See I would talk about The Last Airbender but the aka for that movie is how to completely suck at making a movie and completely waste everyones time. There are people who are giving this movie a chance because they just like seeing a character on screen but to say this movie sucked is an insult to sucky movies. I mean most of those movies the people actually tried their best but honestly there were way too many holes in said story to gain the audiences attention or hearts.
I think The last Airbender is going to make money, it's going to make money due to the "Howard Stern rule", what is that you ask, simply put the people who love Howard listen to hear what he is gonna say next, the people who hate howard listen to see what he is gonna say next. The Last Airbender Fantastisucked, the term has been used by me before look it up in a previous blog if it isn't on here it's on multiply. The last airbender took a cake walk and turned it into a rushed, yet grueling, waste of good martial arts performances, lousy bending but great martial arts.
Wait what? How could it be great martial arts but lousy bending, simply part of the beautiful thing about bending is that your element followed you as you made you motions. If you watched the show it kind of gave you a tactile feel for chi flow as they talk about it in martial arts. Its almost like he only watched Aang bend(not Ong as M night decided he wanted to do its almost like he was making a bad parody of a good show) when he first started learning each of the elements past air(hell his airbending took too damn long).
If you look up avatar the last airbender the cartoon you will see some marked differences, wait let me take that back EARTH BENDING IS THE ONLY BENDING HE GOT
SEMI CLOSE. The way he made the earth seem to fight against its benders before it finally bowed to their will was right, everybody elses bending HE SCREWED THE POOCH. First and foremost FIREBENDERS CREATE THEIR OWN FIRE. It is created from their chi, and in all honesty for them it made sense, why might you ask.
Think of the Greek gods for a second, who are the big three Zeus Sky, Poseidon Air, Hades Earth/the underworld. There is of course another fire spirit there Apollo god of the sun. The only really free flowing bit of flame in our little solar system. Whats the funny thing about the sun if it was closer it would scortch us. Thus while we all use fire and admit its value and power we keep it restrained. So Air plentiful, Water plentiful unless you are in the middle of the land, and Earth PLENTIFUL. Those benders would have plenty of their element around them and have free access to it, because in nature those elements are plentiful and usually not too restrained, ESPECIALLY AIR AND EARTH. Fire on the other hand needs so much to get going it needs fuel, it needs air and then you would have to constantly transport it. I mean Their machines run on fire which means they would burn massive amounts of fuel so by the time you made it to an enemies camp you ordinace should be damn near used up. So if as was explained in the show you allowed fire to be created by your chi and your emotions your passion, your anger, you desires then it would be strong bright and free flowing. You wouldn't have to worry about always having fire with you(which would make it hard for you to sneak up on someone and capture them since you would be carrying a damn torch).
What M night should have done was told this story in 6 parts 2 parts per book(the books are Water, Earth and Fire in the order that Aang must learn them to fully master being the avatar) the beginning of each book developing the characters and their abilities showing why they came to the decisions they did and what mistakes made them better benders, tactitians or people.
Okay lets start with story and character errors:
Story error one:How the Avatar was discovered; in the movie there is this big bubble sitting there that Katara hits with a hammer or something and breaks it open and Poof there lays the avatar. Lame because it basically defeats an important part of the story that you will discover later. Katara is a very strong WATER BENDER. In the show you later learn that she is so strong and gifted that she can Heal using water and that she can even bend the water in your Blood.
In the cartoon, Sokka(not Soaka or Souka, the hell there are ways to screw things up and then there are ways to show its just an obstacle in the way of what you really want to do) and his sister are out on the water and they start having an argument. During the course of the argument katara angered by sokka's sophmoric and condescending ways starts screaming and giving in to her emotions while on the raft. As she does not yet realize she is a water bender nor the strength of her bending as Sokka tries to calm her down she gets more insensed she will be heard she will not be shushed and she will not calm down. The water around the craft is reacting to her emotions churning, splashing and during all of these splashes up comes Aang's bubble containing him and Appa, Oppa, or Opa(dunno how its spell but it sounds like Op Ah, Sokka sounds like Sock ah or Socc ah, Katara is Kat ar ah, and and is Ang like in freaking Tang you know the orange drink or freaking WU TANG) as she continues to rage the ice which is also made of water starts to crack. Up shoots a beam of light out fall Aang and Opa and our adventure begins.
Another story error and lets be real about this the races of the characters, they matter in the story and the fact that you whitewashed then tanwashed most of them makes no damn sense. As many have claimed the cartoon does have asian overtones, yes it is a cartoon but the characters are all asian, if you read the signs in the cartoon they are done in Kanji(thus you get subtitles for what is on the doors when you see the signs). Call it a mistake in the artists rendering, call it a minor faux paux call it caucasians do not need to be the focal point of every damn story. But sokka and katara are clearer of a darker hue than Aang, I don't mean an hour in the sun I mean like a month in the sun darker(you know like the girl who comes back after two weeks in the islands and just has to rub her tan in your face even if it just comes from a tanning booth or a spray bottle). And any claims to the contrary are foolish simply because they diminish the importance of being factual to the source material just for personal preference or connection. Every one in their village and of the water tribes appear to either be Inuit or Eskimo ALL not Most except for Sokka GAM GAM and Katara. As a matter of fact it appeared that every speaking character from the water tribe was caucasian. By the way anybody who claims that the water tribe or earth tribe is in anyway shape or form scandanavian is smoking the same pipe M night smoked to make this movie and think it wasn't going to be a cryingstock(this movie is so sad you cry at what it SHOULD HAVE BEEN). Neither tribes were pale, and the earth kingdom people had slanted eyes and FU MAN CHU mustaches, Fu man chu's not viking beards. And again unless you are saying that both water tribes had a serious case of sunburn(though they were not red) again is an idiot, if you cannot accept a character in a live action movie to be exactly how he was in the cartoon then you know what don't watch either because you can't handle it.
