Movie Review: The Last Airbender (2010) by Stuart Taylor

Let me tell you something about bad movies. Some of them will be completely and utterly pants and it’s like watching a one legged pigeon trying to chase a grasshopper across an icy lake – you can’t help but chuckle and admire its pathetic, yet tenacious efforts. Some films know they are aiming for a low bar and wink at you throughout the experience, letting you know everybody’s wise to the fact that they paid for the movie with the coins they found inside the sofa. Some films, though, frustrate you terribly because they have all the ingredients to bake you up a treat of wonder and deliciousness but they spent so much time making the little decorations to go on top that they didn’t realise the dessert had burned to a crisp hours ago. It’s a cake analogy. You know how some cakes a really well decorated but overcooked and tasteless? You know? Cakes?

The Last Airbender is one of those burned cake films. Their first mistake was giving it to M Night Shyamalan. I don’t think any writer/director has disappointed me more over his career, and I clung on desperately until The Lady in the Water (a film I took my wife to, when I was still trying to court her – god damn you Shyamalan) before I gave up on him. He needs to lock himself in a log cabin, write a personal film on a tiny budget and rediscover real film-making or something. According to imdb, his first screenplay draft for this film was seven hours long. Someone needs to stop this man!

Here’s what I immediately learn about the Airbender universe: there are four distinct nations in the world, each corresponding to the four classical elements: earth, wind, air and water. Each nation has based its philosophies and industry around these elements and some of their kind are known as ‘benders’.

Can I just stop and say that I don’t care how juvenile this sounds: calling people ‘benders’ is hilarious. In the film I meant. Hearing people explain, with no sense of irony, ‘she’s a bender!’ cracked me up, every single time. Amazing. I guess they don’t have that slang over the pond. I suppose they must laugh when a British character says, ‘cor, I could do with a fag right now, I’m desperate!’ so now we’re even. Hehe… benders.

They seem to have edited in a scene from The King and I

So, ‘benders’ are special folk who can manipulate their element using their mind, or spirit or something. For example, one of the main characters is a girl bender (he he he!) called Guitar (as far as I could tell) and she’s a water bender. She raises a big blob of water from the ocean and dumps it on her brother’s face. ‘With great power…’ etc, etc. So here’s the deal – the world is at war. The Fire Nation is taking over everything, because their power is the only useful one as it’s allowed them to embrace the industrial revolution and build steam ships and burn the shit out of their enemies. There was a legend of a dude who could bend all four elements and that he was to born into the Air Nation. Thus, the Fire Nation destroyed the Air Nation out of paranoia. Pretty clever, really.

Our story kicks off when Guitar and her brother (let’s call him Brother) find some bald kid and his massive cat frozen in the ocean. I half expect the bald kid to be able to see dead people, but if he can, he doesn’t mention it.

[scene missing]

Suddenly we’re back in the Water people’s village. Seriously, the previous scene twonked into this one in the middle. We don’t stay here long, though, because some Fire dude – the boy from Slumdog Millionaire – steals Haley Joel Osmond and all the elderly Water people. It’s not really explained why, but I think it’s implied that Slumdog has a real GILF fetish. Now, Slumdog is the Prince of the Fire Nation, but his dad banished him for (and I paraphrase), ‘being a total pussy.’ Determined to regain his honour, Slumdog and his Uncle have been searching for the Avatar – the dude with all four powers, remember? – and it turns out Haley is just that guy.

Guitar and Brother are sent on a quest, by Professor McGonagal, to find Haley Joel Osmond because he’s super important. So they ride his giant cat (which can fly, of course) out to the great beyond and before they can say, ‘what in Jesus’ name is going on?’, Haley has escaped the Fire folk and found them. Good times.

This is Haley's giant pet...

...and this is my actual cat, Goldblum. THEY'RE THE SAME THING.

They travel to the Earth kingdom for some reason and are immediately captured by a bunch of Fire dudes. Will these kids ever catch a break? And where is their flying cat?  Well, it doesn’t matter because Haley incites the Earth folk to start a rebellion and kick the crap out of the resident Fire armies using their amazing… dirt powers. Yeah. Daz Ultra hasn’t been invented here yet so they can totally stain their uniforms and the Fire guys can do nothing about it! That’ll show them. The fight is kinda cool, what with fire, air, water and earth powers all looking rather special and clever but it’s so undramatic! I don’t sense any danger. I want to feel danger! Come on, this is like watching a ballet! And not Black Swan - that shit is fucked up – more like, The Nutcracker or something.

