THE LAST AIRBENDER Post Release - Page 2

Yeah, I don't think "best intentions" should be excused for M Nights' failed movies either, because I'm sure most of the directors (except Uwe Boll; he makes terrible movies and proud of it) have had the best intentions when they made their worst movies; I mean, who wants to make a lousy movie that tanks at the box office and blasted by critics, anyway? But that doesn't excuse directors like M Nights if their movie does turn out to be a giant turd, like TLA.

That's true. But then we also have a thread about filmmakers who are wrong about their work. When it comes to Shyamalan, it seems like he's stripped away everything good that made him stand out and pointed out his own flaws for us over the years.

Don't believe the hype! THE HAPPENING is a 100 times funnier. AIRBENDER isn't hilariously bad, it's just boring-bad. Yes, it's filled with exposition and is horribly written, but the lines are delivered by a bunch of actors who will put you in a coma. There are no wide-eyed, retarded Mark Wahlbergs or screaming, paranoid crazy ladies to be found here. 98% of the action consists of people who are 40 feet away from each other slowly doing tai-chi.

Still, I figured I'd memorize some of the crappy dialogue just to stay awake. Every character is in love with repeating words that they just said 2 seconds ago.

-Daily Show guy: "We have reason to believe that the Avatar never learned to WATERBEND. He is traveling to a WATERBENDING NATION where he'll be trained to WATERBEND by a group of WATERBENDERS."

*4 hours later....*

-Aang: Is there a SPIRITUAL PLACE around here where I can meditate?

-White haired moon princess girl: Yes I know of a spiritual place. The city was built around this spiritual place.

Poor bastard. I love his command of mood in his early, good movies. He needs to go back to the woodshed and make something simple and inexpensive, from a solid script by someone other than himself. But you knew that.

Is this identifiable as a Shyamalan film at all? I mean in terms of theme? Or is it just a let's-try-to-please-the-kiddies anomaly? Can't help noticing this comes after his much-ballyhooed FIRST R-RATED MOVIE.

The movie probably would have been a hell of a lot better if Night actually cared about pleasing the kiddies. Instead he sucked all the fun out of the show and made a movie about Tai-Chi practice and people repeating themselves.

Every ten minutes we either have to hear Aang talk about why he ran away or Zuko talk about why he has to capture Aang.
There's nothing crowd pleasing in this film. No one in my theater reacted to anything.

So basically he made a movie about going down to the park in Chinatown in the afternoon and watching the old people?

Remember how you all felt when you first saw that teaser trailer? Ha ha ha, fuck you.

Why did he make this film? What does he bring to the table? When Robert Rodriquez made a film for his kids, he made Spy Kids, which was pretty damn profitable at least.

Ugh, you're making me want to see this more than ever.

Why would awful, boring dialogue make you want to sit through a movie? Does it really make you giddy with ironic comedy to hear bad dialogue? The key word in the criticism here seems to be "boring" after all.

Pretty much. Devin did use the word 'amazing' though. Morbid curiosity. Though I don't think my 'ugh' makes me sound giddy. Sounds more like I despise myself for feeling that way. Hahaha

Style. Shyamalan has it. But his whole defense against the bad reviews is he believes critics want him... WANT him to get rid of that.

M. Night should be reading these reviews because style has nothing to do with poor dialogue nor bad film making in general. He's in denial.

For all this movie gets wrong, almost everything after Aang has his final flashback to running away from his responsibilities, is the goods. Pitch-perfect way to end the movie, excellent handling of Aang's big waterbend, the reaction of the Fire Nation and all the people left in the city. It was partly the music for sure, fucking Howard, but I felt like that was about the only major sequence the movie got right.

It felt like they were in a rush to compress everything. Shymalan obviously learned sweet fuck all from how Jackson created The Lord of the Rings. There's just no texture or scope to this movie and not enough time spent on character work to make us care or to create an intimacy that will actually pay off if there are sequels.

That said, there were a couple of not so bad spots. I thought the actor who played Iro nailed the character even if the overly sincere acting felt off. When Devin said the movie felt like a high school stageplay he was exactly right. The script reads like a high schooler's fanfiction or adaptation of the cartoon.

