The Last Airbender

The moviegoer who told me to “shut up” while I was laughing at “The Last Airbender,” was taking it way too seriously, just like the film itself. Between the ridiculous dialogue, multiple plot holes, and the one-dimensional acting, “The Last Airbender” is M. Night Shaymalan’s first and hopefully last “Airbender” film. Sadly, his films get progressively worse than the last. At the same time, the director becomes more serious with each film, even as they spiral into further stupidity. Such is the case of “The Last Airbender.”

The Airbenders are people who have the ability to harness the power of either air, water, fire, or earth. One special person, however, the avatar, is reincarnated over centuries and has the ability to control all four elements. The avatar, portrayed by Noah Ringer, is charged with the task of preventing the Fire Nation from conquering the Water, Air, and Earth nations. While the avatar, named Aang, has the ability to harness all the elements, he must first learn how, except there is one small catch: Aang left his village, refusing to accept his responsibilities as avatar because he would have to give up his family. He ran away without learning how to use the other elements, so he and newfound friends water-bender Katara (played emotionlessly by Nicola Peltz) and her older brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone, who must have a penchant for roles requiring him to have horrible hair, like his “Twilight” role) travel to the Water Nation so he can learn how to bend water, but not without fire-benders trailing them, eager to use Aang for their own evil purposes. Aang’s preferred mode of travel is a horrible exercise in creativity and imagination gone horribly wrong: he and his two friends fly on what, at best, could be described as a furry beaver-bison hybrid. Either way, one can’t help but snicker at the CGI’d beast as it flies around.

In the supporting cast, Dev Patel, fresh from his role in 2008’s “Slumdog Millionaire” plays a banished prince from the Fire Nation, who believes that if he captures Aang and brings him back to his father, the King of the Fire Nation, he can restore his honor in his kingdom. Patel was fantastic in “Slumdog,” but it seems as if he has only one emotion as his character, Prince Zuko—anger. But at least he has an emotion, as the rest of the cast seems stiff as boards. One of his co-stars, Nicola Peltz’s, narration is lacking any type of conviction and sounds as if she’s reading a boring children’s book.

The cringe-worthy dialogue is just one of many flaws in this film. At times, the dialogue seems painful, especially in a scene where Sokka falls in love with the princess of the Water Nation, and they talk about her white hair. It’s just as kitschy as it sounds. From this one exchange, the audience is supposed to realize that they are in love, and when she sacrifices herself to give power back to “the spirits” (how this fits into the whole big picture, it’s never explained), we are just supposed to guess at how painful of a loss it truly is for Sokka. Also, time passes indiscriminately in the film. The audience is surprised when a character will mention something that happened weeks ago, but to the audience, it occurred one frame ago.

A dues ex machine is something that comes out of the blue in a story to either resolve an issue or to move the plot along, and generally, it is not an accepted way of telling a story, but M. Night Shaymalan has supposedly never heard of this faux pas because it seems like random characters, unexplained and undeveloped, come out of nowhere to discuss crucial plot points, and then are never seen again. For example, a sequel is set up near the end of the film by the mere mention of a future destructive comet that will give the Fire Nation endless power. Also, a character mentioned once before will become a new villain in the potential next film. A clue to possible sequels is also given at the beginning of the film, a title card reading, “Book One: Water.” After this disastrous outing, the world may never see book two or three, and thank God for that.

The director and former master of building tension fails to build up suspense in any of the scenes, each remaining as ineffectual as the last. Some of the camera shots are bizarre, as extreme close ups are frequently used to no effect. In one fight scene between Aang and some fire-benders, the camera seems to go into “Cloverfield,” mode, getting blurry and shaky, with debris flying everywhere. It did more to give me a headache and less to make me feel excited about the scene.

All in all, “The Last Airbender” is nowhere near worthy of your ten dollars or even worth a matinee price. My only hope is that the person who told me to shut up during my viewing of “The Last Airbender,” realizes I had reason to talk and laugh at its stupidity during the film, because it was a better option than actually paying attention to it.

Rating: -3 stars
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