M Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender is a failure that sometimes offers glimpses of what it could have been. For fans of the popular cartoon series upon which this is based, it is sure to be a frustrating experience. There are the buried hints of potential in the picture’s presentation of an Eastern-influenced fantasy landscape, but what ends up on screen is little more than a flurry of images, half-baked genre tropes, and stilted, embarrassing dialogue.

 I enjoyed the overall aesthetic of Airbender, but was consistently distracted by the amateurish directing and film tech credits. Shyamalan, who once compared himself to Hitchcock and Spielberg, has recently proven that his very specific bag of cinematic tricks has finally come up empty; he botches what could have been a compelling new franchise.

An opening scroll informs us that the elements of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth have manifested themselves as nations of people, survivors of a world torn apart by war. Whether this is a post-apocalyptic landscape or a separate universe altogether is never made entirely clear. All that is known is that the Fire Nation, fearing a prophecy that predicted a God figure known as the Avatar would rise from the line of airbenders, sent their weapons against the Air Nation. At the start of this film, the Airbenders have been destroyed and scattered to the wind, and the Water and Earth Nations are under the tyranny of the militaristic Firebenders, who command monolithic sailing vessels that look like Nemo’s Nautilus on steroids. The world is in despair and ruin, and then the last, lost member of the Airbenders resurfaces in the frozen tundra of the Water Nation.

If the film’s set-up sounds silly, that’s because ostensibly it is. However, in the hands of a gifted set of animators and writers, Avatar: The Last Airbender told a good and nuanced story on the small screen.  It had an eye for small details and made it’s protagonist, Aang, a likable but conflicted hero.

 In Shyamalan’s hands the nuance disappears in favor of dialogue that feels completely improvised and a broad, messy adventure that uses the effects well enough but can’t muster much passion about the sights it wants to show us. Also, for a film that wants to be a franchise, Airbender is terribly choppy and truncated. It’s as if the editors kept taking away pieces until they had ensured they had enough left over for a sequel.

 Using a narrator to fill in the bits we need explained, Shyamalan tries to give us the cliff notes version of the story, but with his own laconic pace added in. Events happen in an order that occasionally defies logic, and the narrative progression is that of a tale told by a child. You know the kind, the ones that use ‘and then’ as a transition. In a particularly bewildering example, the love affair between two central characters is summed up in a few lines, and we the audience, are left to infer the rest. There is a late-in-the game sacrifice that has zero impact because the film has failed to properly introduce that character or their impact on the rest of the story.

It’s hard to decipher Shyamalan’s stylistic devices enough to comment accurately on the acting. Noah Ringer is Aang, the titular airbender who shows up frozen in the ice with his giant flying pet buffalo, Appa. Aang is essentially just a child, and Ringer has an expressive face that works well for suggesting world weariness and innocent trepidation. Unfortunately Shyamalan requires him to speak some of the most unutterable garbage this side of a George Lucas movie, and the young Ringer often looks like a deer caught in the headlights in these scenes. During the action bits he can convince as a diminutive but fearsome warrior, but in close-ups he comes off like a lost child shouting at the screen.

Twilight’s Jackson Rathbone is completely wasted as Sokka, and the same goes for Nicola Peltz as his sister Katara. They stand around at the edges of almost every scene, but outside of finding Aang and deciding too try and protect him, their roles are mostly filler. The romance between Rathbone and a Waterbender is not convincing in the least. Cliff Curtis, Shaun Toub, and the Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi are all miscast as the villainous members of the Fire Nation. Dev Patel is Prince Zuko, and he begins to suggest a layered character in the banished aristocrat but ultimately it’s just too much for him to pull off. Most of this is because the film is afraid to let him progress beyond the confines of the first installment, so that there’s something left over for next time.

