It has become fashionable as of late to rag on M. Night Shyamalan as a director, but people fail to see the real issue. M. Night Shyamalan is not a bad director but an awful screenwriting. Also, he doesn’t know how to direct actors, so maybe he isn’t all that good. In any case he’s remained a visually sophisticated and compelling director but he needs to quit writing his own screenplays and get an assistant director who can work with actors. As long as he has this auteur complex, he’s going to keep making films with cool ideas but little else.
For his latest outing, he takes a cool idea that isn’t even his. Adapted from the Nickelodeon show of the same name (minus the Avatar thanks to the Jimmy Cameron), The Last Airbender introduces the fantasy world of four nations built around the elements of earth, water, fire and air. The fire nation has waged war on the rest, killed off the airbenders, enslaved the earthbenders and is now focusing on the water benders. Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) leads the last northern water tribe even though he’s no more than a teen and his sister, Katara (Nicola Peltz), is the last northern waterbender. While hunting, the two discover Aang (Noah Ringer), the last airbender, in a giant air pocket under the ice.
Their discovery of Aang demonstrates practically everything that is wrong with this film. Sokka thinks he sees something in the ice so he breaks it, not something particularly smart to do to begin with, then the two go running as this rupture of ice emerges, their surprise is emoted in the worst possible way. Sure, they should look dumfounded but they shouldn’t be looking like their trying to look dumbfounded. The actors are too self-aware of the fact they are acting.
And the dialogue here is cringe worthy, mostly because characters say things as they are doing or watching them. Sokka says, I’m gonna break the ice, then he says here I go, breaking the ice. He freaks out and says, watch out, the ice is breaking! And then he expresses his shock. Well what did you think was going to happen? When you smash things into ice, most times it ends up cracking and shattering. You live in the freaking water nation and you don’t understand how ice works?
It also doesn’t help that the acting is cringe-worthy. Nicola Peltz is supposed to be the heart of this film (at least I think) and she never is able to convey any kind of emotion or feeling. Noah Ringer is consistently unconvincing, like a kid in a bad school play. I’m sure his parents are proud, but his performance made me look back fondly on Jake Llyod in The Phantom Menace. Dev Patel as a banished fire prince named Zuko hunting for the airbender is good in some scenes but he’s also hammy in other scenes.
And what makes it worse is that the characters that carry the film aren’t even developed as characters. They have absolutely no personality or nuance at all. There’s nothing that makes Katara different from Sokka or Aang different from Katara. The only people who have personalities are the villains. Their characters are far more interesting to watch, especially Zuko who, despite the bad writing, is actually a fascinating and conflicted character.
When your antagonist is more conflicted and compelling than your protagonist, you’ve got a problem. The film wants to emotionally invest you in this conflict Aang has, but it cannot because Aang is never established as a character and cannot in any way be empathized with because of Noah Ringer’s awful acting. The conflict isn’t a new one, but from the perspective of a child, it could carry so much weight and emotional impact, something the film does a horrible job at conveying.
What saves this film from being worst film of all time material is that there are actually a lot of scenes where the characters shut up and fight. I’m not a huge fan of CGI, it does about as much for me as a peanut does for the hunger an starving man, but I’ve got to say that the visual sequences in this film are astounding. The effects not only look real but also feel like they have a weight to them.
This leads to some visually spectacular fights with tons of crazy action set-pieces. It’s in these moments that Shyamalan as a visual director prevails, crafting some of the best action sequences of the year. The mixture of martial arts, elemental battles and cinematic scale is astounding and if you’re going to see this movie, go check it out on the big screen (but at a matinée) because the action doesn’t disappoint. I haven’t seen action scenes this cool and awe inspiring since Return of the King.
It’s a shame that his all has to be hung around such a poorly written film. Even worse is that if you go back and check out just the first couple episodes of the show, you’ll find writing, characters and plotting that make a lot more sense and are a lot more interesting than Shyamalan’s adaptations. It feels that he tried to shove so much of the first season of the show into two hours that he reduced everything to its simplest elements and in the process sucked the charm and wit out of it.
However, even then Shyamalan couldn’t destroy the intrigue of the show. There were still glimpses of it, moments that seemed so compelling and hints at characters and narrative threads that would have been fascinating to see unfold. It points back to the show, a show that this viewer will be checking out because there’s something here, something undeniably compelling, that Shyamalan somehow manages to capture despite how much everything else seems to elude him. It still doesn’t make it a good film, but it makes it an intriguing failure.
© 2010 James Blake Ewing
8 Comments
Oh dear. It’s a shame a man with such talent has fallen into the giant chasm that is his own arse. I do think that’s his problem – he believes his own hype and has let the success get to him.
I loved Unbreakable. Sixth Sense was good, Signs was good, Lady In The Water was okay. But The Village was terrible and The Happening (even though it seemed impossible) was worse.
I do actually think he’s a decent writer but it’s his directing that lets him down. But both elements are defeating each other as he has total control over his projects now thanks to his early successes. He doesn’t know how to edit his screenplays, he doesn’t know how (or doesn’t want) to cut his films. It ends up in a self-indulgent mess.
I actually love The Village and think the Happening is good fun (in a trashy film way). His earlier stuff I don’t care for. TheSixth Sense seems so dated and not all that creative (see Jacob’s Ladder) and Unbrekable gets worse with each viewing. Signs is okay, pretty hammy in places.
At some point I’ll probably review them all. I hope he gets back on the right track because he has potential.
I agree with mostly everything you’ve written here. This film was definitely a script problem. You’ve got what’s wrong with the writing down to a T: all exposition and no depth. I can’t blame the kid actors because they were working with nothing. I also can’t say that I felt the action scenes were inspiring at all, but I felt they were well done and didn’t deserve to be so massively overshadowed by the bad elements of the story, no pun intended. Here’s my review http://moviemusereviews.com/2010/07/review-the-last-airbender/
M. Night Shyamalan is bound for a comeback he just needs to update his writing, and acting choices.
The Last Airbender 2? Actually, I imagine he will come back in some form, lets just hope its a good one.
OMG, are a moron?
Do you really think he’s got a chance to make another film. Are you that stupid?
He’s a hack. You got be out of your mind to believe that he can make another film.
Well, he found a way after The Happening and seeing as this thing is making money looks like he will.
He’s made some pretty awful films, but so have most directors. Ridley Scott has made some awful films, and yet is somehow responsible for one of the greatest films ever made.
I wouldn’t compare Shyamalan to Scott.
Scott may have made some shitty films yet he’s got the good ones to balance it out. Though I do feel like Scott needs to retire. I have no patience for dinosaurs.