The original Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series is the rare kind of fantasy fiction ostensibly aimed at kids which can also be enjoyed by adults - like The Hobbit (the book, not the tiresome movie trilogy). The Nickelodeon saga ran for three seasons full of compelling storylines and vivid characters.

So, how does a director whose increasingly shaky reputation hinged on thrillers adapt in 90 minutes the entire first season of an adventure/fantasy series?

Badly.

I have never been a huge fan of M. Night (although I really liked Unbreakable), but usually even his flawed films (say, Signs or The Village) have something interesting about them. This one is worthless though.

Writing is leaden and ponderous; the voice-over by Katara (Nicola Peltz), in particular, is one of the most overwritten, insufferable narrations I recall in a major production. In spite of all the yammering, the exposition is so inefficient that the series' rich lore and world-building are mercilessly castrated: the result is a generic, shallow fantasy setting.

(To be fair, the first season was challenging to adapt because of its episodic structure; the second and third have more forward momentum).

While M. Night has never been a great writer (The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable notwithstanding), he does have visual talent. Unfortunately, he is not a strong ACTION director - a limit he is probably smart enough to realize, since both his superhero movie (Unbreakable) and his alien invasion movie (Signs) featured *one* fight scene each. He could not write around this limit here, since The Last Airbender relies heavily on action. The result is a string of set-pieces ranging from bland to ridiculous.

In the series, "bending" - a mix between martial arts and magic employed to command elements (water, earth, fire, air) - was visually effective and precise, with each elemental effect corresponding to a quick, clear body movement. This connection is lost in the movie, where characters gesticulate wildly and flail limbs around to produce comically tiny results; it takes six people performing a choreographed dance to make a medium-sized rock float (in the animated series, characters toss boulders around with a flick of the wrist). It's pathetic, the kind of stuff which gives fantasy a bad name.

Still, the original sin of this film is how the story is better fit for animation rather than live-action and for a series rather than a movie. I can understand the appeal of adapting, say, a book into a film... but here the story has *already* been told in a visual medium, very well and with more time for subplots and character arcs than you can possibly have in a movie. So... what was the point, again?

4/10

They went too fast and all the characters talk like they're reading off placards. The computer generated stuff was good though but i got less than what i expected. What a waste of time and money. I'd rather had stayed home and watched the original cartoon instead.

The original cartoon is ten times better to watch. Even if i consider this movie as a unit in it itself, its missing a lot of story where a new viewer wouldn't be able to connect the points. Although it has good computer generated animation and stuff but you still get less than you'd expect. There are bits where you expect it to be funny and it ain't, no fun.

Anybody who has watched the original cartoon will tell you how much of it they have skipped in the beginning of the movie. The story line is completely shot, you cant tell whats really going on.

M. Night's career as a director has been spiraling downwards ever since The Sixth Sense, we can all agree. But on The Last Airbender, his most recent major project, his credibility simply plummeted.

You know that embarrassing feeling you get when you're watching an amateur movie? Yeah, you'll get a lot of that if you spend your money to watch this in the theaters, which is ill-advised. The Last Airbender simply had no direction, and the script flopped around aimlessly to try and wrap up an entire season of the animated TV show, Avatar (which it is based off of), in 103 minutes. The dialogue was appalling and the poor development of story made audience members moan and groan. An entire love relationship is created with the single, randomly narrated line of, "They became friends very quickly", while two characters who have just met allot the other a generous five second stare each. Embarrassing scriptwriting such as this is what caused the failing of The Last Airbender. This was NOT helped by the mediocre acting performances of Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, and Seychelle Gabriel.

Poor acting, poor scripting, poor directing. What was there to like? Sadly the action sequences, few and far between, are hardly engaging enough to satisfy any moviegoer's appetite, for lack of other elements. I was told by friends that while the movie stayed true to the general plot of the animated TV series, the action was poorly represented. Underpowered, and a bit superfluous in movement, the much needed fight scenes became almost tedious to watch.

The world of Avatar was curious; I'll give it that. The environment with the four elemental nations, each with its own unique race, which far from appearing racist, was actually one of the few ideas that made the movie... somewhat interesting.

A general question continued to run through my mind... It was almost as if M. Night thought to himself, "What is the LEAST I could do with my budget?" And I think he found the perfect answer with The Last Airbender.

I award M. Night's latest masterpiece in his spiraling antics a generous 4/10.