Now the earth tribes APPEARED to be chineses, korean, or mongolian. But the fire benders umm how can I put this nicely They all appeared to be indian(and I mean indian not native american). In the show if you asked me I would have said they were either Mandarin chinese or japanese, by their dress, mannerism and actions. I have heard many laughable denials of the Asiatic base f this story and its sad, because you can tell they are just saying it because while they know better they cannot help their white centric view on how things should look.
They were ALL asians: Inuit waterbenders, Tibetan/Shaolin Airbenders, Korean, Chinese, Mongolian earth benders, and Chinese, Mandarin, Japanese fire benders. It almost looks like it was a representation 3 kingdoms period in china towards the end as was shown in the move Hero staring jet li. Except in avatar they gave each kingdom an element(thus requiring a fourth kingdom) and instead of the fight ending in one huge nation it ends with each nation controlling itself but striving for peace between themselves. Yes each bending style mimiced a martial art air soft style wushu(sort of like snake), water taichi, earth bending hard like tiger or crain, and fire kind of like monkey style lots of flips, kicks and aerial maneuvers. So casting fantastisucked, its almost like he had a cast in mind that he wanted to work on for his next film this became his next film and he used that cast anyway.
Next problem sokka, he's a loveable pest. Again he is somewhat immature, very sophmorice, basically he's a kids version of Ryan Reynolds in any movie he plays in. Yes he's smart, yes he has good ideas he makes jokes all the time, teases but you love him because he's constant. And the journey sokka goes on to become this great strategist and better warrior well I can't see how M nights brooding, sulking, BORING stiff could pull that off. I mean Not ONE JOKE. Unless you count that he's the only one that said KATara's name right. already discussed the name moving on.
Prince Zuko was like prince zuko in the series except his hair was wrong, in the beginning LIKE IN CHINA Zuko ONLY had a pony tail. His sides were bald, he wore his hair up as did IROH(not eroh, the hell with the names Asian saying pffft liar I can look up any other anime and show them saying similar names to these without a freakin problem he has mental problems he screwed it up to screw it up on purpose). Iroh actually had his hair in a sort of courtiers single loop bun like you used to see in old Kung fu movies. Oh and Iroh was fat, I say this not to disrespect the character but to kind of respect who the character was. Iroh was an old general, and he had the body like one, a body that you could tell had seen many years and was starting to go to seed as he stopped the rigors of a strick military life. SO this thin EROH, while he like his tea didn't seem as introspective and comtemplative. I mean technically the cartoon Iroh was FREAKIN CONFUCIUS, he always had words of wisdom and mild mannered yet educational anecdotes to pass on. And he seemed like a man tired of war, he was always trying to cheer zuko up, make him see that there were better things in his future then just being another lackey to his overly ambitious father. There was a bond between Zuko and Iroh that you aren't seeing in this movie. And Iroh's hair what the hell, whats with the I don't know if those were dreads or ratty braids.
Though Zuko's scar, hmmm it should have been the whole side of his face. Yes if you looked closesly parts of the skin look slightly marked from the blistering, but it should have been a big blatant scar not this afterthought that M. Night tried to pull off to make it I guess more kid friendly. And whats with the mispronunciation of asian works its KAI, Agnekai or Agnekai AG NUH KAI. I know asians say Kai all the time because I watch bleach and BAN KAI is when one of the characters takes his ZanPakTo to pretty much its ultimate level, Their swords have a SkiKAI form(which is an unreleased for), a released for(don't remember if that form had a name) and then the BANKAI form. So for M night to have it called Ah Nee Kee the lies for his asian pronunciation keep getting weaker and weaker. We are americans we watch anime, we know what words we hear the ASIAN voice actors say. So if in Hindi, or arabic, or whatever dialect from india that he speaks that he is trying to pass off as asian he should have just said so, cause his words didn't sound REMOTELY asian. I mean they sounded like bad 1950's translations of asian terms and words.
And by the way there are like 2 Agnekai's shown in book 1 water. Agnekais are pretty much Honor battles, and Zuko being so much about Honor these should have been shown, every chance to get even a piece of his honor back zuko would have held firmly too.
