I saw "The Last Airbender" today...

[Darth Mawr]

and found it to be entertaining. I normally stay away from 3D but since my 14 year old son was so excited about this movie that he spent his, let me repeat, HIS $30 to help pay for the family to see this movie and he wanted to see it in 3D so I relented. I was pleasantly surprised by the 3D as it was believable and not a strain on my eyes or brain. We saw this in a digitally projected theater and I don't know if this makes a difference with the 3D. They didn't use a bunch of gimmicks with objects being thrown at you and such. The visuals are stunning and the CGI well executed in my opinion. I was very pleased with their rendering of fire only to come home and find an article online about ILM's work on creating "real" looking fire. I think they pulled it off.

The storyline is a bit hectic and had I not seen a few episodes of the animated series I would have been lost but for the most part you can walk in with no knowledge of the original series and still enjoy the movie. My son's critique of the movie is favorable except for some characters that were left out of the movie that were important to the story in his opinion.

All in all I'd give it a B+, my son gives it an A-. :thumbsup

 

[themanwoaname]

the only thing i have to add to this conversation is i am very glad Seychelle Gabriel is 19. ive had an enormous crush on her since seeing her in the spirit.

 

[OldKen]

the only thing i have to add to this conversation is i am very glad Seychelle Gabriel is 19. ive had an enormous crush on her since seeing her in the spirit.

So you are... "the man with no name" correct?

Why don't you take a seat?

My name... is Chris Hanson.

:lol






Seriously though, cool to hear a good review on this! The trailers made it seem like a gritty translation of the toon. I'm glad to know that it wasn't all "transformered" out...

...

If you take my meaning...

 

[CTF]

It must be gold... after all, it does have 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Read Ebert's review.

 

[blownhemi]

It must be gold... after all, it does have 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Read Ebert's review.

I like io9's review.

M. Night Shyamalan Finally Made A Comedy

 

[themanwoaname]

So you are... "the man with no name" correct?

Why don't you take a seat?

My name... is Chris Hanson.

she told me she was 19! i just had that other stuff in the car because i was going to stop by and say hello to her on the way to my older adult and legal girlfriend thats older adult and legal! OH GHHUOD. AHUAHHU. am i going to go to jail?

 

[jlee562]

Ebert hated it, as did the local SF Chronicle Critic....I KNEW Shyamalan was gonna kill this flick. Really disappointed too, I liked the cartoon.

 

[OldKen]

Ebert hated it, as did the local SF Chronicle Critic....I KNEW Shyamalan was gonna kill this flick. Really disappointed to, I liked the cartoon.

Well... I guess it did get all transformered out then!

 

[jackdoud]

Local newspaper critique hated it too but obviously had no prior exposure to the story and was expecting something completely different. From the interviews I've heard it sounds like Night went a long way to making it true to the cartoon, I just hope having his name attached to it doesn't kill the chances of getting parts 2 and 3 made.

 

[Treadwell]

Gotcher back, themanwoaname. The only time that movie (The Spirit) was alive was when Seychelle Gabriel was on screen. Very captivating performance, and, yes, she is lovely, and was perfect casting as a young Eva Mendes.

 

[ItsThatGuy]

Local newspaper critique hated it too but obviously had no prior exposure to the story and was expecting something completely different. From the interviews I've heard it sounds like Night went a long way to making it true to the cartoon, I just hope having his name attached to it doesn't kill the chances of getting parts 2 and 3 made.

Watch this review. Most of the people asked what they thought were fans of the cartoon:
YouTube - The Last Airbender Movie Review: Beyond The Trailer

This was the worst rating I have ever seen that was given during her reviews.

 

[cboath]

Our paper reviewed it this morning, too. 1/4 stars. Called it unbelievably boring. With critics seemingly all hating it, makes me think I might see it after all...

