M. Night’s Twist This Time: There’s No 3D

As one of the few 3D live-action titles to be released this year, the name “Avatar” was dropped from the title to avoid confusion with the James Cameron movie, but also foretelling how unworthy this film is to be compared to Cameron’s work in every way, including 3D.

The Movie

Rating:

I preface this review by saying I know nothing about the original source material and watched the movie as a regular movie-goer and not as a fan. My opinion is based on this ignorance. Fans of the cartoon may think differently.

Based on the anime-inspired, children’s cartoon, Avatar: The Last Airbender, it’s an imagined world where there are 4 nations, each believing in one of the four basic elements: Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. Within each nation, some individuals are born with the potential to control their respective element. Mastering the art of of this control – which resembles perfecting the channeling of inner energy and physical movements in the martial art Tai Chi – is known as “bending”. Benders typically cannot control an element they are not born into, but the spirits to look over the world, grant one person every generation, the power to control all the elements and act as a stabilizing force between all four. This person is known as the Avatar. 100 years before the start of the movie, the Avatar disappeared, allowing the power-hungry Fire Nation to wage war on the others. The Fire Nation knew the Avatar would be born as an airbender and massacred the air-bending people, hoping to kill the Avatar as well, but not everyone believes the Avatar is dead.

Brother Sokka (Rathbone) and sister Katara (Peltz) belong to the water nation and are hunting when they stumble upon something in the ice and disturb it. Whatever was lying beneath, awakens and out pops Aang (Ringer), a little boy covered in tattoos. His awakening is accompanied by a billow of light that attracts the attention of banished Fire prince Zuko (Patel) who can see it from afar and quickly travels to the source because he’s very suspicious. This marks the start of the numerous holes that would plague the storytelling. Zuko quickly goes to Katara’s village and rounds up all the elders, which is never explained, but I later learned through a fan of the cartoon, is because Zuko believes the Avatar wasn’t killed in the initial massacre and may just be hiding. If he’s hiding, he would be an elderly man. Aang is also rounded up and after some tests that prove his is the Avatar, escapes Zuko’s clutches.

Reuniting with Sokka and Katara, the three friends set off to find Aang’s people. Aang discovers the shocking truth: he’s been gone for a hundred years and all his people are dead. He reveals himself as the Avatar, but never accepted his destiny and therefore did not complete training in all four elements. To bring balance back to the world, Aang must train and so they set forth to train first with the water masters in the north. The Fire Nation figures out this plan and sets to attack the Northern Water Nation stronghold to stop Aang and destroy the Water Nation once and for all.

Early buzz about the movie centered around casting mostly Caucasians to fill the roles in the cartoon that were clearly Asian. This caused an uproar with some calling racism, but as an Asian, I didn’t find a problem with the Avatar being white. It’s a fantasy world so any race will suffice, especially in the movie’s context where even a black actor wouldn’t be an issue. Important issues like these should be judged mostly within the context of the movie’s plot and storytelling. In that regard, the casting of the Water Nation was the biggest problem. Sokka and Katara are white living in a village where everyone is Inuit-looking. Later, they visit the Water Nation of the north who are all white. This discrepancy was a little startling. They should have made everyone in the Inuit village white as well, so at least the nations were portrayed more along racial lines. Thus, the water nation would be Norwegic / Scandinavian. Aside from this, there wasn’t much to cause all the racial uproar. The Air Nation was multicultural, Earth Nation was Asian, Water (at least in the north) was White. The Fire Nation was the most interesting. All the people of Fire appeared to be of Indian-descent and even the architecture shown in the backdrop was Indian. There must be a story to tell here about how the director, who’s Indian, cast his own people as essentially the bad guys, although they always say bad guys in movies have the most fun.

Acting was a bigger problem. Some scenes were bad with little emotional conveyance in the physical display of the actors and stilted regurgitation of bad dialogue. The older, seasoned actors could pull it off with grace, but the younger actors gave over-enunciated performances lacking any subtlety or depth. For example, when the kids stumble upon the scared earthbenders, Aang reveals himself as the Avatar and call them into action. The kids are clearly trying to be sincere, but they look and sound more like kids playing a practical joke. It’s not youtube-amateur bad, or off-broadway good. It’s highschool-play kind of acting.

