[Trailer] Last Airbender: what's the appeal?

[CrimsonReaver]

Come on EN Worlders... There must be more of you that went to see it anyways, right? So what did you think?

The reviews (and fan reactions: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHi1zaN0ooc]YouTube - FANS UNLEASH EPIC HATE FOR THE LAST AIRBENDER[/ame]) were vitriolic enough to convince me not to waste my time on something an AICN reviewer called "a hate crime against people who love movies."

Should I see it for myself rather than pass judgment based on the opinions of others? Ideally, yes. But I absolutely refuse to give my money over, purely to satisfy my morbid curiosity, and have that interpreted as support for crap cinema.

 

[frankthedm]

While pehaps the critics are being a little too harsh, It was not good. There is a chance to enjoy some aspects of the movie, notably the scenery, but I would not recommend it unless one has money and time to waste along with a masochistic taste in movies.

Vodka might help too.

 

[IronWolf]

Yeesh! Still doesn't look good. Guess we'll be skipping this one in the theatres. Thanks for the video link and feedback.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Lol, did anyone ever see this picture before? Found it in the comments to a related article about the series on the website PCat's review link came from.

(Had to redact out a grandma unfriendly part in the reply included with it).

 

[Krug]

US$57 million as of Sunday. So box office wise, despite the massacre it received on reviews, it's still doing ok commercially.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=lastairbender.htm

 

[Dire Bare]

I saw it last night. It wasn't good.

You pretty much summed up my experience with the movie today. I did enjoy it, I don't think it's torture to watch . . . but it wasn't a good movie. Visuals were fantastic, but storytelling was muddled and the acting was terrible. I don't blame the actors, as many of them have proven themselves in other films, it's all in the directing. I also thought the whole "race" controversy was BS, and I think the casting was spot on. It's a shame the actors were directed in such a muted fashion.

 

[CrimsonReaver]

US$57 million as of Sunday. So box office wise, despite the massacre it received on reviews, it's still doing ok commercially.

The Last Airbender (2010) - Box Office Mojo

I never had any doubt it would still have a huge opening weekend. If anything, the reviews likely only got even more people to check it out to see if it was truly as horrid as critics said. The real question is what it will pull for this next weekend. If it goes from $57 million down to, say, $8 million...

One thing seems certain: if the movie should (somehow) make enough money that Paramount greenlights the next film, M. Night Shyamalan won't be back to write and direct. Because, despite making money, I think Shyamalan's name attached to the franchise would just be poison moving forward.

 

[Jdvn1]

I agree with everyone else: it was amazingly terrible. I'm not sure if I've ever seen a movie that bad.

My recommendation: don't see it. Really.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Perhaps we should pitch a show to Bravo...the flipside to Project Greenlight.

Project Redlight:
Take directors who have proven themselves to be devoid of vision in their latest efforts- assuming they had it in the first place- and make them earn their way back to the top. All participants are to be blackballed from making any movie with a budget over $20M (or 10% of their latest flop, whichever is greater) until they pass this show's test.

The test itself is simple: take a movie that is generally regarded as a dog and remake it into at least a "C" movie. I'm talking anything that has or could have been lampooned on MST3K. I'm talking bad ratings at Rotten Tomatoes.

If, after making a megaflop, you can take...saaaaayyyy...Manos, Hands of Fate...and make it watchable by the mainstream, you get to return to Hollywood's directorial "A-list."

 

[Deset Gled]

The dialogue is awful. It exists only to relate exposition, and often without any context.

The plot is a haphazard mess.

The editing is incomprehensible.

The acting is wooden

This pretty much sums up my opinion. I found it kind of sad, actually.

Worst exposition/dialogue moment: during a voice over, Katara refers to Aang by name before Aang has introduced himself on screen (but after he had been discovered by Katara and Sokka, captured by the fire nation once, and been saved by K and S). How the movie failed so badly to properly introduce the main character is simply beyond me.

Worst editing moment: during a fight scene, Aang is inside a ring using airbending an large wooden panels to hold off hoards of enemies and take them on one at a time. This cuts directly to a scene of Aang running across the tops of some vertical logs, with no transition to explain how or why he got out of the ring or moved through the mounds of mooks. Maybe there will be deleted scenes on the DVD to show this, but I won't be seeing them.

I will note that I thought Aasif Mandvi did a decent job in his role.