 

[wuher da brewer]

I thought the story was completely unengaging. Which really made me hate the music as it made the sentiment feel rather forced. The exposition is utterly terrible. A lot of the acting is weak. I will agree that Seychelle Gabriel was refreshing to see onscreen and her small love element of the story was handled far more convincingly than Anakin and Padme's love interest. Though her departure from the story left much to be desired. Admittedly, I found the mythology extremely stupid. Though I don't know why I should care about the mopey dalai llama in the first place. All that exposition and they never said what flying buffalo-faced, insect-legged, beaver tale the-size-of-a-bus was about.

 

[Sigma-LS]

If you've seen the show...remember the guy that was supposed to marry the Princess, the one that was abrasive as hell and mispronounced everybody's names? Soakah anybody?

Now imagine the cast of the cartoon told their story to him. Then he made a movie. That's like this turned out.

You can see exactly where the scenes were supposed to come from but then they rewrite some of the best lines in the entire series as junior high tripe just so it's not the same as the source. If I saw it in another show but made from a book I would say it was dumbed down for the target audience. But this was from a kid's cartoon!

I wonder how this is going to affect the new series/miniseries coming out?

EDIT: Also TMI for an hour and a half flick. Maybe they could have made things a little less jumbled with two or two and a half hours.

 

[tain669]

I really haven't seen it but I tend not to listen to the 'critics" all that much

 

[seven]

My wife and I are huge fans of the cartoon and, personally I really like M. Knight as a director, so I had really strong hopes for this movie.

What I loved about the movie was how well the production team brought the world of the Last Airbender to life. I thought the CG was great (for most of the shots), the costumes were awesome, even most of the sets were really well done.

What I didn't like about the movie (and my wife agrees) is that there was no character development. I never once cared for the characters so I don't really care what happens to them. It really makes it hard to get into the movie when you don't care.

I hated the script. They over explained things that didn't need to be, and they didn't explain what really needed to be explained to keep from feeling lost. Then there was such long periods of time were our main characters didn't say anything at all, other than "let's go!" or "Awng!" or some other filler dialoge to get the story from one scene to another.

I also couldn't stand the acting from ANY of the characters (well, Maybe Iroh was the exception). Apart from having horrible lines, it felt like I was watching a skit for 1st graders being preformed by their parents.

It also lacked a really good music score. The music in the film really helps the audience get into the emotion of the scene, and there really wasn't any.

The fight scenes were pretty bad as it was obvious the extras didn't know what they were doing and the main characters were taking too much care not to hurt or hit the opponent. If you watch the Blue Spirit in the background while Aang is pretending to fight (but not really doing anything), you can tell he really doesn't know what he is doing.

The editing was all over the place. Editing is to help move the story along in a gentle and unnoticeable flow. This editing was choppy and felt like it just cut out key parts that could haved helped the audience know what was going on.

What I love so much about the cartoon is the amount of 'heart' that it has, and that it has such strong characters. Their is so much emotion in it that I was sure M.Knight would protray this as he has done so well in is other films. Unfortunately, all this was lacking in the film. It's almost like Knight didn't take the job seriously and quickly just slapped something together.

If I had never seen the cartoon, I would have hated this movie and felt completely lost in the plot.

What the movie needed was to be 2.5 hours long to cover as much material as they needed to cover. They needed to spend the first 10 to 30 mins of the film getting to know our characters and either liking them or hating them and setting up the storyline. It needed stronger acting from all the characters to make them more believable and not forcing lines. It needed a stronger script. The fire nation needed to be a more intimidating force. The extras needed to be good actors too. Augh. I could go on...

I am no longer anticipating the second and third film unfortunately.

 

[Birdie]

I really haven't seen it but I tend not to listen to the 'critics" all that much

There's not trusting critics, then there's 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. Anyone who goes to see this knowing that, deserves what they get.

 

[darth_myeek]

Why do I hear Beavis and Butthead say...

"Airbender, huh huh, he said um Airbender."

 

[propologist]

if there's no farting at all in the movie I will be disappointed. I may have to wait to download it for a few weeks..

 

[Deric]

My son and I saw it today and the one thing that bugged us is that they pronounced the names differently than the cartoon. I understand they probably pronounced them the proper way but considering it is based on the cartoon it bothered the crap out of my son and I.

The other thing that bugged me was Sokka looked like this guy from Fifth Element