Between you and me, I don’t think there will be a next time. Visually, Airbender can be kind of fun and goofy, with the frames arranged like a comic book or video game, and there are a few set pieces like the climactic battle of the elements that includes a tidal wave that would make Roland Emmerich envious. There are a few interesting creatures, some impressive steampunk machines, and some genuinely awesome fantasy backdrops.

However, none of these pieces make a cohesive whole, and what’s worse is that Shyamalan doesn’t even seem to be interested in making the picture complete. Widely know for building twists into his films, M Night delivers one of his most insidious yet by merely refusing to end the movie. Tricking all of us into thinking we were watching a self-contained story, he yanks out the rung and shows us that Airbender is not the last at all, but only the tip of a cinematic iceberg that will likely never be revealed once the movie going audience lays eyes on this one.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

Good Morning to all of you fine folks seeking free passes to movies in Baltimore! We have passes to the upcoming M. Night Shyamalan film, The Last Airbender. The trailer, which can be found below, has blown away many folks who doubted this film. I for one am excited to see it.

We are hosting a screening for you all at a local Baltimore area theater on June 29th, which is right around the corner.

Read and watch below to learn more about this action packed upcoming film.

Synopsis:

Air, Water, Earth, Fire.  Four nations tied by destiny when the Fire Nation launches a brutal war against the others. A century has passed with no hope in sight to change the path of this destruction. Caught between combat and courage, Aang (Noah Ringer) discovers he is the lone Avatar with the power to manipulate all four elements. Aang teams with Katara (Nicola Peltz), a Waterbender, and her brother, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone), to restore balance to their war-torn world.  Based on the hugely successful Nickelodeon animated TV series, the live-action feature film “The Last Airbender” is the opening chapter in Aang’s struggle to survive.

Check out the film’s trailer at http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thelastairbender/

Trailer:

THE LAST AIRBENDER opens in theaters nationwide Friday, July 2^nd!

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Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s adaptation of the popular action cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender is set to hit theaters hard in July (minus the Avatar part, so as not to cause confusion with a certain billion-dollar blockbuster) but Shyamalan himself is already settling in for the long haul. He says that this summer’s Airbender is actually the first installment of a planned trilogy that he expects to continue himself.

Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender will reportedly be based just on the first season of the cartoon series, with the next two parts following the show’s second and third seasons through to the conclusion of the story.

In an interview with UGO, M. Night discusses his approach to the proposed trilogy, likening the series to Lord of the Rings, in that the three movies will comprise a single, arcing plotline rather than establishing separate adventures for the characters.

He also says that he hopes to write and direct the next two parts of the series himself, and producer Frank Marshall told Starlog that the script for the second picture has already been written.

Unlike Peter Jackson’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS, this trio of films won’t lense back-to-back-to-back. “We’re shooting them one at a time, because they’re being written one at a time,” says veteran producer (and STARLOG favorite) Frank Marshall. “Night is now working on the script for the second movie, but he hasn’t had time to write the second or third ones. He’s looking at the arc of all three. One of the things we’ll be doing is using the sets, ships and elements for each different nation in this film and incorporating them into movies two and three. We’re not waiting. There just isn’t enough time. Night will finish this movie, then the script and then we’ll prepare for thme next one. I think it’ll probably happen over six years.”

This is great news, both for fans of the Airbender series and for Shyamalan’s fans, but we have heard him say this before. Remember the planned Unbreakable trilogy? No? Well, he apparently does, because there have been reports recently that he and Bruce Willis have actually spoken about reigniting those old fires. I, for one, greatly hope that we get some more Unbreakable films, but that doesn’t look likely until this Last Airbender business is taken care of.

What do all of you think about a Last Airbender trilogy? Who is excited for this summer’s first film? Who else is left that even cares about Shyamalan’s work? We want answers!

