Director: M Night Shyamalan
Starring: Noah Ringer, Jackson Rathbone, Nicola Peltz, Cliff Curtis, Dev Patel
Score: 4 / 10
This review by Robert Nijman
‘Incredible, this 3D extravaganza, but the story is a bit wanting.’ A much heard piece of critique on James Cameron’s Avatar, that thanks to the amazing three-dimensional world of Pandora picked up close to three billion dollars at the international box office. So far. The new adventures of M. Night Shyamalan, the man behind The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable but also recent and questionable thrillers Lady in the Water and The Happening, are characterized by similar weaknesses in its mythical story. The script that Shyamalan, for the first time based on existing material (the series Avatar: The Last Airbender, which for obvious reasons saw its prefix removed), has some original features but lacks any particular depth and simply remains an adaptation of an animated series with a limited content in general. The fact that the 3D aspect of this family fantasy film does not contribute to your experience at all, as the action remains at distance and has you squinting for a hundred minutes straight, leaves The Last Airbender empty-handed on both accounts. Story and vehicle, form and function.
The world of The Last Airbender consists of four nations, or tribes: Air, Water, Earth and Fire. Several members of each tribe can telepathically control their respective element, by concentrating on moving quite similarly to monkeys performing a cross between yoga, karate and ballet. For the last hundred years, the Fire Nation has been waging a deadly campaign for world domination, either suppressing or completely eradicating the other tribes. During this violent century, no one has been able to stand up against these forces and the inevitable control of the Fire Nation that will be its result. No one but the Avatar, the only one who can master all four elements and thereby potentially – and magically – restore the balance between the four nations. The Avatar, a young boy named Aang (former Texas state champion Taekwondo Noah Ringer), is the latest reincarnation in a long line of Avatars (á la Dalai Lama) and is the only chance for peace in a war-torn world. Fortunately, Aang is found frozen in the ice of the Northern Water Nation by Sokka and his sister Katara (Jackson Rathbone, Nicola Peltz), after he has a spent the previously mentioned one hundred years in his icy prison for no apparent reason. The two siblings, the last of their nation to still be able to actually bend their element (Yes. Yes, like Beckham), consider it to be their duty and destiny to help Aang fight the Fire Nation. As you do.
The story, Book One of the Avatar series and mainly focusing on the element of water, is the first part of a planned trilogy. The film is therefore, much like obvious inspiration (among many) The Fellowship of the Ring, open-ended. The question is whether we’ll ever see the second (and later third) book of Avatar. The film has not been received particularly well, and there are no concrete plans for further production. In addition, the filmmakers have a lot to improve upon before justifiably extending their project. Even without including a few remarks on the ridiculously cumbersome way in which the different elements are used as weapons, that is. Young Katara, for example, does little else than look her dearest, while Sokka explores a range of expressions that includes seven different types of concern for his little sister and excludes everything else. Meanwhile, the various leaders of the Fire Nation speak their lines as if uttering one-liners from a game of Mortal Kombat, while protagonist Ringer has obviously better mastered the fine art of Taekwondo than the subtleties of acting. Firelord Orzai (Cliff Curtis), the commander of the Fire Nation, is stereotypically one-dimensional and thus reminds you of every other bad guy in a long and tragic range of similar movie / series / animations. Prince Zuko (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame) and his uncle and mentor Iroh (Shaun Toub) could possibly be the only potentially interesting addition, but they are very much underused. Not in the least because plotwise, the weight of their contribution lies in a sequel that may never see the light of day. The special effects could well have played an impressive part in this far-fetched fantasy, but the cheap and apparently post-production 3D projections turn the martial art inspired treatises into rather hazy apparitions, without ever involving the audience in the action. The result is an annoying, slight headache inducing blur, barring this lamentable excrescence of modern moviemaking of any enjoyable experiences. Only James Newton Howard’s striking score, in his seventh collaboration with Shyamalan, can compensate. Somewhat.
The Last Airbender is a fantasy film that, despite all its ambitious intentions and the fact the project is helmed by the usually quite original Shyamalan, fails on almost all fronts. The 3D aspects never amount to any added value, but rather increase the distance to the people in the audience, who never feel they’re involved in the action that strangely appears to be in the deeper levels of the big screen, oddly far away. The story that Shyamalan based on the source material of the animated series could have resulted in a becoming fantasy, but is in practice no more than a parody on much better instalments of sci-fi adventure. Not in the least because the director appears to take the mythology of airbending way too serious. Or, at any rate, more serious than any Japanese animation warrants, or deserves. The plot seems to borrow generously from everything between Kundun and The Karate Kid, and from The NeverEnding Story to Dragonball Z, without ever – not even once – doing these sources of inspiration any justice. An achievement in itself, given the latter. One incredibly alarming aberration of Shyamalan’s, from which he’ll hopefully soon recover. While they still give him the chance.
