Avatar movie around the corner! Are you excited or what?!

[Haza]

I'm really excited. I've been watching the animated series readying myself for it. It can't be anything but good with this story.

 

[Redstar]

I'm really excited. I've been watching the animated series readying myself for it. It can't be anything but good with this story.

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but the movie has been universally panned. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a score of 5% out of 40 reviews (38 of which are negative), while Twilight has 52%.

You wouldn't believe all the things Shyamalan changed from the cartoon. It's almost an entirely different work with "The Last Airbender" slapped on it. Being a frequenter of several Avatar fan forums I can tell you that I've read dozens of people say they literally cried upon leaving the theatre. It's horrible.

 

[loliwin]

NOT looking forward to seeing it. The cartoon will always be the best version of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

 

[Ariolander]

So went ahead and saw the midnight release... The movie was downright terrible.

I feel as if M. Night Shyamalan never even saw the series that he was making a movie of. I know sacrifices need to be made for the movie format but in many ways Shyamalan completely missed the point. I mean of all the things to screw up even the name pronunciations of almost EVERY character are messed up. Its as if he downloaded the cliffnotes off the internet and made a movie off of that.

I mean seriously it wasn't a book, it wasn't in Japanese, how the hell can you screw up name pronunciations on a series that was originally dubbed in English. Its almost as if Shyamalan is trying to get back at everyone for bastardizing his name by bastardizing all of theirs.

Anyone who saw the original series will be either thoroughly disappointed or completely enraged. Hell I went in knowing it was M. Night Shyamalan, knowing had a 10% on RottenTomatoes, and lowered my expectations accordingly yet was still disappointed. I know my brother was so enraged he wanted to walk out and demand a refund 15 minutes in.

Don't get me wrong it does have its strong points:

Noah Ringer
Is actually a decent martial artist and did a decent job with Aang. He voices well and is very acrobatic. A trait expected for an airbender.

Sokka
Though Sokka was re-purposed as "heroic exposition rather than comedic relief Twilight's Jackson Rathbone did well for himself.

General Iroh
Shaun Toub was an excelent Iroh and considering what he was given did the wise old man archtype well. Not what I expected from a Daily Show intern.

Martial Arts
The martial arts scenes... when they are there are really cool.

For anyone 10 and under the show will probably be awesome but unlike the cartoon the widespread appeal is lost in transition... probably because it was written by M. Night Shyamalan who is probably one of the most overrated directors ever.

I thought the twist would be that it was actually good... I was mistaken and proved a hopeless optomist.

Name pronunciations.
Instead of Sokka they say So-ca. Instead of Iroh they say E-row.
f you ever saw The Last Puppetbender PSA about name pronunciations... those were the ones Shyamalan introduced.

Master of the anti-climix.
A bit of a spoiler but if you were expecting Avatar-Mode Aang and an epic conclusion to the invasion of the Northern Water Tribe you will be disappointed because the situation was sanitized and diffused without a single death.

Katara (Nicola Peltz)
She deserves her own bullet point. She has all the acting talent of a wet towel. So damn white and by God I swear she was going to pull an Ember Island Players and cry "This fills me with hope!" "This makes me want to tearbend!"... actually that might have been funny Nicola Peltz was not.

Abuse of narration.
I have never seen such abuse of narration as seen in this movie. He tried to much and did to little. I mean they literally did a timeskip and then narrated "BTW Sokka and the Princess are in love now". Thats not the worst of it. At on point they narrate: "we didn't show it but we did, this, this, this, and this while in the Earth Kingdom but now we are at the Northern Air Temple"

Bending is terrible.
If you haven't heard of it already Shyamalan changed bending A LOT (you can't bend without your element present) making firebenders look pathetic and earth benders stupid overpowered.
Thats not the worst of it though. While the martial arts was crazy cool the link with bending/martial arts was removed and bending ends up being really lame. To start a whirlwinds Aang has to do crazy hand movements and make several backflips to get something going... yea its that bad.
... also the special effects were cheesy and slow-mo was abused

In the end for all its strengths the downpoints drown them out. There is a reason it only has 6% on RottenTomatoes.

