And, when the climax of the film becomes an anti-climax, you know you've screwed up something crucial.

Displays of power without devastation do not convince seasoned warriors with world-domination on their minds and a hundred-year history of bullying to turn tail and run away peaceably--no matter how high you make that wall of water.

The animated series did not shy away from the nature of war or from Aang's anger, nor did it avoid a crucial climax for some less-than-fulfilling anti-war rhetoric. At the end of Book 1 of the animated series, the Fire Nation warriors turn tail and run away, not because of some display of power, but because they were crushed and they had no choice but to limp on home.

Mistake #5: Not having a unique opener.

Why resurrect the classic Star Wars opening, but do a far worse job on it than Lucas did in the early 80s. Really? Can't we be just a little more original??? Certainly, the budget was there...

Or, if you're going to imitate, can't you at least get a good copy editor to clean up the verbosity and poor punctuation?

Mistake #6: Competing with Eclipse on opening weekend.

To maximize the opportunity for success in real estate, one should adhere to three simple rules: location, location, location.

To succeed in the movie industry, one should likewise adhere to three simple, albeit different, rules: timing, timing, timing. (Well, success has a little more to it than that, but it plays a big role.)

So, what in tarnation were they (experienced moviemakers and production executives) thinking when they decided to release The Last Airbender during the same opening weekend as Eclipse??? Oh, right. Thinking's overrated.