![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holliHoly crap, you guys. Apparently, what it takes to break a two-month posting hiatus (uh, sorry about that!) is an afternoon spent seeing The Worst Movie In The World.
Don't worry. I didn't pay money to see The Last Airbender.srevans and I bought tickets to Despicable Me, then snuck in. Well, it was an excuse to sit in the air conditioning for a couple of hours. And I do enjoy heckling.
Luckily, there was an awful lot to heckle. I can honestly say that I have never in my entire life seen a movie that fails in as many ways as this movie fails. At times, I got the sense that someone had made a checklist of all the things than fans found enjoyable about the show, and then carefully removed them from an early draft of the script.
Sense of humor? Nope. Everyone has to be super dour all the time, except for Katara, who always looks like she's about to cry. Also Sokka makes a Blue Steel face a lot.
Strong female characters? Nope. Only Katara, Yue, and Gram-Gram get any lines (And none of Gram-Gram or Yue's lines make any goddamn sense) and Katara gets none of the badassery that is her due. I strongly suspect someone in this film's production thought they were being feminist when they took out all the stuff about Master Pakku being a sexist dick. I am here to tell that person, whoever they were, that they were sadly mistaken. You know what would have been feminist? Leaving in Katara's awesome fight with Zuko, and not letting her get knocked out in three seconds.
Lively dialogue? Nope. Everyone seems to have their Portentousometers turned up to 11, and the Word Salad switch firmly in the On position. Seriously, some of the shit they were saying didn't even make any goddamn sense. Like, as sentences. And that's leaving out the stuff that's just hilariously overwrought.
Compelling characters? Nope. Nobody's motivations make any sense, nobody has any sort of discernible personality (well, Zuko's very angry, and I think Aang might be... sad? We'll go with sad), nobody says or does things that relate in any way to known human feelings or desires.
Thoughtful use of Asian culture and mythology? HA. No. Nooooooo.
For the record, anyone claiming that the production team just wanted to hire the best possible actors are full of shit, because these kids are TERRIBLE. Like, Emma Watson circa the first Harry Potter movie could have acted circles around them. With her EYEBROWS. They're just awful, and maybe some of it's down to bad directing-- because, oh lord, the directing is bad-- but the best actors for the parts? No WAY.
While we're on that-- the directing. Oh my god, so bad. M. Night Shyamalan is clearly, deeply unsuited to this material; he obviously has no idea of how to manage this sort of cast-of-thousands, epic, special-effects-intensive script. I'm pretty sure the guy who gets Peter Jackson's coffee could have handled it better; he probably would have directed much livelier fight scenes.
And that's not even really getting into the script, which was a trainwreck in every way conceivable. Like, it even failed at things like basic timelines and movement of characters: Zhao appears to be making day trips back to the Fire Nation to confer with Ozai about the SCROLL he stole from the LIBRARY (did he mention that he stole a SCROLL from a LIBRARY? Just to be clear, that is in fact what he did: stole a SCROLL from a LIBRARY), and then teleporting back to the Earth Kingdom thousands of miles away. Katara and Sokka don't mention to Aang that, hey, we think you might have been in that iceberg longer than you thought, until they arrive at the Air Temple, a journey that takes, you know, weeks. Basic logistics like that are just totally absent from the awareness of anyone involved in this movie.
Oh, and apparently they blew their budget on shitty bending CGI and couldn't afford to build the offshore prison set for the earthbenders. So they just had the earthbenders be... too sad to fight back. In their dirt prison. Or something.
Other highlights: watching Noah Ringer attempt to interact with CGI Momo, very badly (it looked like he was doing charades); the total absence of any kind of overarching theme or plot, the two or three non-terrible actors in this thing gamely attempting to elevate the material, and failing (sorry, Iroh!); the way the movie kind of forgets about Sokka and Katara for about the last third of the film; the careful removal of any menace that might have been associated with Fire Lord Ozai; and Senior Fire Nation Correspondent Zhao, punching a fish.
You know what? See this movie. Buy a ticket for another movie, obviously, and go during the day so there won't be a lot of other people in the theater. Heckling the shit out of this thing was a really enjoyable way to spend two air-conditioned hours, and I recommend it highly.
