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So I went to see The Last Airbender this afternoon with Em and Lisa. I'll give you all five seconds to get your 'I told you so's' out of the way.
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The thing is, HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR A MOVIE TO BE THAT BAD? I'm really easy when it comes to movies, guys. All they have to do is NOT PUT ME TO SLEEP. You know how Em likes to read horrible books and fic just so she can put all of the pain in her soul to good use? I DO THAT WITH MOVIES. And this movie was so bad I didn't even enjoy it sucking.
I was very purposefully not taking a big political stance on the whole thing. I'm just not the kind of person who feels right making those sorts of judgments. But it's not like they can even say 'well, there was all this controversy, but we made a really good movie', because they didn't. They didn't even make a passable movie. They made a movie that made ECLIPSE look like the best movie released this year. ECLIPSE. A TWILIGHT MOVIE. WAS A HUNDRED TIMES BETTER THAN AVATAR.
And it could have been a modestly mediocre movie, except for most of the acting was horrible. And when I say horrible I mean I could probably have done a turn better, and um...I do not act. Ever. Not since that one monologue in high school when a fellow student asked me if I was really going to kill myself.
And even if they could have scraped together some decent actors (Jackson did okay for the first fifteen minutes when he got to be kind of funny and then again when he asked Yue why her hair was white, and I still love Dev Patel, okay?) the script was the most painful thing I've ever heard in my life. It was pretty much entirely exposition. And not only was it entirely exposition, but it repeated itself over and over and over again. What's that commander Zhao? You raided the great library? And found out about the moon and ocean spirits? And are going to kill them? I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that, can you have three different people run it by me FOUR MORE TIMES.
I get that Avatar is a kid's show, but the cartoon itself is written with wit and humour and great care and intelligence. The cartoon has faith in its young viewers and it believes they will understand, because they know kids aren't dumb just because they're young. The movie did not have that same faith in its audience, and that was the very worst thing about it.
Now, there were some scenes in the movie that would have been lovely in a different movie. Mostly scenes where there was actually action and not people standing around listening to huge chunks of exposition. And the movie LOOKED good. With the exception of Momo who just looked too bright, I think, against his backgrounds. Like his saturation was turned up against the movie. He didn't seem to fit. And I've seen people bitch about how they didn't make the martial arts styles for the bending different in the movies, but I think they actually did a pretty good job of the choreography on those, and I could definitely tell that there were four distinct styles, even without the elements involved. Also, Jackson Rathbone did this eyebrow flip in one of the scenes that was very amusing. I could have just watched that for two hours and been fine. Maybe interspersed with him getting knocked over by Appa's tail and soaked by Katara's clumsy bending.
Mostly what I and the other two are curious about is whether that movie would have made any sense to someone who hadn't seen the series. Because uh...we'd all seen it and it didn't make any sense to us.
I'm leaving this unlocked in case anyone wants to tell people to come laugh at me. I'm not actually mad about spending money to see it, I'm mostly disappointed in its lack of care and faith and intelligence. They took brilliant source material and chopped it up and then didn't know how to put it back together. It's a damn shame.
I'm going to watch some of the cartoon to soothe my broken soul. Here, have Jackson with his vampire hair. I know that always makes me feel better.
.
.
.
.
.
The thing is, HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR A MOVIE TO BE THAT BAD? I'm really easy when it comes to movies, guys. All they have to do is NOT PUT ME TO SLEEP. You know how Em likes to read horrible books and fic just so she can put all of the pain in her soul to good use? I DO THAT WITH MOVIES. And this movie was so bad I didn't even enjoy it sucking.
I was very purposefully not taking a big political stance on the whole thing. I'm just not the kind of person who feels right making those sorts of judgments. But it's not like they can even say 'well, there was all this controversy, but we made a really good movie', because they didn't. They didn't even make a passable movie. They made a movie that made ECLIPSE look like the best movie released this year. ECLIPSE. A TWILIGHT MOVIE. WAS A HUNDRED TIMES BETTER THAN AVATAR.
And it could have been a modestly mediocre movie, except for most of the acting was horrible. And when I say horrible I mean I could probably have done a turn better, and um...I do not act. Ever. Not since that one monologue in high school when a fellow student asked me if I was really going to kill myself.
And even if they could have scraped together some decent actors (Jackson did okay for the first fifteen minutes when he got to be kind of funny and then again when he asked Yue why her hair was white, and I still love Dev Patel, okay?) the script was the most painful thing I've ever heard in my life. It was pretty much entirely exposition. And not only was it entirely exposition, but it repeated itself over and over and over again. What's that commander Zhao? You raided the great library? And found out about the moon and ocean spirits? And are going to kill them? I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that, can you have three different people run it by me FOUR MORE TIMES.
I get that Avatar is a kid's show, but the cartoon itself is written with wit and humour and great care and intelligence. The cartoon has faith in its young viewers and it believes they will understand, because they know kids aren't dumb just because they're young. The movie did not have that same faith in its audience, and that was the very worst thing about it.
Now, there were some scenes in the movie that would have been lovely in a different movie. Mostly scenes where there was actually action and not people standing around listening to huge chunks of exposition. And the movie LOOKED good. With the exception of Momo who just looked too bright, I think, against his backgrounds. Like his saturation was turned up against the movie. He didn't seem to fit. And I've seen people bitch about how they didn't make the martial arts styles for the bending different in the movies, but I think they actually did a pretty good job of the choreography on those, and I could definitely tell that there were four distinct styles, even without the elements involved. Also, Jackson Rathbone did this eyebrow flip in one of the scenes that was very amusing. I could have just watched that for two hours and been fine. Maybe interspersed with him getting knocked over by Appa's tail and soaked by Katara's clumsy bending.
Mostly what I and the other two are curious about is whether that movie would have made any sense to someone who hadn't seen the series. Because uh...we'd all seen it and it didn't make any sense to us.
I'm leaving this unlocked in case anyone wants to tell people to come laugh at me. I'm not actually mad about spending money to see it, I'm mostly disappointed in its lack of care and faith and intelligence. They took brilliant source material and chopped it up and then didn't know how to put it back together. It's a damn shame.
I'm going to watch some of the cartoon to soothe my broken soul. Here, have Jackson with his vampire hair. I know that always makes me feel better.
