The Last Airbender

The Last Airbender is a 2010 American action-adventure fantasy film written, co-produced and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Based on the first season of the Nickelodeon animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender, the film stars Noah Ringer as Aang, with Dev Patel as Prince Zuko, Nicola Peltz as Katara, and Jackson Rathbone as Sokka. Development for the film began in 2007. It was produced by Nickelodeon Movies and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film premiered in New York City on June 30, 2010, and was released the following day in the United States on July 1, 2010.

Contents

 * 1Plot
 * 2Why It Sucks
 * 3Redeeming Qualities
 * 4Reception
 * 4.1Box office
 * 4.2Awards and nominations
 * 5Trivia
 * 6Videos
 * 7External links
 * 8References
 * 9Comments

Plot
The four nations of Air, Water, Earth and Fire lived together in harmony until the Fire Nation declared war on the other three. A century later, there is still no end in sight to the destruction. However, an Airbender named Aang discovers that he is the Avatar, a person with the ability to control all four elements. He joins forces with Katara, a Waterbender, and her non-bending brother Sokka to restore balance and harmony to their world.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) Incredibly poor acting from the cast, ranging from being utterly emotionless (e.g. Noah Ringer and Nicola Peltz) to obnoxiously hammy (e.g. Aasif Mandvi). Nate Ploof from "Stupid Beagle Reviews" stated in his review that he had seen middle school plays that had better acting than this film.
 * 2) It heavily relies on exposition without any emotion, with Doug Walker describing the movie as "All explanation and no humanity".
 * 3) Terrible editing with no flow from scene to scene.
 * 4) Unintentionally racist yet lazily, casting choices, some of which was caused by nepotism (Nicola Peltz was cast as Katara as a favor to her billionaire father, Nelson Peltz) and name recognition (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame was cast as Prince Zuko, who is supposed to be from a culture resembling that of Imperial Japan).
 * 5) The entirety of the first season, consisting of twenty episodes that last twenty-three minutes, a total of seven hours and forty minutes, has been compressed into ninety-six minutes worth of film (not counting the credits), forcing a huge number of plot elements to be either heavily truncated or outright removed.
 * 6) * Not helping is that forty minutes worth of footage was removed from the film at the last minute to facilitate a terrible 3D conversion thanks to Paramount rushing the movie out for its release on July 2, 2010, and it was probably not worth it, as it made the movie much worse with many of the aforementioned and described below problems stemming from this cut. Not helping is that the film's novelization has over twenty differences (some of which are major) that got axed as a result.
 * 7) Several of the characters' names are mispronounced: for example, Aang is mispronounced as "Ong", Sokka is mispronounced as "Soaka" and Iroh is mispronounced as "Eeroh".
 * 8) * Some say that the incorrect pronunciation was done to give the characters more Asian-sounding names, even though none of the characters in the film have accents.
 * 9) * It also somewhat explains the title not having the Avatar title because of an unrelated movie directed by James Cameron being released before this film did, and this will also affect most later Avatar universe installments going forward, as even the "Avatar" title in the movie was mispronounced as "Ahvatar".
 * 10) Horrid portrayals of the main characters from the original series:
 * 11) * Rather than being a humorous person who has self-esteem issues that he hides behind a "tough guy" persona, Sokka is a serious soldier with an unquenchable bloodthirst and the personality of a twig who makes Anakin Skywalker from the Star Wars prequel trilogy look like a saint in comparison.
 * 12) * Aang, who has always been portrayed as a playful and kind kid who struggles with the responsibility of being the Avatar, is portrayed here as a whiny, angsty brat who almost never cracks a smile.
 * 13) * Katara, instead of being a self-dependent, mature person who is also one of the best Waterbenders in the series, is a completely flat character who is an absolute joke of a Waterbender and mostly exists to deliver exposition.
 * 14) * Zuko is portrayed as a generic "edgy" teenager who wants to be unbanished from his father rather than an impatient and emotionally-conflicted person struggling between his free will and his father's demands.
 * 15) * Fire Lord Ozai is shown in full from the very beginning, whereas the series kept his appearance a mystery until the third and final season.
 * 16) Poor grasp of the lore from the series, with bending seeming to be generally much, much weaker:
 * 17) * Firebenders are shown to be required to actually use a source of fire, which is a rather baffling change, given that Firebenders produce fire from chi, their own internal energy, in the series.
 * 18) * Waterbenders take forever to start moving a small puddle.
 * 19) * In the infamous "pebble dance" sequence, it takes a team of seven Earthbenders to throw one little rock. A single Earthbender in the TV series could lift a giant boulder with one hand, while four Earthbenders were capable of taking down an entire group of Fire Nation tanks.
 * 20) Immense disregard for real-world physics, particularly in one scene where the Fire Nation invades the Northern Water Tribe with "drill helmets" that tear through thick ice in mere seconds... even though they would actually take almost four months to drill through the ice. In the series, it took the Fire Nation a few days of constant raiding before they were able to break through the city walls.
 * 21) Haru, who was a young adult in the TV series, is now a little boy.
 * 22) The Earthbender prison camp is in the middle of a quarry, rather than on a metal ship like in the TV series - which creates a massive plothole, as they could escape very easily, yet they don't do so for some reason. In the series, no Earthbending was possible on the metal ship, so it made sense for them to be roused and empowered by Katara to not lose hope and fight back because there was a big risk and they had something to lose... but in the movie, they're surrounded by Earth!
 * 23) Poor choreography with hallmarks, awkward closeups for the actors, and static shots along with the fight sequences.
 * 24) Horrible 3D conversion that "won" a unique one-off Razzie Award for "Worst Eye-Gouging Mis-Use of 3D".
 * 25) The film takes itself way too seriously, unlike the TV series, which had both light-hearted and intense moments.
 * 26) The trailer showed a scene where Aang is about to fight the Fire Nation all by himself, but the scene never actually appears in the final movie (likely because of the movie being cut short as mentioned above).
 * 27) Noah Ringer, who played Aang in this movie, stated that he had "no previous acting experience", proving he was a terrible casting choice.
 * 28) * Similarly, Nicola Peltz's audition tape was described as "subpar at best".
 * 29) Even when the film tries to have emotional moments, all of those scenes just serve to have characters give more exposition rather than talking about or showing how they feel or express what they like or dislike.
 * 30) Pointless sequel-baiting involving Zuko's sinister sister, Azula.
 * 31) Incredibly crappy dialogue, such as "We were forced under the water of the ocean" and "This time, we'll show the Fire Nation that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs".
 * 32) M. Night Shyamalan did a weak job of directing this movie, which resulted in him "winning" a Golden Raspberry Award for "Worst Director" (also mentioned in "Awards and Nominations" section).

