So before I saw this movie, I was joking around with a buddy of mine about it's low rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This movie is currently rocking a 9% on RT, even lower than Dragonball, which sat at a ~20% at opening, now dwindling at around 13%.
My initial complaint with the movie was the cast. Why litter the cast with white actors? This wouldn't be a problem in any other situation, where the subject material has an asian character that's portrayed by a white/black/whatever actor in any given movie. The reason I have a problem with this is because the entire Avatar universe is set in a highly Asian-style culture. Even the movie set was created with Asian influences. But I'm seeing a bunch of white kids running around pretending to be Asian, and it's completely destroying the suspension of disbelief.
The second problem I had was the completely arbitrary name changes. For some reason, he (being M. Night Shaymalan) just changed the pronunciations of a bunch of characters, if not completely changed the names entirely. Aang, pronounced "ong," Sokka, pronounced "Sokko," Zukko being so fucked up that I can't even remember, Iroh, pronounced "Eee-roh." Like, why? It's not like this movie was being made for anything other than fan service(***). So why change what the fans know?
The acting was wooden, the CG was very meh, the fight scenes were mediocre, all the characters' personalities were changed, so all of a sudden, everything that made Aang likable (being playful and happy) was gone, making him a super-serious emo all the time.
Aasif Mandvi was cast as the central villain, General Zhao.
For those of you who don't recognize the name, allow me to clarify. The Indian correspondent from the Daily Show with Jon Stewart was the central villain. Ask me if I really took that seriously. It was like watching Mission Impossible 3 right after watching Along Came Polly. Those of you who have seen both of these movies know EXACTLY what I'm talking about.
Just stay away from it. If you're not a fan of the show, you're going to hate it. If you ARE a fan of the show, you're going to hate it. Just... don't see this movie.
(***): You know, I don't think any kind of effort went into this movie. I think the guys who made this movie put as much effort into the movie that was put into movies like "Marmaduke" and "Furry Vengeance." They thought, "Oh, The Last Airbender is just some kids' show on Nickelodeon," so they figured they could just do whatever the fuck they wanted and release a piece of shit under the radar, right under Toy Story 3 and Eclipse so that no one would even notice. The producers made a buck, the studios made a buck, M. Night Shaymalan made a buck, and fans of the show got absolutely shafted. Another day at the office for Hollywood.
