The Last Airbender Review

Thoughts on the Last Airbender

So for those of you who don’t know, the movie is based on an anime show called, “Avatar The Last Airbender.” (done by Nickelodeon) And I’ve basically been obsessed with that show since I started watching it 3 months ago. I even attempt to water bend the ocean whenever we go there.

Ok, so my thoughts on the actual movie. I thought that if you had never seen the anime series, it would have probably been a great movie, but when compared to the show, it was awful, too many major errors, or worse, possible intentional changes. I’m a huge fan of the director M. Night Shyamalan, I love movies like “The Sixth Sense,” “Signs,” “The Village,” etc. I think his intention was to sort of try to make it a little different from the movie and in my opinion, I feel there were two possible successful choices he could have made: 1. Taken the movie a totally different and new story, probably with the help of the original creators, or 2. He could have made it as close as possible to the series.

One really distracting detail about the movie, was the often character pronunciation changes. Aang, was pronounced, “’Aahng,’ Soka, ‘Soaka,’ Iroh, ‘Eeroh,’ etc.

I felt the best character out of all of them in the live action film, was actually Princess Yue. She was the only one who really worked for me. Not only was she as close to a physical replica as they come, she really portrayed the character. My least favorite character would have to either be Soka, (also pronounced ‘Soaka’ in the movie) or Zuko. Soka’s personality was majorly altered.

I did really try to remember that I shouldn’t compare the real movie to the cartoon, because of the obvious factor that options with cartoons are virtually endless, and live action movies are limited. I did enjoy the life action in some parts, and it was nice to see what they might look like in real life, but I felt like a lot of their movements were delayed. I’m very curious, that since it’s gotten bad reviews from the public as well as the critics, if they’ll go on with the planned trilogy. As is very apparent from the ending, there is definitely supposed to be a continuation.

I could ramble on and on about the movie, but I just basically thought, the acting needed work, (better emotions in the cartoon) the action a little work, and the original plot was fine just the way it was. The movie was very entertaining and I’ll probably buy it when it comes out, but was slaughtered when comparison to the anime series.