My eight-year-old son and I love the animated series, so we eagerly awaited this movie. I saw it today without him, to decide if he'd like it. I think he would, because it shows what Aang and his friends might be like if they were real. Alas, where I had expected that MNS might depart too far from his source material, the first of his big problems seems to be that he stuck too close. Still, there is a surprising positive feature about this film that might make it a minor cult classic. More on that later.
First, some math: the original was set in three seasons ("books"), and consisted of 20 episodes per season, at about 20+ minutes each (after you take out the commercials and the opening narration). That's 400 minutes. The film is only about 100 minutes, so if MNS was going to tell the same story, he'd have to have gone at least four times as fast. Pacing like that would have been absurd. Alas, he kept too much, while leaving out some of what made what he left as meaningful as it was in the original. For example, toward the end, one character must make a great sacrifice for the sake of the others. In the series, this was spread out over two installments, so it got 40 minutes to develop. Here, it just can't be given the same time, so all its poignancy is lost in what ends up feeling like a forced sub-plot item. And that happens a LOT in this film. Which leads to the second problem.
The second problem is simply that if you haven't seen the original, you will have no hope of following this convoluted, summarized, narrated, series of set pieces. Not much better is that, if you HAVE seen the original, you're going to be infuriated over what's been left out. The sweetness of the original was largely in watching the slow, oh-so-familiar-to-us-grownups process of children becoming adults. Here, the characters don't really change much, though we do see evidence of progress in their skill sets; it's their level of maturity that seems static. And, speaking of children, we come to the third problem.
The third problem is that the kids are adequate actors, but the script is mostly absurd, worst by far when the characters speaking its lines are the adults. Believe it or not, the quality of the acting appears to be almost perfectly inverse to the ages of the actors. It's almost as though MNS felt that he could make the young actors look better by having the older ones look bad. Dude, it wasn't necessary! All three young heroes are pretty good. Ringer, as Aang (and, yes, they all say "Awng," or "Ahng," or "Ong," and that rhymes with "Wrong"), is the weakest, but his slightly smoldering dead-pan actually works for a character coming to grips with being the very last of his kind, whose friends are all dead, who has to save the entire world, while multiple enemies are trying to destroy him, and, oh, yeah, while he is only twelve years old. I bought Ringer's Aang. Rathbone (not really a kid actor, at well over 20) was a pretty good Sokka (yup, it's "SO-kah," rhymes with "Mocha," and, no, I didn't order that). But Peltz as Katara (she gets to keep her name, yay!) was actually quite fine. And that brings us to the good part.
The most positive thing about "The Last Airbender" is that it's actually mostly about The Last Southern Waterbender. Katara is the main character in this movie. And, while it gets a reliable 4.3-or-so from almost every demographic group, look at the breakdown on the IMDb voting details page. Women under 18 (you know, "girls") give it a 6.7. Not a high score, but substantially higher than every other age or gender. Once you see it, you'll know why. It's because of Katara, the fighter. Katara, the mother-figure. Katara, the leader. Katara, the brave, the strong, the compassionate, and the patient. She is every bit as much the hero of this film as is Aang, and he couldn't do what he does without her.
There are some very, very good moments in this very, very uneven film. The plot holes and exposition lumps are ghastly. The breathless pacing is overwhelming. But, some of it is beautiful, like the scenes where Aang and Katara are practicing their waterbending forms together. Some is exciting, like the fight scenes that outdo "Crouching Tiger" by quite a bit. Some is sweet, or bittersweet, like the flashbacks to Aang's early years. But best of all is the hidden jewel of a story about a young girl who, it would seem, delivers on the hidden dreams of a lot of young girls. A solid character doing extraordinary things, perhaps as all young girls aspire to be and do. Seems like maybe Hollywood could learn a bit about an untapped market from this, and meet the wishes of many a member of the future ticket-buying adult public.
If you haven't seen, or didn't like, the series, give this movie a 3 or 4. If you did see it and liked it, give it a 5 or 6. But if you have a daughter who still lives in your house, take her to see it. Out of respect for her and her peers, this 51-year-old father of his own little Aang will give it the same grade she probably will: 7.
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