“Of course I’m the Avatar. Can’t you tell by my glowing spirit tattoos?”
C-
I wanted to like this movie. I really did. On some levels, I did enjoy it, despite the awkward dialog, lack of character development, and inexcusably short running time. I love the cartoon series. It has all the elements of a great anime, despite its American production. To be fair, the movie has some great moments, but it’s just disappointing to see the epic source material washed over so carelessly.
Pros:
- Great action sequences. You can tell what’s going on, it looks good, and it’s believable.
- Great special effects. Well, it’s 2010. That’s easy now, especially with the $150 million budget.
- Perfectly cast. Noah Ringer is Aang. I can’t imagine anyone else in the part. Same with Katara, and Zuko. Hell, even Iroh felt right. Jackson Rathbone would have been perfect as Sokka, given some actual Sokka material to work with, but I can’t fault him for that. Despite everything, he’s still my favorite character. Even when he’s not being funny. Even when he’s played by that dude from Twilight.
- Shyamalan leaves no doubt that Zuko is his favorite character in the series, going so far as to identify him as the real hero in an interview that was designed to defend his casting decisions and apparently give major series spoilers.
Cons:
- Too much expository dialog written to bandage the holes left by an exasperatingly short running time. Whether the running time was a decision of the studio or the director is unknown to me, but it should be a crime to try to cram an epic into less than 2 hours, and this movie pays the price. It might even hurt its chances at getting a sequel.
- Not enough interaction with Momo
- For no apparent reason, Shyamalan chose to change the pronunciation of names. Instead of Aang it’s Ong. Instead of Avatar, it’s Aw-vatar. Instead of Sokka it’s Soak-ah. Not sure what that was about, but it was annoying.
- Generally just not enough character interaction on a human level. Sokka being a dork, but proving himself through problem solving and good leadership; Aang’s huge crush on Katara; Zuko taking out his anger on the crew of his ship; Sokka courting Yue–they literally just say it happened in the narration. Sorry, Mr. Shyamalan, that’s what they call bad writing. The greatness of the story comes from its heart, these three kids inexorably linked on a quest to save the world from an evil tyrant against seemingly impossible odds and becoming BEST FRIENDS along the way.
- Not enough detours between the south pole and the north pole. It goes like this: SOKKA: “We should stop and help some of the villages along the way. You want to do that?” AANG: “Heck yeah!” CUT TO: North pole. Exposition. Blah.
- In the very beginning of the movie, they show the benders from the 4 tribes just like they did in the show, but for some reason chose to leave out the narration, then they actually showed a text crawl like it was Star Wars or something, and had Katara read the words in the crawl. The lack of narration in the one moment that it actually appears in the show is quite puzzling considering the movie’s heavy reliance on Katara explaining everything that happened to us; everything that we were so excited to see for ourselves entering into this adaptation.
I feel bad that these young actors will be faulted for their part in this movie. They all performed very well, despite Shyamalan’s best efforts to make them look bad. Oh well, fans of the series can at least hope that he realizes that he fudged this one, and maybe rectifies this with Book 2, but until we start seeing trailers, it’s all just speculation from here.