Katara getting the waterbending scroll SHE STOLE IT FROM PIRATES. And why were the pirates important, because those same Pirates were the ones used by the admiral from the fire nation that Zuko didn't get along with to attempt to ASSASINATE HIM. Not only that but it wasn't until Book 2 Earth that Aang found out that Zuko was the blue spirit. The complicated relationship between Zuko and Ang, Zuko's quest to regain his honor, Zuko and Iroh, Zuko and Azula and Zuko and firelord Ozai is also sometimes told using the mask of the blue spirit. Admiral Jin didn't Suspect Zuko's treachery until he saw the twin swords zuko likes to use in his uncles bunk.
And AVATAR KYOSHI hello that damn statue is on KYOSHI ISLAND, the land that Sokkas future Girlfriend comes from. The island is the place where an important battle between Aang and Zuko is fought, man just whew. The ignorance of that whole scene and the Speech Aang gave belonged to Katara. It showed you how rumors, messages and stories of the battles against the fire nation have traveled the world. It showed Kataras passion and how she was more then just the bossy younger sister, the one who had dreams of the strong Earth Benders finally overcoming the fire nation.
And where was Aangs playfulness. They weren't making stops on the way to the northern Water tribe to fight battles Aang had a list of goof off side trips he had planned. He still saw the world as it had been 100 years before when there hadn't been a lot of fighting. To make matters worse they allowed Aang to be trapped in a room that was supposed to have a door that ONLY A MASTER AIRBENDER COULD OPEN.
There were rumors that M nights kids made him watch the show, I think he knows how to sleep with his eyes open cause dude. I mean so much is rushed, the characters are so wrong, the constipated way he treated all bending, the botched casting, the holes in the story, the ignorance of the character growth.
I mean the best Water bender did not want to teach Katara because she was a girl, but come to find out she is not just any girl but that necklace she always wears, her pride and joy that Gam Gam gave her, that necklace was made by that great water bender for her grandmother when she was his betrothed, She ran away from the Northern Water tribe because she did not like it's rigid structure. Hell the Princesses father wasn't dead he is the one who held the feast in the AVATARS Honor. He showed them that Magic Garden THAT WAS NOT IN A CAVE, I mean he stole a scene from the cartoon and screwed it up. Those two koi the white with the shiny blackish patch and the black with the shiny/glowy whitish patch circle the MOON in the cartoon it was part of how Aang saw the Yin Yang symbol in the pull and learn to better understand water bendings push and pull. It helped him better connect water bending in his mind. He just through it off in a cave some wear as an afterthought.
Avatar touched on so many adult themes in a way that children could understand them and take notice of them that the fact that a SUPPOSED adult could screw it up so badly. I mean it isn't even a old cartoon that current generation children may have only seen reruns of and possibly out of order, its a freaking current cartoon. It's been getting Marathons with Extra info since a month and a half before The Last Airbender was due to premier. I know it's like I keep harping on the guy but it's almost as if M night wanted to be ridiculed after this movie came out. Like this was his cry for an intervention, its a current story, like Harry Potter EVERYBODY HAS SEEN IT. That's why it got a movie, and instead of taking the lessons from the good harry potter movies it's like he fell in love with the "directorial vision" of the guys who basically had turned the fans off so badly I often wonder if J K Rollings doesn't sometimes say to herself why did I agree to this hack again PUBLICLY! You do not cut improtant MAIN STAY characters out of a story just because they do not fit your directorial vision.
I mean I know I usually say I want to give a movie a chance because some reviewers could care less about the subject matter of a comic/cartoon/adaptation movie such as this, but I hate to say it they are right, this thing has gone so far past Craptastic that it almost has to be viewed just to see how badly Hollywood does not respect our money. Somebody had to show up during the filming of this thing and say, "ummm dude what are you shooting? The death of my profit margin this movie SUUUUCKS."
On
Think Hero's Youtube channel he talks about all these pregnant pauses in the movie between lines, and what I'm wondering is were those T bag pauses? I mean was he having the actors pause at those instances to say here, these are my testes I want them all in your mouth for watching this trainwreck of a movie, and actually paying for it. Is this M nights cry for an intervention, has he lost his muse and is just churning out crap until somebody says dude here, this is the good weed, or here this is a project you can actually wrap your brain around to work out the kinks, because this should have been a cake walk. It's not like a comic book movie with a character that has been around for 50 years so there has been a million costume changes, character updates, artists, inkers, adaptations, successes, failures, favorites, most hated. He had the CGI budget(even if Opa's face looked like somebody ripped it off from Where the wild things are) which if all you were looking for was the elements moving around okay the elements moved, but at least to me it looked like it was an afterthought. Like even though this was the entire thing that made them distinctive from other martial artists(and even in the world of Avatar: the last airbender there were other types of martial arts) he still found a way to focus solely on the martial arts and damn near completely try and ignore the powers.
I mean I blame this on Hollywood completely I see a lot of movies lately where they completely ignore what it is we like about the characters to try and tell us some story based on some wet dream they had when they got somebodies money to make a movie. It isn't the subject matter they are trying to bring THEIR VISION to life, to hell with the subject matter without them IT doesn't exist. Yeah well without the viewers your ability to make a sequel doesn't exist.
So yeah once again Fantastisucked, it's a word introduced by marvel in the Ultimate Universe and it DEFINITELY describes this Travesty