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The soundtrack, composed by James Newton Howard, is surprisingly amazing.
 * 2) It has a good recreation of the intro from the television series, barring the use of a gibberish language in place of authentic Chinese characters.
 * 3) The Earth Kingdom villagers are actually played by Chinese actors, along with the other Water Tribe villagers (besides Katara, Sokka, their grandmother Kanna, Princess Yue, and Master Pakku) being played by actors of Inuit descent.
 * 4) Despite her character's race being changed, Seychelle Gabriel's performance as Princess Yue was moderately well-received by fans (barring the "penis hair" meme based on the rather unfortunate appearance she has when seen from behind in one shot), and series creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino would later cast her as Asami Sato in Avatar: The Legend of Korra.
 * 5) * Similarly, Shaun Toub's performance as Uncle Iroh was also well-received and was kept faithfully from the show, despite his character's race being changed as well.
 * 6) Decent visuals in some scenes.

Reception
The Last Airbender was universally panned by critics, audiences and fans of the original animated series upon its release, and is widely considered to be one of the worst films ever made. Many reviewers criticized the screenplay, acting, directing, casting, plot holes, unfaithfulness to source material, visual effects, editing, characters and 3D conversion. It is commonly described as "a badly-made summary of the first season of the show". Fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender tend to be especially harsh towards the movie. Years after its release, word got out that its misdeeds weren't entirely Shyamalan's fault, but that of the film's producers, who didn't even bother to watch the series.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 5% "rotten" rating with a critic consensus that reads "The Last Airbender squanders its popular source material with incomprehensible plotting, horrible acting, and detached joyless direction". Metacritic gave the film a score of 20/100, landing it in the "generally unfavorable reviews" category. Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film half a star out of four and described the film as "an agonizing experience in every category I can think of". Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times said in his review "By specifically critical and broadly adult standards, this film is undoubtedly a disappointment, but it is disappointing in a way that its intended audience may not notice".

Jen Yamato of Movies.com awarded the film one and a half star out of five and said "The good news for those eagerly anticipating this live-action, big budget adaptation is that the 3D isn't horrible. The bad news? Just about everything else is".

Box office
The film opened up at #2 on its opening weekend, grossing $17,511,097 domestically. On its closing weekend, it made a total domestic gross of $131,772,187. In overseas territories, the film grossed $187,941,694. Overall, the film made a worldwide gross of $319,713,881 and was considered to be a box office disappointment. It is the fourth highest grossing Nickelodeon film, behind The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Adventures of Tintin.

Awards and nominations
The film dominated the 2010 Golden Raspberry Awards, "winning" five Razzies from nine nominations: "Worst Picture", "Worst Director", "Worst Screenplay", "Worst Supporting Actor" (which Jackson Rathbone "won" for both his role as Sokka in this film and as Jasper Hale in The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) and the one-off special "Worst Eye-Gouging Mis-Use of 3D" Razzie.