Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The Last Airbender 0/10!

I have never, ever, received so little for the price of a movie ticket than I did with this movie. This is, probably the worst movie I have ever seen in a mainstream release. It has replaced Eragon as the worst movie with a budget I have witnessed and has created absolutely new lows in movie making. I don't know if ever I have left a movie theatre with absolutely nothing good to say about a movie. The only thing I can say is that I laughed a lot. At the terrible dialogue. 

Firstly, the special effects were terribad. The opening scenes in the snow were laughable and you could actually pick out the halos around the characters where they were either put on a screen of imposed over CGI. That beautiful trailer we all saw that had all the ships and the kid in the tower in an epic war scene, totally not in the movie, and in fact nothing anything near that good or cool is in the movie. Truly hack work. This movie is so melodramatic that from hence forth all melodramas shall be known as airbenders, but that’s the least of this movies worries really. I don't really prescribe to all the hubbub about them not casting enough Asians. This is a made up world, and if they wanted to cast some white folk, and some Indo/Pak kids that’s fine with me. This movie had people of all flavors and there were plenty of Asians cast. However, they should have casted some kids in the lead roles that had at least a smidgen of acting talent. Sadly the worst of the worst were two of the characters that received a lot of air time. Noah Ringer, who plays Aang, the Last Airbender was terrible, even when held to standards for his age. This was his first gig, and frankly, I am wondering if he dad knew the casting director or something, because he should still be an unknown. He wasn't the worst though, Jackson Rathbone takes that honor. He plays Sokka a non-elemental bending semi-warrior who serves no real purpose to the plot but to say stupid things and deliver lines with all the emotion of a robot. Of course this is probably how they taught him to do things on the Twilight set. 

Perhaps, though, these guys could have done something if they were giving anything, and I mean ANYTHING to work with. This is the worst script I have ever had the misfortune to stumble across. The lines are absolutely laughable. This literally makes Twilight look like an Oscar winner. Its generally a pretty good sign of poor script writing when actors that are generally average to good in quality are as equally terrible as the untested young talent. Dev Patel, who has talent, place a flat, completely non-dynamic character. Cliff Curtis, Shaun Taub, Aasif Mandvi are all at least adequate, but all come up short here. The other problem is this movie lacks any sort of resolution whatsoever. It was clearly made to be in a series of movies, but it makes it shamefully obvious that its part of a series. Unlike most other series, which has a full arc in each film this one just sort of ends like the first night of a three night mini-series on NBC. What makes it worse is that since its so terrible and is getting such terrible reviews there won't be anymore movies. Given the way this one ends THERE IS NO REASON TO WATCH IT. Its seriously like watching half of a movie and then stopping right before a lot of stuff happens, and never going back to it. Tell you what, I will sum it up for you: 

There are a bunch of 14 year olds standing around, giving bad lines with even worse delivery, they do monumentally stupid acts for no particularly reason while one or more of them watch and say with little emotion "no don't you dare do that exact act in which you are going to do." Then they do that act and something else happens, then they get on a terrible CGI'd luck dragon clone and go somewhere else where they do some sort of combat that looks like it should be part of stomp. Then he doesn't something with water and the movie blacks out. The fire lord says something to his daughter blah blah blah, then you get ready for the real parts of the movie to start, oh but then it ends. Generally I believe that quality and enjoyability are not mutually exclusive, but there is a point in which a movie is just so bad that there really just can't be an reason to enjoy it. This movie is one of those. I just can't see how anyone can honestly say they enjoyed this movie. And from the rotten tomatoes reviews it doesn't really look like anyone has.

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