When I first heard of Shyamalan taking on this project I admit my first thoughts were that there would be too many special effects for a director of his ilk. Well my first thought was bore out as it is clear from the first frame of this film that he couldn’t handle the special effects. Even the 3D is added after the fact to top this 2D movie.
The 3D is so badly added to the film that all it appears to do is darken an already darkly lit movie. Even if you’re a 3D fan I don’t see how you could like this afterthought 3D. The second mistake, if you can count them this way, is the changing of this animated idea into a live action movie. I think this is a huge mistake.The animation of the Nickelodeon TV series drew on the bright colors and “clear line” style of such masters as Miyazaki, and was a pleasure to observe. It’s in the very nature of animation to make absurd visual sights more plausible. Since “Airbender” involves the human manipulation of the forces of air, earth, water and fire, there is hardly an event that can be rendered plausibly in live action. That said, its special effects are atrocious. The first time the waterbender Katara summons a globe of water, which then splashes (offscreen) on her brother Sokka, he doesn’t even get wet. Firebenders’ flames don’t seem to really burn, and so on.
As “The Last Airbender” bores and alienates its audiences, consider the opportunities missed here. (1) This material should have become an A-list animated film. (2) It was a blunder jumping aboard the 3D bandwagon with phony 3D retro-fitted to a 2D film. (3) If it had to be live action, better special effects artists should have been found. It’s not as if films like “2012” and “Knowing” didn’t contain “real life” illusions as spectacular as anything called for in “The Last Airbender.”
This stinks.