[scene missing]

Oh, suddenly the fight is over. I was complaining, but I didn’t mean you had to just end the scene! What the f…

OK, so long story short – Haley is the Avatar, but sadly he was never trained to use anything but air powers, so basically he’s completely useless. Ah, but Guitar has an idea – get someone from each of the Kingdoms to train him up! Genius. Haley insists on learning water first and nobody questions him. Seriously, no one says, ‘er, Haley, we’re in the Earth Kingdom right now. We’re surrounded by Earth Benders. Why don’t you learn Earth first? We’ll only have to come back again.’ Nope. Water it is.

Of course, Haley gets kidnapped by Fire Army dude almost immediately. Luckily for Haley, some freaky Kabuki warrior comes to his rescue and there’s a really aesthetically pleasing sequence where they escape through the Fire army’s defences that reminds me of the original Matrix film. Still no tension or sense of danger, but pleasing nonetheless. They escape and -

[scene missing]

Haley, Guitar and Brother arrive at the Water Kingdom, where they meet the lovely princess, who looks like a penis from the back. Unable to use his

Spot the Penis

characters to move the plot forward, Shyamalan jumps forward in time and has Guitar give a mini voiceover to explain how Haley is training and how Brother and the Princess have fallen in love. No one cares, Shyamalan, unless you show them growing closer. Dumbarse.

Anyway, it’s time for the finale, so let’s set the scene: The Fire Army are invading the Water Kingdom in their steam boats; Slumdog is sneaking into the Kingdom to try and steal Haley before the army reach him; that’s it.

When the attack begins, Princess Penis realises there’s only one thing to do! It’s time to visit the magic pond! What’s the magic pond, you ask? It’s an underground pond with two glowing fish in it. Princess Penis reasons that if Haley meditates really hard they’ll win? Or something? Well, this backfires as Haley meditates so hard that Slumdog nips in and steals him without Haley waking up. Fail.

Meanwhile there is a massive fight going on in the Water Kingdom between the Water dudes and the Fire guys. At least, I’m pretty sure there is – it’s really dark. The problem is, I’ve forgotten what everyone’s fighting for. Sure, the Fire guys are bent on world domination, but do we really care about the Water dudes? And apparently, if Haley dies, he’ll just be reborn so that doesn’t matter. What am I supposed to care about??

Shyamalan gives me the answer: the fish. I’m supposed to care about the glowing fish in the magic pond. I know this because the climax of the film is a tense showdown between the Commander of the Fire Army, the Uncle and the fish (currently in a canvas bag). After a lot of angry shouting in which the Uncle implores him to leave the damn fish alone, the Commander stabs the fish to death causing the moon to turn red and the Benders to get nauseous. I’m not making this up. But even this doesn’t matter because Princess Penis brings the fish back to life by jump-starting it with her own life energy. Sure, she dies but hey – she was a dick.

Everybody wins and the film ends…

But wait – mysterious bonus scene – the Fire King is sending his daughter out to do something dastardly. Dun dun dunnnnnnnn (to be continuuuueeed)

Or at least it would be continued if it hadn’t been so rubbish.

The Last Airbender, then. What was that about? You could tell there was a lot of good stuff in there – rival kingdoms, an evil industrial army, crazy elemental powers, a Jesus-like ultra being and a royal love story. I know it sounds a bit like the contents of the Daily Mail when I put it that way – but you know what I mean. Unfortunately, Shyamalan and co. were unable to mould these pieces of gold into a… a… jewellery metaphor… and instead they produced a very incoherent, hacked together blandfest. There are some huge set pieces and large scale magical battles but despite all the fire, earth and water powers shooting back and forth, no one gets a well-deserved smack in the face. Every hero needs a moment where he gets smacked to the ground and winded so you know he’s up against a deadly and powerful foe. All we got was a bald kid being carried off while he was asleep.

And now I address you, M Night, directly. The Sixth Sense can’t have been a fluke. It was too well made, perfectly subtle, deep and crafted with loving hands. Find the old you. Stop basking in your own smug self importance and try to impress us again. I’ve even got a plot for you, I came up with it just tonight with Hannah - Dawn Porter, Davina McCall and Anna Richardson have erotic adventures with each other’s boyfriends, who can’t tell them apart. Write that. The twist will be that they’ve all got gonorrhoea. 

Comments

1. Jane says:

   September 2, 2011 at 3:20 pm

   Ver’ funny. And very true. Why waa it so bad? Why? WHYYYY?

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