The Last Airbender

2010. Dir: M. Night Shyamalan. Starring: Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone and Shaun Toub. ●●○○○



I must confess to the feeling of trepidation before seeing M. Night's latest blockbuster (and make no mistake it has taken a significant amount of money). All over the internet the vultures and naysayers have ripped apart The Last Airbender, delighting in the further degredation of their former champion. However in spite of these opinions and of my own furtive cinema trip I ended up beign pleasantly surprised.

Please don't get me wrong this is not a good film, it isn't even a competent film, but it is far from the steaming pile certain online critics have painted it as.



In short the story concerns the legendary last member of the Air nation (newcomer Noah Ringer) who is destined to control the elements and defeat the war-mongering Fire Nation led by Cliff Curtis and his exiled son Dev Patel.

If that synopsis seems a little rushed it's because the entire film is a shortened version of a Nickelodeon anime-style serial, the mythology and history for the universe in which it is set was originally designed to be spread over some 15 hours of television and condensing it into a 100 minute film (or one paragraph) means cutting corners and explaining character motivations through voiceover or montage. M. Night has to find time to squeeze in some pretty extensive set pieces and the images and concepts that the audience familiar to the original series will respond to. What is therefore lost is the delicate matter of expanding and filling this society.

Lets start with the positives. "Bending" elements is quite cool, and the CGI usage to complete this works on the big screen. Towers of water, balls of fire and heaving mud clots are fascinating to observe in action. Dev Patel and Shaun Toub (especially) as the exiled Prince and his loyal uncle are very strong, putting in performances far better that the film deserves. The costumes and score are both high quality on the technical side.

On the other hand a lot of other stuff lets them down. The rest of the actors range to the boring - Aasif Mandvi, a word of advice, try varying your delivery every now and then - to the utterly indefensible - Jackson Rathbone proving once and for all that nice skin and cute eyes are no substitute for talent. Not I'm not going to condemn Noah Ringers performacne as he really had so little to do he didn't get a chance to shine.

The biggets failure was in coherence however, both the screenplay and editing meant that we couldn't understand what was really going or get the devotion to the quasi-spirtual connection to the elements. There was also little attachment to the characters as a result, as one major supporting character sacrifices her own life (for a fish, apparently) I had to stifle a yawn. There were also some howlers of badly written lines, to provide exposition or to explain the motivations that we condensing the story meant couldn't be trusted to the audience i.e. "We have to show them that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs." and "Again, I offer my condolences on your nephew burning to death in that terrible accident."

Overall I would have to say The Last Airbender is entirely avoidable and not worth spending any money on, but if you wanted to have it on in the background of a club the visuals are exciting enough for that to work.