Movie Review: The Last Airbender

“The Last Airbender” is the story about a world that has lost its balance and the saga of those attempting to gain absolute power and others whose goal is to rebalance it.

Adapted by Oscar nominated director, M. Night Shyamalan, from the animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” the film is jam-packed with slick martial arts, heroism and visual beauty.

For a century, the Firebender tribe has waged a campaign for global domination over its fellow tribal nations of Air, Water and Earth.

A young waterbender, Katara (Nicola Peltz), and her brother, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) discover a young boy named Aang (Noah Ringer, a 12 year old Taekwondo champion in his first movie role) while out on the frozen landscape of the Southern Water Tribe.

Once they discover that he is the Avatar, they are bound to aid him in his fight for the freedom of the world.

As they cross the globe with the intention of gaining support from the other tribes, they are always just 2 steps ahead of the young firebender Prince, Zuko (Dev Patel “Slumdog Millionaire”), shamed in battle and burning with the desire to restore his father’s (Cliff Curtis “Training Day”) esteem for him.

That is the premise and catalyst for 103 minutes of fire and water flinging and endless, simplistic conversation: Adapting a live action film from anime is a delicate and daunting task that is not always pulled off successfully.

While Airbender is certainly visually impressive with painstaking care placed on the costumes, the setting and martial arts sequences, it is unbalanced, like the world within which it is placed.

The script lacked intelligent language, the actors are as two dimensional as their animated counterparts and the 3D was sadly flat and gray, the result of converting the film to 3D in post-production.

The actors woodenly recite lines like "There is no love without sacrifice." And, "Nothing is ever truly lost." and, "It is in the heart that all wars are won”, it was hard to even care what happened to any of them. The action sequences were even boring.

Words like meditation, qi, and enlightenment were casually tossed in the mix with no understanding of them and without explanation, presumably to add depth. What could have been a chance to present these concepts to a fresh audience was missed.

Whatever the expense that went to waste to create this film proves that money can’t buy good taste or understanding.

There are other real blockbusters out there to enjoy this summer. Skip this one!

Alexza DeCroix writes on music and film and lives in New York.