Avatar: The Last Airbender

Avatar – The Boy in the Iceberg / The Avatar Returns

  • Title: Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Boy in the Iceberg / The Avatar Returns
  • wiki: link | link

Avatar - The Boy in the Iceberg / The Avatar Returns

Wayback Wednesday takes us back to the world of elemental benders and a 12 year-old boy destined to return balance to the Four Nations. The opening two episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender introduce us to the Southern Water Tribe‘s Katara (Mae Whitman) and her jerky brother Sokka (Jack De Sena) who discover a young Air Bender frozen in an iceberg. Having never seen an Air Bender before, believing them to have been wiped out, they are shocked but even more so when they discover Aang (Zach Tyler Eisen) has been frozen in ice for 100 years and is the missing Avatar destined to bring balance back to the realm dominated by the war mongering Fire Nation.

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(Hopefully) The Last Airbender

  • Title: The Last Airbender
  • IMDb: link

For his latest disaster movie writer/director M. Night Shyamalan adapts the Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Remember when he gave us great films (Sixth Sense, Unbreakable) filled with tension, plots which sucked you in, strong characters, and great performances? Don’t expect any of those things here.

Although it boasts its share of unintentionally funny moments, The Last Airbender isn’t even bad in a fun way. It’s tedious, head-scratching, amateurish, poorly conceived and even less ably enacted on screen. This concept, and its combination of martial arts, philosophy, and fantasy, might work in 20 minute animated segments but it doesn’t translate well to a live-action feature-length film.

The story involves four nations each based off of one the four elements (easily color coded for the slower viewers). Some of each tribe have the ability to control, or bend, the element of their tribe. How rare a gift, and how easy an ability it is to use, varies wildly throughout the film.

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