Don't worry. I didn't pay money to see The Last Airbender.
srevans and I bought tickets to Despicable Me, then snuck in. Well, it was an excuse to sit in the air conditioning for a couple of hours. And I do enjoy heckling.Luckily, there was an awful lot to heckle. I can honestly say that I have never in my entire life seen a movie that fails in as many ways as this movie fails. At times, I got the sense that someone had made a checklist of all the things than fans found enjoyable about the show, and then carefully removed them from an early draft of the script.
Sense of humor? Nope. Everyone has to be super dour all the time, except for Katara, who always looks like she's about to cry. Also Sokka makes a Blue Steel face a lot.
Strong female characters? Nope. Only Katara, Yue, and Gram-Gram get any lines (And none of Gram-Gram or Yue's lines make any goddamn sense) and Katara gets none of the badassery that is her due. I strongly suspect someone in this film's production thought they were being feminist when they took out all the stuff about Master Pakku being a sexist dick. I am here to tell that person, whoever they were, that they were sadly mistaken. You know what would have been feminist? Leaving in Katara's awesome fight with Zuko, and not letting her get knocked out in three seconds.
Lively dialogue? Nope. Everyone seems to have their Portentousometers turned up to 11, and the Word Salad switch firmly in the On position. Seriously, some of the shit they were saying didn't even make any goddamn sense. Like, as sentences. And that's leaving out the stuff that's just hilariously overwrought.
Compelling characters? Nope. Nobody's motivations make any sense, nobody has any sort of discernible personality (well, Zuko's very angry, and I think Aang might be... sad? We'll go with sad), nobody says or does things that relate in any way to known human feelings or desires.
Thoughtful use of Asian culture and mythology? HA. No. Nooooooo.
For the record, anyone claiming that the production team just wanted to hire the best possible actors are full of shit, because these kids are TERRIBLE. Like, Emma Watson circa the first Harry Potter movie could have acted circles around them. With her EYEBROWS. They're just awful, and maybe some of it's down to bad directing-- because, oh lord, the directing is bad-- but the best actors for the parts? No WAY.
While we're on that-- the directing. Oh my god, so bad. M. Night Shyamalan is clearly, deeply unsuited to this material; he obviously has no idea of how to manage this sort of cast-of-thousands, epic, special-effects-intensive script. I'm pretty sure the guy who gets Peter Jackson's coffee could have handled it better; he probably would have directed much livelier fight scenes.
And that's not even really getting into the script, which was a trainwreck in every way conceivable. Like, it even failed at things like basic timelines and movement of characters: Zhao appears to be making day trips back to the Fire Nation to confer with Ozai about the SCROLL he stole from the LIBRARY (did he mention that he stole a SCROLL from a LIBRARY? Just to be clear, that is in fact what he did: stole a SCROLL from a LIBRARY), and then teleporting back to the Earth Kingdom thousands of miles away. Katara and Sokka don't mention to Aang that, hey, we think you might have been in that iceberg longer than you thought, until they arrive at the Air Temple, a journey that takes, you know, weeks. Basic logistics like that are just totally absent from the awareness of anyone involved in this movie.
Oh, and apparently they blew their budget on shitty bending CGI and couldn't afford to build the offshore prison set for the earthbenders. So they just had the earthbenders be... too sad to fight back. In their dirt prison. Or something.
Other highlights: watching Noah Ringer attempt to interact with CGI Momo, very badly (it looked like he was doing charades); the total absence of any kind of overarching theme or plot, the two or three non-terrible actors in this thing gamely attempting to elevate the material, and failing (sorry, Iroh!); the way the movie kind of forgets about Sokka and Katara for about the last third of the film; the careful removal of any menace that might have been associated with Fire Lord Ozai; and Senior Fire Nation Correspondent Zhao, punching a fish.
You know what? See this movie. Buy a ticket for another movie, obviously, and go during the day so there won't be a lot of other people in the theater. Heckling the shit out of this thing was a really enjoyable way to spend two air-conditioned hours, and I recommend it highly.
