Air... Water... Earth... Fire... They say that only the Avatar can master all the elements, so if that's true, M. Night Shyamalan could be the real Avatar, seeing is how he has mastered the element of surprise...ingly bad movie making.
Okay, so let's start off with the most obvious mistake about this movie- it was ever made. This movie is based off a Nickelodeon cartoon, so that right there should be the first sign that this probably isn't going to be a great film. Not only that, but each element in the story has its own season in the actual show. So how do you take an entire season's worth of story and condense it down into a two hour film? Don't as Shyamalan because he sure doesn't know.
Secondly, this movie has no character developement what so ever. The three main characters, Sokka, Katara, and Aang (not Ung!) are all introduced literally within the first few minutes of the film. After that, the movie jumps right into what Shymalan calls the "story" and moves so fast that it is difficult to develope or care about any of the characters because there are so many of them coming at you so fast.
Expanding on that, Shyamalan does try to develope each character carefully and give them each a backstory that will make them seem more human: Zuko has his father issues, Katara and Sokka's mother has died and their father is off fighting in the war, Aang's entire race has been wipped out, and Sokka even has a brief love interest; however, none of it meshes the way it should and by the end it just all feels overbearing.
Next, the script was so uninspired and boring that it was actually funny. Most of the lines uttered in this film were just blatant observations like: "No! Katara, don't hit that sphere!", and "That bison thingy floats" when obviously the bison thingy is floating. Each character speaks as if they can't wait to finish their line and quite honestly, neither could I.
Moving on, the acting in this movie is terrible. Now I know that I have done my fair share of complainning about bad acting, but this one takes the cake. In fact, it made me miss the great stoneface acting of Dear John. I don't know what Shyamalan was thinkg hirring such a cast of bad actors. Oh wait, yes I do- "Let's spend all our money on visual effects and take whatever we have left over and hire whoever will work for it. I mean come on, in today's economy, that's pretty much everybody so work won't be hard to find!". I mean you know your movie is bad when Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi is playing your villain.
Despite semi-stunning special effects, this movie is a total bomb. Nothing works here and we are all being conned into paying our hard earned cash to see it. It is also yet another disappointing run in Shyamalan's losing streak, but despite my subtitle, I don't believe that this will be his last movie. Shyamalan is a talented writer-director and I can't wait for his next good movie (if indeed there ever is one).
No comments:
Post a Comment