TMIA: Since I had ST's less than positive review (above) combined with the movie's rather putrid score on rottentomatoes.com and my ability to read enough pathos into a commercial to make me cry, I thought that maybe my expectations were low enough that I wouldn't feel I had totally wasted my money, even though I had to pay more to (accidentally) see it in 3-D. Right. Well, I really enjoyed the music. And I did get choked up a few times. And . . . Yeah, the movie was bad. It was just misfiring on all cylinders. What did you think about the acting?
ACTING
ST: WHAT acting? And yes, it was utter, utter crap. But it was fun to tear apart in the parking lot at 2 am. And if you were one of those idiot 12-year-olds in the parking lot complaining about the name pronunciations, then you are far behind the curve. That was just the tip of the crap iceberg (crapberg?).
The only character that I felt they captured the spirit of was Iroh; everyone else was so far removed from their character in the TV show that I was shocked. Seriously. We think that they spent so much on the special effects that they realized, "Oh, crap, we've only got $10 left for the script. Let's find the cheapest, worst screenwriter on the planet."
SCRIPT
TMIA: And the special effects left a lot to be desired, too. You do realize that Shyamalan wrote it (along with producing and directing), right?
ST: Yes, I realize he wrote it. Perhaps he was wearing too many hates (Freudian slip? I meant hats) and so it all turned out badly? Also, he didn't write it all on his own. A script goes through many hands before it's finalized, and even then there's improv and changes made on the set.
It wasn’t just the script that stunk – lots of stuff did. It’s just the script is the most immediately easy thing to criticize. The sheer amount of information dumps in each segment of the movie was ridiculous. The dialogue was almost entirely a series of information dumps that would have been a challenge for even the most amazing of actors to deliver in a realistic manner.
I think one of my favorite amateur line was when they get to the Northern Water Tribe and Katara’s voice over information dump says, “And my brother and Princess Yue became good friends right away.” As my friends and I discussed afterwards, that is a totally unnecessary line. You can either accomplish that in a 3 second shot where Yue and Sokka look meaningfully at each other (which I actually think they had, anyways) or you can just leave it alone and let the viewers see that, as there are scenes later where Yue and Sokka are together. They seem to have cut A LOT out of this movie, so why waste 20 seconds on a stupid line (and this wasn’t the only one. I think they wasted A LOT more time on stupid lines than should be legally allowed).
CHARACTERS
ST: Getting away from the script, I just hate how he had the children actors act. The script/directing/editing made them so that they were little adults, not children. Part of the charm of the cartoon is that Aang is twelve. He’s a kid. He realizes he has this immense task before him, but he gets sidetracked on fun quests quite easily. And Sokka is a dork. He’s a guy with a boomerang. They started him out in a promising manner – when he says Appa’s trying to eat him, when he dents a guy’s family jewels, etc.; but then it was like they thought, “No, what this movie about kids REALLY needs is a handsome, romantic lead.” So Sokka suddenly becomes this serious guy. And Katara lost her role as the wet blanket who always spurred Aang on. Suddenly, Aang was making the serious motivational speeches instead of Katara. Weird.
TMIA: It's true; there was a lot of ACTING in this movie, but I'd agree that they really didn't have anything to work with. That's why I'm so impressed with the job Iroh's actor did. And my greatest fear wasn't realized: Aang didn't have a Texas accent. Also, even if he looked different, Oppa was pretty great. Momo was awful, as was Aang's interaction with him. (One of those scenes made me laugh so hard I cried a little.) I actually thought Sokka did pretty well considering what he had, and he and Yue could have worked a bit better given more time. Literally and figuratively.
ST: Yeah, the whole scene with the fish in the spirit pond was crappy. The fact that he's a firebender, and there's fire all around him, and he stabs it, and he's all stabby stabby, and I'm like, seriously? When you already have a script that's gold, why mess with it? I wouldn't have minded if they changed lines or scenes, but when they change personalities, they're making different characters and a different story, and pretty soon . . .
TMIA: It's Avatar in name only. Literally.
EFFECTS AND ACTION
ST: Do you remember all those scenes in the cartoon in the Fire Lord's throne room where it was fire and pillars and curtains of fire and scary doom? Do you remember what it was like in the movie? There were two lamps.
TMIA: And a nice embroidered pillow, I think. So, what did you think of the other special effects?
ST: If the action sequences were better, it would have helped. But they weren't. That scene with the Blue Spirit in the ring of stones? It made me nauseous.
TMIA: What the heck was with all the slo-mo? All the fight scenes lost their momentum because they kept being interrupted by slow-motion at utterly inappropriate times. The pacing overall was terrible, but to have bad pacing in the action scenes is kind of inexplicable. The action had no action.
ST: And the bending?! A and I were cracking up at really inappropriate moments. The action . . . it was just pathetic.
TMIA: I don't know how they could possibly make bending not cool!
ST: It just blew my mind how horrible it was. Zuko and Aang were always fighting hand to hand. Why?!
TMIA: The bending took so long, I wouldn't want to wait to do it either.
SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVEMENT
TMIA: So what would you have wanted the big S to do?
ST: He could have done a 5-minute montage at the beginning that covered the whole first season. The whole point of the first season is that he's a kid. He gets side-tracked easily, and that's why there are all the side stories.
TMIA: I'm a writer, and I think in stories when I'm getting serious about things. ST, who has seen the series many more times than I have, mentioned that the part at the end with the northern waterbending tribe was all of two episodes in the series. We allowed it to have some shorthand in the cartoon because it had all the other episodes of character development backing it up. This movie did not.
If I were creating this movie, I think I would have talked to fans of all ages and asked them about their favorite scenes from earlier in the series. Then I would have structured the whole movie to start when they arrived in the Northern tribe. I would have expanded to include what happened in those two episodes that we didn't get to see in the series. I would have tried to work as many of those fan favorite bits in as I could as flashbacks. There would be an organic reason for compressed summaries/explanations/info dumps and short vignette scenes and voiceovers and cutting to the good parts of the conflicts/road trip moments. Could you imagine the fun they could have had playing the scenes as Sokka described them to Yue with commentary by Aang and Katara? But flashbacks are evil to real filmmakers, so this is why I am not a film-maker. (One of the many reasons.)
Anyway, I figure this strategy would allow for the present development of Aang's water-bending troubles and Sokka's relationship with Yue (they were really the only two young actors who were competent--possibly because they had something to grab onto--and had some sort of chemistry) while giving viewers live action versions of scenes they loved/the best that the series had to offer without the whiplash. It would have allowed Sokka and the others time to shine in humorous and other ways while avoiding the Cliff's Notes of a Road Trip movie syndrome.
But the director wanted to make an epic. I would just want to make it fun and good and hopefully profitable.
ST: It already was an epic. All he had to do was make it shorter.
SILVER LINING?
TMIA: It does make me want to watch the show again, if only to wipe the taste of the movie out of my brain. That's usually how I feel about movie adaptations of books, so I shouldn't be so disappointed except that I feel like they had even less of an excuse to suck because the plot and tons of great character development were already there for the taking, along with ready-made action scenes and an incredible fighting style. And a child actor who could do the bending, for the love of Pete!
ST: It seems like his philosophy was if I don't have to spend money on it, and I can change it, I'm going to.
TMIA: I feel like I should say that the single actual child in the theater when I saw this enthusiastically thought the movie was cool. Any closing comments?
ST: FART. How's that for airbending? And it didn't take me 20 minutes to ramp it up.
TMIA: I still blame James Cameron. If only we'd been allowed to have the real name, this never would have happened. :)
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