An absolute failure, even with the not-bad ending.

And so what really? What kind of director wouldn't have that kind of human reaction to bad reviews?

Agree with Xion. The last few minutes of the film are the best, in no small part due to James Newton Howard's score. It is actually well shot and dialogue-free for the big finish.

Here: Flow With Water (@ iTunes). That extracts the value from the film, on sale for 99 cents.

Too bad...this might have been a decent film. With kid actors, I never blame the actor. I blame the director.

Ha. Thanks for linking that. The one I watched yesterday got taken down for some reason.

Io9 did one hell of an article on showing what Shymalan did wrong and what he cut/omitted from the film.

Im really waiting a few months (oe even weeks) to see what the creators of the series think of this.

This was filmed at the big theater in Albuquerque. Cool tapes. Also, everybody at the midnight premiere I went to (at the other theater in Albuquerque doing midnight showings) had similar reactions.

I figured out the twist ending!

M. Night Shymalan's career was dead all along.

And bald! The hairpiece was the Sixth Sense and the Sideburns were small parts of Unbreakable and Signs.

I've been thinking about Shyamalan a lot recently. I wrote a piece on him. Has there ever been a career trajectory like this before? Each film just got steadily worse and worse. The thing is The Sixth is a brilliant film, it wasn't an accident, and for their flaws Signs and The Village look beautiful, they are just massacred by their endings.

The Happening was an utter disaster, it felt like he literally gave up after the indifference to Lady in the Water and The Last Airbender seems to follow that decline?

What can he do here? Are we going to get Unbreakable 2?

So is there a Shymalan cameo in this one?

I haven't seen Signs, and it's been at least 5 years since I've seen The Sixth Sense or The Village, but from what I remember, there's not much difference in quality between the two. The problem is that the ending of Sixth Sense blew you away because you didn't see it coming, but by the time The Village came out Shyamalan was "that guy", and the ending a foregone conclusion even for those in the audience who didn't read the whole thing on AICN. If you could go back in time and release his films (at least the first 4 "big ones", I stopped watching after Village) in reverse order, I think the perceived trajectory in quality would be the same.

I think this is VERY true. I understood the hate for The Village, but never actually felt it myself. I thought the film was strong and very involving until it got to the inevitable twist. The silly thing is, I'm generally pretty bad at 'seeing it coming,' and will never know if I would've figured it out beforehand. I had a friend who muttered it to me as I was enjoying the movie. And obviously it's primarly because the film was the 4th in Shyamalan's series of 'BIG REVEAL MOVIES.' I'm sure I was trying to second guess the movie like anyone else. But honestly, I recall simply enjoying the film, it's score, cinematography, and its performances.

It seems like it was really with Lady in the Water when his storytelling abilities really went cuckoo. It was definitely a failure. But I admit, it was an interesting failure. With a fantastic score.

I had heard the bad reviews, but my son really wanted to see it. Prepared for the worst, it wasn't as terrible as I had been expecting...especially the last few minutes Xion was talking about. It was painfully dull when people weren't fighting, and full to the brim with breathless repetition, but all-in-all it was pretty much what I would expect from a mediocre director with no action chops and a bunch of unskilled actors. Aasif Mandvi? I mean, come on! He can be hilarious on TV, but I kept expecting him to address Jon Stewart with a green screen background.

My son loved it, because he's *six* and it was his first really big movie. But I think if you take Shyamalan's fall from grace out of the picture, it's just another in a long line of "hey, that's popular...let's make a movie of *that*" flicks from people who care more about cashing in than making a watchable movie.

Finally saw it tonight. I watched the animated series with my daughter and really enjoyed it. I have to say that the series was better but the movie was not horrible. It wasn't great either. Too much had to be compressed down to below two hours. Several scenes felt rushed. Some of the dialogue was off and I did miss the level of humor from the series.

The ending scene was awesome. I was entranced just enough to hope that somehow it makes enough green to see the remainder of the story. Who doesn't want to see the little blind earthbending girl on the big screen.

