{"id":9546,"date":"2010-07-17T19:33:15","date_gmt":"2010-07-18T03:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=9546"},"modified":"2010-07-18T21:58:21","modified_gmt":"2010-07-19T05:58:21","slug":"the-last-airbender-m-night-shyamalan-2010-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=9546","title":{"rendered":"The Last Airbender (M. Night Shyamalan, 2010): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed at Camino Real Cinema, Santa Barbara, CA.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 The Last Airbender<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 is a live-action martial arts fantasy film, based on the Nickelodeon anime series Avatar.<\/em><\/p>\n

Brother and sister team Sokka and\u00a0Katara (Jackson Rathbone and Nicola Peltz), find and rescue Aang (Noah Ringer)\u00a0from frozen captivity.\u00a0 Aang soon discovers he is the last of the airbenders, capable of controlling the four elements of water, air, fire, and earth, and Zuko (Dev Patel)\u00a0the Prince of Fire, is in hot pursuit of him.<\/p>\n

At odds with Zuko is Admiral Zhao (Aasif Mandvi), a Fire commander who is also pursuing Aang and attempting to destroy Zuko, who’s a castaway.<\/p>\n

Sokka, Katara and Aang seek the help of Princess Yue (Seychelle Gabriel) of the Northern Water Tribe, for protection, training, and in the case of Sokka, a tender romance.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0film however\u00a0is neither tender nor romantic.\u00a0 It is also not funny or thrilling or scary or exciting.\u00a0 It is not predictable nor is it unpredictable, and it did\u00a0not suspend my\u00a0disbelief.<\/p>\n

Basically the martial arts suck, as well as the acting, casting, directing, writing, and dialogue.\u00a0 Admittedly not a huge fan of CGI, in this case it’s the only thing holding the film together – it’s a snoozer!<\/p>\n

In a nutshell:<\/p>\n

Acting – Nicola Peltz (Katara) comes off as a whiny, cry-baby, and over-emotional.<\/p>\n

Casting\u00a0– At 25, was Jackson Rathbone (Sokka) really the best actor available to play a 15 yr. old\u00a0Asian character?<\/p>\n

Directing – M. Night just had too much on\u00a0his plate.<\/p>\n

Writing – My 11 yr. old daughter’s scripts are more concise.<\/p>\n

Dialogue – “Hey guys” and “let your emotions flow like water” just doesn’t cut it for me.<\/p>\n

To set the record straight, I’m a fan of M. Night and\u00a0I dig\u00a0his out of the box creativity.\u00a0 Supposedly M. Night was writing the rough draft for part II (in this planned trilogy), during filming of part I.\u00a0 Maybe he’s doing too much and should just concentrate on writing (OR) directing, maybe he picked the wrong material (his family are fans of the series), maybe he needs a long vacation at a spa, but his multi-tasking is working against him now, and someone in his camp\u00a0should point this out.<\/p>\n

Two great films I recommend are The Sixth Sense<\/em> and Unbreakable<\/em>.\u00a0 The Village<\/em> and Signs<\/em> are also\u00a0worth watching, but the three to avoid are Lady in the Water<\/em>, The Happening<\/em>, and this recent fiasco.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.\u00a0 Viewed at Camino Real Cinema, Santa Barbara, CA. \u00a0 The Last Airbender\u00a0 is a live-action martial arts fantasy film, based on the Nickelodeon anime series Avatar. Brother and sister team Sokka and\u00a0Katara (Jackson Rathbone and Nicola Peltz), find and rescue Aang (Noah Ringer)\u00a0from frozen captivity.\u00a0 Aang soon discovers he is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}