What have done Mr. Shyamalan. Review on The Last Airbender

Never I give a ear to bad reviews and word of mouth, but I agree here, the movie is bad.

I must mention that I have just seen a few episodes of the series but I liked it so I did read some Wikipedia wisdom for it. May be which is why I never felt bad about the casting too much.

Lets us make a list of things I like about the film-

**plot**, to begin with has tremendous potential.

**Visual Effects**, stunning well proportioned and realistic(i found james cameron's avatar effects cartoonish or artificial- oh yes call the firing squad and shoot me now...!!!)

**the action sequences** are great, kid Noah Ringer doesn't look out of proportion during the action sequences.

**choreography**- during the elemental bending, one point I noticed that while fire benders shaped their hands like karate chopps, earth benders made claws, Avatar simply had open arms effortlessly and water benders held them like flippers.

**Dev Patel**, the only one amongst almost the entire cast that has appropriate expressions and is actually likeable, also the way he throw punches and kicks, thats our "best" karate kid.

**Noah Ringer**- well he may not be "racially" appropriate but his hard work shows, and most ppl complain that he has a stern outlook than the playful Ang from the tv show. Imagine you wake up expecting it has just been a few days and the first few things you see are, an attack on the water tribe village by Fire Nation and getting surrendering to avoid the the genocide of the entire, Captive Earth Kingdom people and your entire clan being exterminated. Now who would wanna be "cheerful and playful" in times like that.

**all four tribes have been "attempted" to look different races**, Water people as white Caucasians(they live near the north and south poles), earth people as chinese(mongol or sino whichever is suitable here) with traits like farmers, and the Fire Nation people, tanned Indian from all the heat they receive while playing with fire constantly. although I could not make out what race were the Air nomads cuz the monk looked black or slightly latino, all Ang's classmates were white.

Now the bad points, a few examples.

**Dialogues**- The scene where Ang is "lured" by the priest in the Northern Air temple-"you seem a fine young man..............by his tone I was begining to feel he was going to say "come to daddy Let me teach you how to BEND-over" and this is just one of the many awkward and in-appropriate dialogues. and you don ask in the *OLD WORLD* - "are you ***OKAY***?" what next, Katara practicing water bending while listening to her ipod. Even Uncle Iroh sounds funny at times, looking confused and not able to relate his words with his expressions

**Screenplay**- The leader of the northern water tribe looked so confident about their citadel and army yet the Fire Nation Army could easily break in, still he looked entirely confident and calmly walked around. He even instructs his soldiers to shut off all the fires in the city to minimize the "elemetal source" for fire nation, yet I could very well see every lantern in the city burning even before the fire army broke in. The Fire nation ships could be easily seen from the horizon yet they could not evacuate the city, while the city was shown with ocean at one end and a mountain at the other side, so simply moving the "women and children" up to make them safe, no additional brain bending required.

**The Water tribe princess**, why do you have to pop out your eyes constantly, we have enough eyeball popping girls on the disney channel already so go away and take your clueless boyfriend Rokka(Rathbone) with you.

**Mr Mandvi(commander Zhao), ** the simplest way to look evil, cunning and menacing is to stare and avoid shaking your head to much while talking, even **SKELETOR** of he man looked evil without any flesh on his face just by using this trick.

The mammoth "appa" just makes cameo apearences, and during battles I see soldiers just dancing around(choreography is excellent) and not hacking anyone, even with their spears and swords.

Overall- the tone of the film confuses me, was it:-

a) **A Dark tone** like "Narnia:Prince Caspian" = the fire prince threatening to set the entire water tribe village on fire forcing "avatar" to surrender, Avatar seeing a field of skeletons of his Air Nomads

b) **A Costume drama**, focussing on characters over the epic like "TROY" & History Channel films like "The Tudors"- The entire plot of the Fire Prince is really very convincing and Dev Patel has managed to show his prowess despite all the limitations.

c) **A sweet Fairy tale**, like Never ending story, and several other disney films= In the battle at the end I could not see a single soldier of either sides lying dead, nor any bloodshed. At times it felt like a theatre play. The only person to bleed several times in the entire film was Dev Patel.

d) **An Extravagant epic**, focussing on the plot over characters, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy- All those visual effects were stunning, yet what is the point in spending so much money on christmas decorations when you forgot to water the tree.

The entire film crumbles under its own weight.

I do not agree with people who say that it is difficult to squeeze and entire tv series into a 90 minutes film, but the film opens up saying it is chapter one, it is supposed to have at least three more sequels so it would have been possible.

The first thing I am going to do now is to watch the series.

one more thingMr. Shyamalan has quite a fan following in India(sixth sense). Even I have a soft corner for his films. I was surprised that this film was not much publicized in India(didn't see any publicity in the papers or the multiplexes).Cheezy dialogues can be fixed with some sensible dubbing(english to hindi dub movies often end being much more likable- "Over the Hedge", "Flushed Away", "V for Vendetta" being a few examples).