I agree completely. Watching The Village is frustrating because there is a good movie buried deep in there. Roger Deakins' cinematography is beautiful. And it's probably because I was all worked up about the upcoming election but the (intentional?) political subtext worked for me.

Ok, to stay on topic, this weekend I'll be watching The Last Airbender (in fucking 3D) with a friend who wants to see it. I don't really have the heart to tell him how shitty everyone says it is.

This film was really bad....really bad.

I'd rather not, if she'll be under the dull and lifeless action direction of M. Night.

I saw this movie a few days ago with my girlfriend's sisters. They are huge fans of the show and hated the shit out of it. I was pretty entertained with the borderline incompetent filmmaking.

I appreciate the sentiment behind filming the fights in long takes, but the ridiculous tai chi 'power-up' routines look silly in long shots, and kind of need dramatic angles and editing. And isn't there a basic storytelling rule that you don't write exposition as an "As we both already know" speech? It seems that Daily Show guy was reminding himself and others what was going on throughout the whole movie.

It really did seem like M. Night forgot how to make a movie.

*Link removed because it's a cam from the movie* I just saw the earthbender scene from the movie. Jesus fucking Christ, that was awful.

That little synchronized dance they did to throw that little rock? The special effects? "My name is OONG" and "All Airbenders should be deadKILL HIM"? Fuck me, that's awful.

Hey, you should take that down. The moderators won't take kindly to pirated material being linked from Youtube. Especially one so recent and recorded on camera.

But yeah... I just watched that with my brother and we both cracked up HARD.

Such a boring movie. So empty and lifeless. I couldn't care less about anything or anybody in the movie. I wonder what future critics will say when looking back on all of these crap fantasy and sci-fi films about young males going on a hero's journey, all wrapped in pointless mystical bullshit.
At the very, very least, the locations looked nice.

At this point, I think this is a liability. It seems like he has one mood. It's kinda precious, claustrophobic, and it doesn't vary in pitch well. And he uses it in every single thing he does. Now that I've seen the series, I can't believe he didn't try to inject some humor into this story. Its the humor that brings relief to the characters.

Maybe at this point, yeah. But when Sixth Sense dropped, right after stupid shit like the Haunting remake, it was a revelation that someone still understood how to build things like dread and suspense slowly and quietly instead of relying on CGI or cheap jump scares. Just the way he trusted scenes to play out, I was just like, "Thank you."

I still think that flick holds up, by the way. It isn't just about the big twist. Unfortunately Shyamalan didn't get that message.

A blog about people getting wise to Shyamalan and how he was and never will be Rod Serling, no matter how many twists he cooks up.

Within that blog are two videos.

"I would kill myself if I thought like you." Shyamalan at the Mexico City press conference for Airbender.

Audiences laughing at Devil when Shyamalan's name pops up.

Yeah... This didn't work. Not for lack of trying, but it just didn't work at all.

Can we expect a longer write-up from our resident Shyamalan 'apologist?' I'd be very interested. Perhaps in your CHUD Blog?

Count on it... I just came back from the movie so I need to sleep on it. But my next blog will be about this. Gimme a couple of days. I appreciate your interest.

Awful. Just awful.

Now, I'm not sure if Shyamalan's handling of the action sequences has been addressed beyond a few short mentions of their execution, but I have this to say this: I admire his intent, to an extent. I like the idea of long, single-take action scenes, but I think that, in this particular case, he just couldn't handle them as a director. I recall him commenting in an interview that he felt the extras were "jockeying" for his attention, and it shows: the action sequences play out like turn-based RPGs, with the actors standing around and wondering what they should be doing next.

In the laughable Earthbending prison camp sequence, for example, Katara runs up and pushes one of the soldiers after he insults Aang, looking off-screen as if waiting for Night's next command, and the two soldiers standing nearby do nothing while one seemingly gives a thumbs up. It's just really awkward choreography, and it doesn't only considerably impact the performances: the CGI also comes off badly, as if Night wasn't making compromises in terms of editing with Industrial Light and couldn't properly communicate his vision to them.

The Blue Spirit scene also makes Night look nervous, as if he's afraid to really get into the choreography as fiercely as the show did. Instead, the camera simply watches the action unfold from a safe distance as the extras stand around in botched stances.