Edit:
Also do NOT watch it in 3D.
3D seriously detracts from the show, was added late in production and it shows. There aren't many cool 3D scenes, it wasn't filmed in 3D, and because of the way the glasses work all the cool snow and Greenland ice scenes are tinted grey because of it.

 

[Nick]

I was dead set on wanting to go see this, but after seeing RottenTomatoes' rating and Ariolander's post, I don't think I'll be going. If I want to watch it so badly, I'll find an alternative towards paying money to go to the theaters and see it. :/

 

[Yamikarasu]

8% on Rotten Tomatoes. At least it's up from the 4% I saw yesterday.

Seriously, if Shyamalan really messed up this movie that bad, that really is a terrible thing he's done. I'm just getting into the series, I'm watching it on Netflix, and I know that this series has a very dedicated fanbase. If the same thing happened with Pokemon (ignore the fact that the chances of Pokemon being made into an American live-action movie are nill) I would be crushed.

One of the reviewers said that the dialog was an "orgy of exposition" which was exactly one of the things I was worried about. That and bad acting by the child actors, which is apparently another huge flaw.

This should have been an animated movie. Maybe Nickelodeon will try to rectify this injustice by making one to air on TV.

 

[TwinkleClefable]

Oh you mean Airbender...

I thought you meant Blue people Avatar.

I'm not as excited now.

 

[Jake♫]

...It's pretty bad =/ I went to the midnight premier in 3D (I really had high expectations, along with my friends), and I can honestly say it was a waste of $14.50. For pete's sake, they pronounced the main character's NAMES wrong. I mean if it was a book or something, it's open to interpretation, but it's based on a TV show with AUDIO to it. I mean it's not like they had nothing to base it off of. At one point, someone in the audience yelled out "His name is ANG, it's AANG!" (Short vowel A versus long vowel A, because I know that's kind of hard to tell =3)

Secondly, there was just SO MUCH skipped. I mean I realize there is a limited time frame and everything, but still...so much more could have been added. They completely skipped the visit to Ba Sing Se with Boomi (Spelling? lol), the original storm after the visits to the air temples...ugh.

Thirdly, they really should have mentioned they were only doing Book One. I went in expecting a lot more, but in reality, it ends at the Northern Water Tribe with victory over the Fire Nation. Understandable, but they were still quite misleading.

The 3D itself was completely unimpressive. I took off my glasses at multiple points during the movie...and there was absolutely no difference in picture whatsoever. I mean, if I'm paying an extra five dollars to see this, I would actually like some 3D effects in the movie.

tl;dr : Not worth the money, see it when it becomes rentable if you want to. I'd take the cartoon anyday.

EDIT: Completely Ninja'd by Ariolander xD

 

[jjeangi]

Haha, I love this movie review of Avatar. It made me laugh so hard:

 

[Haza]

Ugh... my main disappointment was the fact that the Kyoshi Warriaors were scrapped and that Azula was on on screen for 2.000001 seconds. Also, the pronunciation of Aang and Saka were atrocious and I'm not sure why they made it that way. The animation was incredible but they sped the story up to much and Aang looked the part, but he didn't behave much like him. Even though I enjoyed the film, it could have been much better. Luckily as I was leaving the theatre I found $150 on the ground :)

I'm looking forward to book two. The Kyoshi Warriors better show up, and Azula and the girls, and Tof! It's gonna be all about the ladies.

 

[Spinor]

I'm getting an extremely strong feeling this movie will be crap.

Goodness, I was right. :\ All reviews are terrible.

 

[mikey]

Sadly, this movie was a disappointment. I saw it yesterday with friends. They cut a lot of stuff out, such as the Kyoshi Warriors. The cast was not great either, and there was much mis-pronunciations of names, like Sokka and Aang. (They literally called Aang "Uung.") Yeah, it was a waste of money sadly...

 

[Nyu~♥!]

Haha, I love this movie review of Avatar. It made me laugh so hard:

LOL. That guy has a sense of humor.