M. Night Shyamalan’s Avatar The Last Airbender

Dev Patel looks to turn his fans on their heads as he goes from hero of Slumdog Millionaire to villian in this adaptation of Nickelodeon’s popular series. Starring opposite Patel and in the title roll is newcomer Noah Ringer. The Last Airbender will be in theaters July 2, 2010. Airbender could mark a turnaround for Shyamalan’s career which has spiraled down the toilet with such busts as The Happening, Lady in the Water and The Village. This is also the first adaptation of Shyamalan’s short career.

Enjoy the trailer below:

Are you a fan of Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series? what do you think of this live action big screen adapation? do you trust Shyamalan’s direction? Let us know what you think!

When it was all said and done the New Orleans Saints were Super Bowl Champs and Hollywood had a bunch o’ movies that wanted to advertise during the big game. We already talked about Alice in Wonderland and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; joining those two were M. Night Shyamalan’s Avatar The Last Airbender

Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island starring Leonardo DiCaprio (looks like he’s gone back to The Aviator color scheme)

Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman remake starring Benicio Del Toro

and Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood remake starring Russell Crowe (reuniting the duo for the umpeenth time- Body of Lies, American Gangster, A Good Year, Gladiator)

What do you think of the ads? How did the movie ads compare to the beer, bank and chip commercials?

Chris Messina, recently seen in Away We Go and Julie & Julia, has been signed to star in Devil, based on a story by M. Night Shyamalan (cue warning bells) and directed by Quarantine co-helmers John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle.

I’m endlessly surprised by how quickly a film can go into production after a casting decision is made: filming for Devil will start ten days from now, in Toronto, Canada. The film is a product of Shyamalan and Media Rights Capital’s “Night Chronicles,” which will produce one horror-suspense genre film a year. I don’t know if this means they’ll all be from the mind of Shyamalan, but I doubt it.

Brian Nelson, the writer of 30 Days of Night, wrote the script, which is being kept under tight wraps — likely because there’s some sort of twist involved!

We’ll see if Shyamalan’s production deal pans out for him — the man has a lot riding on this and his upcoming The Last Airbender to salvage a career that was rocked by Lady in the Water and The Happening. I still have my fingers crossed for him though — his first few films were stunning pieces of storytelling

Gracing its way onto all of our computer monitors, the guys at SuperHero Hype! have blossomed out with the first teaser trailer for the latest M. Night Shyamalan movie, The Last Airbender. Originally based off of a Nickelodeon animated show of the same name, this feature follows the adventures of Aang (Noah Ringer), a ten year old successor to a long line of Avatars, who must put his childhood ways aside and stop the Fire Nation from enslaving the Water, Earth and Air nations. Also starring in the film is Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire), Cliff Curtis (Live Free or Die Hard) and Jackson Rathbone (Twilight) to name a few.

Jumping out on screen July 2, 2010, Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies throw us this teaser. Click below to get a peek of what Shyamalan has in store for us: Check out the little guy below:

M. Night Shyamalan, you and I haven’t gotten along since Signs. With The Happening, I finally took you off my buddy list and I told you not try to IM me anymore. We were finished.

Or so I thought.

USA Today released the first two pictures from his upcoming adaptation of the animated show, Avatar: The Last Airbender, marking the first entry in the planned trilogy. (Not to be confused with James Cameron’s Avatar, due out December 18th.)

In the pictures we see Aang (Noah Ringer) and his nemesis Prince Zuko (Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire).

Avatar: The Last Airbender is set in an alternate world in which the “nations” are divided along the lines of elements: the Water Nation, the Earth Nation, the Fire Nation, and the Air Nation. The titular Avatar was supreme master of the four elements and was predestined to protect the rest of his world against the evil Fire Nation. Abruptly disappearing from view, the Avatar resurfaced in the form of 12-year-old Aang, the last of the Airbender tribe. Discovered frozen in ice near the South Pole by two young members of the Water tribe, Katara and Sokka, the irresponsible Aang had to summon up enough strength — and self-esteem — to do battle against the villainous Firebenders.

Shyamalan’s Avatar: The Last Airbender opens everywhere on July 2, 2010.