Note to Appa: you may not really know our friend here, but I’m betting bison to buffaloes you agree with him.
I didn’t have the stomach to see The Last Airbender myself. It seems like sometime in the recent past, James Franco, Joaquin Phoenix and M. Night Shyamalan all conspired to see who could jack up their image and career most successfully in separate ventures. And the winner is…?
On the other hand, M. Night has obviously had a head start, with a creative decline that began after Signs (some would say following Unbreakable, and still others The Sixth Sense). Needless to say, people didn’t care what was Happening, and now M. Night’s career is drowning like a Lady in the Water. I’m hoping they take his name OFF promos for upcoming film Devil – which he didn’t write or direct – as audiences have been engaged by the trailer until his name pops up (followed by audible chorus of groans).
Still, in light of a recent YouTube phenomena that rivals double rainbow, I found this Q&A review of The Last Airbender (below) summed up the thoughts of both the die-hard series fans I know, and those who had never heard of it before stepping into the theater (and now wish they hadn’t). Enjoy.
Note to M. Night: stop writing, directing, AND acting everything yourself. Take a tip from a familiar movie title… when it comes to cinematic creativity, it takes a VILLAGE.
What did YOU think of The Last Airbender (or our friendly Ibex) – leave your comments.
It’s too bad the guy can’t see how audiences react when they see trailers for his movies in theaters now. When my brother took me to see Scott Pilgrim vs the World this weekend the theater saw the trailer for Devil and the immediate response to the mere appearance of M. Night’s name was derisive laughter. Of course that was happening as far back as The Happening and there were even snickers at Lady in the Water. It would seem the people screaming in the trailers for the movies MNS directs are screaming because they realize they’ve signed on for weak films.
He basically took episode 1 of season 1 and episode 24 (last episode) of the same season, remade them without using the same dialogue (which is a shame as the original dialogue is great) then wrote 30m of filler to “connect” them. There is zero character development (Did anyone walk away thinking that Ang was a funny little kid and that Sokka was a witty and sarcastic teenager?). It was very incoherent.