Despite bad acting, terrible pacing, and incomprehensible writing, the few effects-heavy action scenes make the movie very tolerable. The kung fu-inspired elemental fighting is a bit corny in certain parts, but cool in most. The only knock is the inconsistency of the martial art. It seems elemental benders are very powerful, but those who are, aren’t used in meaningful ways in the movie. The director’s inexperience with action scenes really shows in the final battle sequence between the water and fire nations. One would expect a fierce battle between water benders living among water, against the might of the fire nation’s war machines. Instead, you get a cliche invaders-against-a-fortified-city battle, with few elemental fighting going on and mostly hand-to-hand combat.

About Other Critics: I’m completely unfamiliar with the Avatar material and even I did not make the blatant misinterpretations that fellow critics made. One critic says the movie takes place 100 years in OUR future. Another, many thousands of years. It’s not. This is an imagined world. Critics also pointed out how in an early scene, Katara throws water at her brother and he’s not wet. In the movie I saw, he’s clearly “wet” in the sense the water quickly turned to ice because they live in a sub zero climate, so he’s covered in a little ice, but Katara clearly didn’t throw water at him, but merely near him and he may have just been splashed. Many critics also pointed out a minor twist at the end – a twist I never saw. Everything was predictable and a few moments could be considered surprising, but nothing remotely categorized as a plot twist. It’s these little mistakes that make it sound like critics didn’t actually watch the movie.

The 3D Experience

Rating:
Movie watchers with good memory will recall no mention of 3D in the original promotional material for The Last Airbender, yet it’s being highly touted as a 3D film now. Like Clash of the Titans and Alice In Wonderland, Airbender is a 3D conversion job, but unlike Alice where the 3D was intended from the beginning and mindful of throughout production, Airbender is a tacked-on, last-minute addition similar to Clash of the Titans, and it shows. Producers of Airbender assured fans it wouldn’t be a mess like Titans, but the final product is much worse. There is no 3D to speak of. Some scenes were completely flat and most had just a small hint of depth even in deep spaces, such as down a corridor.

Watching 3D in the movie theater requires viewers to wear polarized lenses that dim the brightness a bit. James Cameron was aware of this drawback and designed the Avatar universe to be filled with light, even in night sequences. It’s simple: if it’s too dark you won’t see anything, let alone depth. So if something cuts the brightness further, you’ll have even less depth perception. Avatar does not take place in a bright, sun-filled world. Much of the movie takes place in the cold, dim, nothern regions. Many sequences also take place at night, making the picture even dimmer once the 3D glasses come on. Clash of the Titans had less of a problem because there were many outdoor sequences, or sections punctuated by light. Avatar is too dark of a movie. Even if the aforementioned 3D conversion was good, you still wouldn’t feel a sense of depth.

Hotness of Girls

Rating:

It’s supposed to be a kids movie, but I’m including the rating because it’s live-action. Even so, I’m deeply disturbed by how young the actresses look, primarily Seychelle Gabriel, who plays Yue, and Summer Bishil who plays the fire nation prodigy. I know Summer is an adult, and I’m hoping Ms. Gabriel is too, but both are portrayed as adolescents. Gabriel’s character is more disturbing because she looks 14, but has a romantic scene with Jackson Rathbone’s Sokka – an actor who is in his mid-twenties.

Ignoring the girls for a second, I wanted to add how disturbed I was by an early scene in the movie: when the Avatar is first rescued from the ice, Nicola Peltz’s Katara looks at a half-naked Noah Ringer in a very weird way. The camera could’ve done closeups to the tattoos, but languished on Noah’s naked skin instead. I understand that Noah’s Avatar is covered in tattoos and Katara is probably surprised by the markings, but the way the scene was shot combined with Nicola’s acting, seemed very pedophilic. It crept me out.

Summary

Overall Rating:

It’s a deeply flawed movie filled with amateurish acting, dialogue, and pacing, but the underlying mythology is intriguing and some action sequences are fun to watch. The sloppily-added 3D was clearly a desperate attempt to add extra income. What The Last Airbender succeeds is create curiosity in the original source material because I now want to watch the cartoon. There’s so much potential here that I would like to see another Airbender movie, but perhaps use a different director/writer.

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