I had just finished the show, Avatar: The Last Airbender when the movie was released. I had heard how abysmally it did in the theatres, netting a pathetic 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Granted, Rotten Tomatoes tends to be a bit harsher, where a good movie will receive a 70%. But to get an 8% is still quite an achievement. So after waiting a couple of months for Last Airbender to make its way to the dollar theatre, I finally saw it. I only had to pay $2.50 for this travesty, and even that was probably too expensive.
So what made The Last Airbender so bad? Well, M. Night was clearly given creative freedom for this production, and he made the most of it. In my previous article, I mentioned how the four nations in the show more or less represent the cultures of Japan, China, Tibet, and…wherever Inuits live. So why is it that a bunch of white kids replaced them for the movie? As it turns out, M. Night didn’t happen to like the white kids’ portrayals of characters. He specifically stated he wanted Caucasian children to be the ones auditioning.
As it turns out, even Zuko was originally supposed to be a white kid, but M. Night liked the Indian kid’s portrayal of him, so he changed the whole of the fire nation from Japanese, I mean Caucasian, to Middle Eastern. Zuko, Azula, Zhao, and Ozai, yes Ozai who’s not even supposed to be anything more than a silhouette in the first book shows up throughout the movie. Moreso, even the architecture of the Fire Nation was replaced with that of something you’re more likely to see in Indian culture, and their hairstyles were more American than anything. On top of that, the other three nations were a mixed salad of races if I’ve ever seen one. The Earth Kingdom was primarily Chinese looking, but there was a random African Tribe amongst them. The Southern Water Tribe was mostly Inuit citizens, with the exceptions of Katara, Sokka, and their grandmother, who were all mysteriously white. The Northern Water Tribe was mostly white, with a few darker skinned individuals thrown into the mix. The air nomads were part Tibetan, part Caucasian, part Indian, with a random black guy as Monk Giatsu. The races of all of the characters were just all wrong.
The sequence of events didn’t make sense either. They skipped over multiple plot lines, like the Kiyoshi warriors (and Suki altogether), Jet and his Freedom Fighters, Bumi and the city of Omashu, the pirates, the fortune teller’s love prediction, the Northern Air Temple, Aang’s first attempts at Earth and Fire bending, among others. I realize they can’t fit it all into at most a three-hour timeslot, but the only thing they even tried to incorporate was the Earth bender’s imprisonment, and that was probably only so they could include Earth bending at all. And even that was screwed up, because the Earth benders were surrounded by earth. They weren’t imprisoned at all!
It’s not even just because my friends and I are Avatar fans. I don’t believe this movie was good from a non-fan standpoint because the story was rushed, the acting was terrible, they were in too many places in too short of time, the dialogue was dramatized, the choreography was ridiculous, and the movie as a whole was just a mess. It felt as if he took his six favorite episodes, cut them into pieces, put them in a jar, shook them all up, mixed with wet plot devices and poured them out onto the editing table only to have them randomly taped together and put on the show floor as is.
The ending was different, the names weren’t pronounced correctly, the plot was out of sequence, Yue dies differently, Zuko’s scar is hardly visible, Pakku willingly teaches Katara, Sokka’s not comic relief, Aang isn’t light-hearted and childish, Aang is WAY too dramatic, the Avatar state is done at random times instead of during emotional turmoil, the giant blue monster never occurs at the end, the spirit world is always the same place, Roku’s dragon speaks to Aang instead of Roku himself, Katara’s grandmother willingly tells Katara to follow Aang, Zuko’s past is relayed via some random kid, bending requires a whole dance routine just to lift a rock, fire benders can only bend with already-existing fire, Iroh has dreadlocks, the water scroll is practically happened upon, Yue’s fiancé is nowhere to be found, Zhao instantly knows without proof who the Blue Spirit is, Aang’s capture is completely different, the list goes on and on and on.
Seeing this movie makes me wonder if M. Night even watched this show at all in the first place, considering Katara’s not a high-strung ninny, Sokka’s not the clumsy comic relief, Aang’s not a childish ball of sunshine, and Zuko’s not a vengeful douchebag. Not to mention that Aang became Ahng, Sokka was Soak-ah, Iroh was Eeroh, and Agni Kai became Agni Kee, and not one character actually looks like they’re supposed to. Ultimately the movie was a box office failure, and it’s hard to believe that Paramount is more than happy to have M. Night finish the next two. I don’t see how anyone can even look forward to an Airbender 2 and 3, even if M. Night somehow improves them because the first will still be horrendous. Like any good book, there’s just too much to the series to manage a perfect movie, but I think it’s possible to come close if it was at least two and a half hours long instead of a measly 90 minutes, had proper cultural casting, and M. Night was nowhere near the production of it.
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