...the pronunciation of Aang and Saka were atrocious and I'm not sure why they made it that way.

...there was much mis-pronunciations of names, like Sokka and Aang. (They literally called Aang "Uung.")

lol, if they made a pronunciation error like that, in what should be a professional movie, then they'd have to go back to preschool... in fact, it wouldn't be professionally made, either(and it's hard to believe that it probably was made by professionals)
No, those aren't mispronunciations, those are the ways you are supposed to say them, the normal (chinese, i think) way. The way us english-speakers say it is the mispronunciation. I have no idea why they didn't either just leave it the "english" way OR just start off in the series with the chinese pronounciation. Well, it's way too late now.

Either way, i'm sure the movie sucked. When I saw the trailers I had a feeling it would fail, miserably.
The fact that the funny Aang wasn't in the trailers, made me feel like there was no funny Aang at all. D:

EDIT: Proof of this pronounciation stuff.

Wired.com: What's behind the changed pronunciation of the some of the main characters' names, and even the term avatar?
Shyamalan: For me, the whole point of making the adaptation was to ground it deeper in reality. So I pronounced the names as Asians would. It's just impossible to pronounce Aang the way it is used in the series. It's incorrect! I can't do it. So I just pronounced it correctly.
Wired.com: So the series dropped the ball on that one.
Shyamalan: Aang isn't "Ayng," it's "Ahng." Iraq isn't "Ee-rack," it's "Ee-rock." It's an opportunity. I don't have to make the film for little kids on Cartoon Network; I'm making it for the world. And 85 percent of the people who are going to see this movie have probably never seen the show, and I want it to be legitimate. I'm Asian. What can I do?
Wired.com: How did that decision come about?
Shyamalan: As soon as everyone came to rehearsal. Shaun Toub said, "Why are we pronouncing Iroh like 'Eye-roh?'" And I said I didn't know! [Laughs] What am I supposed to say, you know? I had an opportunity, so I said, "Look, we're going to introduce people to this mythology. It should make sense. We should be expanding it to give it more depth." That's the opportunity, and I fought hard for it. I knew it was going to be nothing but trouble for me, but it was important. It represented to me the integrity of the movie.

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↑ That "read more" thing appeared automatically. :o

 

[x Necromorph x]

I beg to differ with what the director said "85 percent of the people seeing the movie, will prbably have never seen the show" I think thats is just stupid that he said that, he must be oblivious to the popularity of the show. I saw the movie, it was alright I liked it, but the pronuciation really bothered me, Aang was "Uung" and Sokka was like "Suuka"

 

[Taemin]

I was hoping this movie would be awesome.

All the reviews are saying that it's total suck, except for maybe two or three of the actor performances.

D;

I'm suddenly not as disappointed that I haven't been able to go see it yet.

 

[x Necromorph x]

I was hoping this movie would be awesome.

All the reviews are saying that it's total suck, except for maybe two or three of the actor performances.

D;

I'm suddenly not as disappointed that I haven't been able to go see it yet.

You should see it still, I liked it, and I am a HUGE fan of the show.

 

[Redstar]

I saw it and it was definitely not worth the money. Wait awhile and just rent it if you really want to see it, but going to the movies is not the best option.

 

[Haza]

Okay, if he was going to change the pronunciation to be correct in an Asian sense, why would half of the characters be European? and why was the Fire Nation of Indian/Middle Eastern descent but wearing asian clothing. If you are going to try and make one aspect correct why would you completely destroy the rest?!

 

[Jolene]

Hmm I have not seen the movie but I know that lots of reviewers are really angry at M Night Shamalan. I mostly feel sorry for his daughter he said that the reason why he made the movie is because his daughter wanted him to and it would be really bad if she found out the critics were saying all these bad things about her daddy. If critics said those things about my daddy I would slap them.

 

[Klippy]

It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't great. :/ There was a lot of bad acting and just really stale emotions, so if they actually do make the two sequels like they are saying they are, they should just recast the roles with people that can act.