Uhng the Awwwatar

I just saw the "Last Airbender"-movie. It was... not as horrible as most people said it was, but it was most definitely not good compared to the original series. I did watch it in awful quality, so I missed some of the effect of good sound and image, but I'l probably watch it again in the cinema or on DVD.

Parts I liked

and that I think was done right in this movie:

• The music. It reminded me a bit of the show, and that's a plus of course. It was probably nothing I would listen to on my ipod, but nice music nonetheless.
• The part with the bowing. I think I remember reading somewhere that a lot of people hated it, but I think it was a nice touch that Aang "embraced his destiny" in the end, at least somewhat reluctantly.
• The bending effects. Sometimes, when they weren't dancing all over the place, it looked really good. More on that later.
• Momo and Appa. (Even though we never saw Appa clearly)

Parts I disliked

Prepare for a long rant.

The mispronounciation of the names made me cringe. I got used to "Eeeroh", "Uhng" and "Soak-ah" after a while, but the worst part was actually how some of the actors pronounced "Avatar". Kind of like "Awww-atar". It just sounded so out of place! I don't know what the hell Shyamalan was thinking. Why piss off the fans by doing this? We don't care that "Sah-ka" is the wrong way of saying his name when that's what he's been called in all 3 seasons of the original show!

Show, do not tell. And there was a lot of stuff that wasn't told right either. 

First of all; I thought modern movies never used narrators anymore. It's cheating, and it shows that you are not able to make the movie without it. Instead of Katara telling the audience that they had been training, I would have liked to see a short montage instead. That just seems so much more professional. Narration just tells me "I had to much stuff to work with, I'm not a good enough director to shorten it down with clips, so I'll make one of the characters tell the audience instead."

Instead of having Katara narrate the "Water, earth, fire, air", sequence, couldn't just she and Sokka be discussing what the Avatar is when they are out hunting?

We never got a clear idea of what the Avatar is, and how the concept works. Somehow the movie should have explained that the Avatar is the spirit of the planet in human form, that he or she has the ability to control all the elements, and that he or she is reborn into the next nation of the Avatar cycle when they die. And the part about keeping balance. The grandmother in the movie tried, buuut I don't think she did it right.

Aang... Ohboy. Sometimes he looked cute, but he was so pouty and sad all the time! I realise that the movies have to be more serious to be taken seriously (like, seriously!), but come on, let Aang be a little more cheerful! I absolutly adore the way Aang is in the series! If you would present the first episodes of Avatar to an adult, they might think that it's a bit childish, but he grows up so much after a while! I loved how he is trying so much to avoid his destiny in the beginning, and how he's always so cheerful and so talented and powerful at the same time. And he was a natural at waterbending, damnit! I absolutely didn't feel the same kind of love for this version of Aang as I do for the original. I loved his tattoo though.

What was the deal with Appa? We never got to see a closeup of what he really looked like. He was just some mysterious furry beast who floated. Aang never showed any real love for his companion like he does in the original. Any generic audience who's never seen the animated series must have wondered a bit about a lot of parts in this movie.

Katara and Sokka were boring and uninteresting most of the time. Katara had none the original's charm, and Sokka was almost funny... once. And I don't think their relationship was established good enough, they just didn't seem like they knew each other. Not to speak of their relationship with Aang! I can see why animated Katara and Sokka would choose to travel around with Aang, but not why these two would. They hardly know the kid! And they seemed more like his fans than his friends.

The Dancebending! I might be a bit biased about this, because I saw this clip before I watched the movie, but seriously. The bending looks so much natural and tougher in the animated series! And you can actually see how the movements of the person affects the element they are bending. Most of the time in the movie, it looked like they were dancing. A lot of fancy dancing, and then something happened.

And the part with the rock flying by... If you watched the video I linked, you can see a lot of earthbenders do some fancy dancing, and then one small rock flies by. I don't know if I would have noticed what's actually supposed to be happening here if Rufftoon hadn't pointed it out. It's just bad planning.

What actually happens is that one earthbender is about to be hit with a blast of fire, but a wall of dirt rises up from the ground and protects him. The camera pans to the left, and we see the group of earthbenders that just moved that wall of dirt do a "victory dance". Then a small rock flies by, and another, single earthbender who's moving that rock pops into the screen after it, and shoots the rock at the firebenders.

What it looks like is that the group of earthbenders use a lot of fancy moves to make just that one little rock fly by, since they are still moving after the wall of dirt has protected the other man. it could have been done so much better! See the link from rufftoon to see what I mean.

...sigh. It was an okay, horrible movie. If that makes sense. But It didn't do the original series justice at all!