I’m not a fan of M. Night Shyamalan and believe me I’ve tried to give his movies a chance. I loved his first movie Sixth Sense. The misdirection in that film was awesome. When I found out the true meaning of “I see dead people,” I was blown away along with the rest of the audience. It was a brilliant movie and I wish all of his movies ended up the same way. But after struggling through movies such as Signs, Unbreakable and The Happening, I’m forced to conclude that Mr. Shyamalan is a one-hit wonder.
After being burned time and again going to see a M. Night Shyamalan movie, I decided to sit back and skip the Last Airbender. (I can’t for the life of me figure out why I want to call this movie “Avatar”). For those of you that don’t know, “Avatar”: The Last Airbender is a cartoon (or anime as some of you may prefer) on Nickelodeon TV.
I watched this anime series encouraged by the raves of friends. They claimed the show was the greatest thing since sliced bread. But after watching numerous episodes, I concluded that I wasn’t watching the same show. Avatar was boring, the story was slow, the characters weren’t interesting, the animation wasn’t that great to me, and what was that they “thing” they flew around on?
What we have is a recipe for disaster. Boring source material and a producer/writer/director who has made one decent movie after countless years of trying. Never mind the flack he’s taken for not hiring Asian actors when the series is about…Asian characters.
I want to share with you some of the negative reviews that were spawned by this movie:
“The Last Airbender is a boring, nauseating blockbuster filled with poor editing, painfully wooden acting, unrelenting dullness, and unimpressive special effects. It’s so bad that it's gone past good and back to bad again.” –Avi Offer
"Battlefield Earth" has a new rival for the title of "worst-film-of-the-last-20-years." M. Night Shyamalan extracts some of the worst melodramatic acting performances ever from his largely child cast in a 3-D movie that works best unseen. – Cole Smithey
“The film ends with a set-up for a sequel, which those unfortunate enough to endure this torturous mess can only hope never occurs. Should “The Last Airbender 2” ever be made (and if the enforcers of the Fourth Geneva Convention fall asleep on the watch), it’s a safe bet that step one will be replacing Shyamalan with a director who can bend a cartoon into something that audiences will line up to get into rather than out of.” – Daniel M. Kimmel
Should you go see The Last Airbender?
Say what you will but the movie has made $70.5 million so far in less than a week. I've heard from 3 friends that saw it. 2 loved it and 1 didn't. So I still give him his props.
ReplyDeleteAnd I had forgotten that he directed SIGNS. Now I will say that I think that was one of the worst movies in history. I've never slept thru a movie so much in my life. This goes for me and the friend I went with. We were bored beyond belief. We still sometimes joke about how awful it was. However, somehow that movie made a ton of money. It made $408 million worldwide. $227 million from the U.S. on a budge of $72 million. So that was a huge hit.
All in all I applaud him for his unique vision and staying true to his self and creativity. I may not always like his movies, but I take my hat off to him for not always following the crowd.