Bottom Feeders: Why?

I told you last time on Bottom Feeders that I would watch and review The Last Airbender, so that’s just what I did.  I spent a lot time defending M. Night Shyamalan but promised that all of that might change, and it has.  M. Night and I have been soul mates since 1999 and always will be, but fuck that guy.  He shouldn’t have made this movie, he shouldn’t have made the two before it and he should probably never make another movie again.  I’ve seen enough bad stuff from him now that it didn’t surprise me how bad this was once he got his hands on it as much as it surprises me that he was allowed to get his hands on it in the first place.

There are tons of movies out there that just shouldn’t have been made and this one beats them all down with an aluminum baseball bat.  No matter what movie he wanted to make, Shyamalan should already have been in a time-out by this point.  His producing and writing privileges need to be revoked until he earns them back.  On top of that, this is a project that is completely out of his league even at his best.  He’s never directed a battle scene or even a real serious fight scene and he’s never done a grandiose, effects laden fantasy movie like this before.  He shouldn’t have been involved with Airbender at all and yet somehow he ended up in charge of it.

Still, some people can handle pressure like that.  When they’re completely out of their depth, they perform their best.  Not here.  This movie fails on every level.  The plot is pretty much ripped directly from the cartoon and yet they still manage to have it make no sense at all.  Every five minutes there’s a flashback or a voiceover telling us about this world they live in, and none of it makes sense.  After two hours the only thing you know is that these people have a spirit everything. The main character, Aang, gets captured and escapes like five times.  Each time the evil fire people capture him they say they can’t kill him because apparently the Avatar reincarnates when you kill him and then they’d have to find him again.  Here’s the thing.  They totally did that already and it’s the reason they rule the world.  They should just kill him and hunt him down again while he’s a baby.  They’ll have years to do it and it’s way easier to keep a baby captive.  They’re basically designed to be the perfect kidnapping victims.

Oh, and here’s a taste of how terrible this plot is.  At one point the fire people capture Aang for the second time and after realizing there are benders in his group they take him to the prison camp where they hold all the earth benders.  Aang talks to one person and then gives a terrible speech telling everyone they should rebel because they’re special.  The Guards stand around like dumb assholes and watch.  The earth benders say they would totally rebel if Aang were the Avatar and Aang is like “oh, I totally am.”  The guards, finally deciding action needs to be taken, taunt him and tell him to prove it.  He does and the earth benders, realizing that they are indeed special, decide it’s cool to fight now.

Which goes against everything they taught me.

The Guards finally do something actually helpful but completely ignore the Avatar – the guy they’ve been trying to find for the last 100 years.  They get beaten in a really terribly choreographed fight and Aang says he needs to go get trained in water bending because something something something.  They decide that on the way there, they should start a rebellion and they totally do, which we are shown through the art of fucking montage.  An entire rebellion.  So either they start a massive revolt in like three days or we’re fast forwarding through like a year of their lives.  It could be either.  Then Aang flies off and immediately gets captured again.

That’s the most sensical part of the whole movie.  The rest is the fire people attacking an ice city, which is working because they killed the spirt fish.  A girl we just met says she can sacrifice her own life to save the fish and she does, so the water people win again.  This girl, by the way, was introduced as a love interest for another character like 10 minutes ago.  He spends all of ten minutes trying to get us to care about this chick and then expects it to be dramatic when she dies.  Aang gets captured one more time during all of that by the way.

The Last Airbender has absolutely no redeeming qualities.  It’s complete proof that directors should get to work on passion projects after they’re successful.  If your last two movies were terrible it’s time for the studio to take the reigns.  They toss you a fly ball popcorn movie and if you make that work, then you can direct a movie about a show your kids love.  Unfortunately the studio saw dollar signs here and they were ultimately right:  The Last Airbender earned about 320 million dollars and they’re discussing a sequel.  Plus, Shyamalan totally wants to.  He’s not ashamed of this movie at all.  He’s a kid that pisses himself and then walks around like that all day.  Worse, he’s the kid that does it again just for attention.  He is my ex-best friend and I officially give up hope.  It isn’t the single worst movie ever but it’s in a tie for first place.   Normally I don’t bother with ratings because they would all be either 1.5 or 2 stars but I will go out of my way to specify that this is a one star movie.  Fuck this movie.

What you should watch instead: Apparently a bunch of you have seen this, so nothing.  You are grounded from movies until you learn how to recognize the bad ones.

 

Am I right or am I right?  Email all opinions, in the form of a yes or no answer, to [email protected] and explain yourself before you cause pain to yourself.  Or, follow me on Twitter @Dan_Tompkins.  You can shout at me there and as a bonus, I will amuse you.