...

EDIT:

If anyone wants to know what I'm talking about, here's Thumbs Up Guy:

Naw, that's intentional. Thumbs Up guard totally hates his commanding officer, so when Katara gives him a push, Thumps Up guard is like, "awesome. Screw that guy."

He's actually looking at another guard that also hates their CO, not Aang.

Finally checked this out after avoiding it for the longest. I used to be one of Night's biggest defenders. He showed so much promise with his first three films. The Village could have been just a flawed gem until the crash and burn ending that made no sense. I couldn't finish Lady In The Water it was so bad. Same for The Happening...it was just irritating watching Shyamalan piss his talent away like that. But I thought he was at least "trying" and just failing miserably.

Until I saw Airbender. I'm convinced the guy has been cloned. No way the man who made Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs made this reviling piece of shit. I couldn't make it through a scene without laughing at the incredibly distracting and horrifyingly bad acting. It's not even high school bad. It's as if nobody directed the movie, because no one could sit through a take without stopping and doing something drastic about the acting. In fact, how did the studio not see the dailies and pull the plug on a $150 million dollar investment that was so disastrously executed? Shyamalan doesn't have THAT much clout. Maybe he has dirt on the studio execs. My god, my god why has though forsaken me?

I'm trying to resist hyperbole, but it's inexcusable for someone with this kind of talent to make something so obviously wretched...it's written badly, acted badly, staged badly, paced badly...the only thing that didn't make me want to vomit was the visual FX. The powers were pretty cool. Otherwise a trainwreck of epic proportions.

Night seriously needs to start reading his reviews again, because I know he was reading them for Sixth Sense and believing his own press...which is what probably got him into this mess. I just don't understand it, I've never seen such a dive in quality before in the history of great filmmakers. Night is talented, he pulled some of the best work out of Willis and Gibson, so I don't understand it.

Ambler, did you see the deleted scenes on the disc? What'd you think of this one? (I've already posted this on another thread)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YToyaLSLQM0

Finally got to watch the film. If you're at all familiar with the original show, it's horrendous. By itself, it's just so oddly incompetently made in every way other than art direction, visual fx, and music. There's really not much to say. It's just so boring.

Why is it that in his most excellent moment in which the entire Water Tribe bow before him as James Newton Howard's score swells triumphantly... Aang looks utterly constipated?

I guess its a good thing I gave this a miss. The clips I saw had the most atrocious dialogue in it. Maybe I'll catch this on Cable someday.

I thought he looked constipated throughout the movie. Maybe he was suffering from acid indigestion during filming.

What did you think of arch villain Aasif Mandvi of TV's The Daily Show?

Watching this movie, it becomes apparent that M Night is overwhelmed by the material and doesn't know how to make it work onscreen. There are a couple of neat ideas sprinkled throughout but the execution is way botched. So yeah, terrible and uninvolving movie. Biggest crime here is probably the acting but, man, that dialogue is atrocious.

I don't think of him at all!

Actually, it felt like he got an inordinate amount of criticism for his performance, but I think he was just an easy target because of the Daily Show connection. Nobody came across well in this. If he was just some unknown actor, I think it would've been ignored as just another one of the many bad performances in the movie.

I think Devin had the best criticism towards Jackson Rathbone's performance. Constantly looking like a retarded lizard, is how I think he put it.

what the bloody christ did i just watch?

Shyamalan directed this movie like somebody tone deaf trying to sing.

i don't see any movies in pre-production on Night's imdb page, which is unsual as he always has a movie in the pipeline...i wonder what must be going through his head right now, as he usually comes across super confident about his prospects and even borderline arrogant. the guy's friends need to spring an intervention on him as he seriously has his own head up his ass with regard to making movies. I love this article about Sixth Sense's twist (and probably Shyamalan's career) being a gimmick and not a true twist ending.

http://invisibleinkblog.blogspot.com...an-is-not.html

The guy who wrote that blog is a friend and mentor to me and a lot of my friends. Really strong opinions on filmmaking and storytelling and a lot of fun stories to listen to. A very cool guy.