The Last Airbender OR Why M Night Shamalamadingdong needs to stop.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a highly successful animated series that ran on Nickelodeon. It followed the adventures of The Avatar Ang, pronounced like it looks, as he tried to master the 4 elements so he could challenge the Fire Nation lord before he gained ultimate power and dominated the planet.

I've watched it, I enjoyed it, it's pretty damn good for "amerime".

There was quite a bit of hype for the new movie based on the series. The original trailer had me giddy:



You probably saw the problem at the very beginning.




This man, M Night Shyamalan, is easily trying to catch up to Uwe Boll for the bad director title. I loved Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense. But then there was Signs, and Lady in the Water and The Happening. It's been a steady decline, and these were his original ideas. Just imagine what he would do to a beloved children's show.

Butchered name pronunciations are something I can allow in a book adaptation, unless there is a canon dictionary, names are always up to interpretation. But the cartoon was on for 3 years, millions of people watched it and heard these names pronounced the same way for 3 fucking years. Changing how they are pronounced now is just stupid.

The bending was all wrong, the martial arts were too over the top and the entire story was rushed to get to the final battle that was lack luster at best.

This movie is a continuation of the current trend in Hollywood of making a movie visually appealing but completely devoid of substance. I don't care how awesome the CG water effects are, if the entire movie is some guy sitting in a boat I'm going to get fucking bored.

If you enjoyed the cartoon, skip this movie. If you have to entertain a child or mentally handicapped adult that can be easily distracted by shinies, go get a bag of glitter. Skip this movie and help send a message that we want substance over style.