Here we are folks; the review that you've all been waiting for... all three of you. The review of what I truly consider the absolute worst film I've ever seen. And just in time for my six month anniversary, too!
But before we reveal what it is, I think that I feel the need to clarify something. When it comes to picking something to review, I will admittedly do so at random, hence why I've only recently talked about the first two seasons of Steven Universe despite the show being out for a good four years now. But when it came to this specific list, that wasn't the case, as I had always been planning to talk about each of these films at some point. This was merely a convenient outlet for my utter disgust with these films.
That said, I didn't just choose these films because of some glaring flaws they have. In fact, I chose them for the opposite reason; the glaring positives that they had, as well as what material I had to work with when writing my reviews. To prove that to you, I can actually point out something positive with the first four films on the list.
5. Fant4stic. At the very least, even if it's extremely generic for the genre, it at least went in a different direction for the team that hasn't really been done before. It's still a shitty direction, but I can at least say they weren't just redoing the exact same thing as the other films.
4. Thunderbirds. Not only had a decent rescore by Hans Zimmer, but also had visual variety between each of the vehicles and the redesigns fit in with the more futuristic edge. Shame about the shitty CG, but what you are gonna do?
3. Hannibal Rising. The cinematography was decent and the set design fit really well with the post-WWII theme.
2. The Thing not-prequel... the acting was decent?
Okay, I will admit, the positives did start to dwindle as the list went on, but you get the point. Each film on the list had something nice for me to say about it... except one! Despite having seen the film several times, analysing every scene and every aspect with as critical an eye as I could muster, I have yet to find ANYTHING nice to say about this film. To this day, I can't even say anything remotely positive; it's THAT bad! And this isn't stuff like "The Room" or "Birdemic", where much of the entertainment value comes from how bad they are. This film is the pure definition of BAD!
And so, without further delay or revisiting the clues, here we go. The absolute bottom-of-the-barrel, piece of shit, worst film I have EVER seen is:
M Night Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender"... just to give you an idea of how bad it is, Paramount Studios basically had to use a random commenters opinion on the film from JoBlo to plaster on the front of my copy of the DVD case for ANY form of praise... and it was an opinion taken completely out of context... they couldn't find anyone who said a single nice thing about it, so basically plastered a lie on the front of the DVD... MST3K, I need you!
Thank you. Get used to that clip, by the way
This... THING was released in 2010, just two years after the end of the show it was based on; Nickelodeon's "Avatar: The Last Airbender", which I'll just call "The Legend of Aang" for the sake of simplicity, especially since that was the European title.
The show, running from 2005 to 2008, is the story of a fantasy world where people can "bend" the four elements and are separated by their own cultures and customs into four nations; the Air Nomads, the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation. The mediator in all of this is the Avatar, a person capable of bending all four of the elements and has a personal connection to the Spirit World, reincarnating onto the next nation in the cycle every time they die. But one day, as the Fire Nation began their siege on the rest of the world, the Avatar vanished
With this particular reincarnation, the titular last Airbender Aang, a war between the Fire Nation and the rest of the world has being going for the last 100 years. In all that time, Aang had been frozen in suspended animation until he was awoken by two siblings from the Southern Water Tribe, Katara and Sokka. Upon discovery of Aang's role as the Avatar, but more importantly saving him from the banished Fire Nation prince Zuko, Katara and Sokka go along with Aang to help him learn how to master the other elements so that, when the time came, he could face off against the Fire Nation's current ruler, the ruthless Fire Lord Ozai.
"The Legend of Aang" is arguably Nickelodeon's most popular work, garnering critical praise for a diverse range of entertaining characters, an emotionally gripping story, unparalleled world-building, beautiful animation and a seamless incorporation of East Asian philosophies and folklore. The show was even popular enough to have both a comic-book continuation with several short stories and a sequel series with the next Avatar, Korra, which even expanded into it's own adventures and it's own comic book sequel. Admittedly, "Legend of Korra" isn't as great as "Legend of Aang", especially with the first two seasons, but it still pulled through with a likeable protagonist and discussions of politics and what can be considered social norms.
And then there's this movie, which was announced shortly after "Legend of Aang" finished with a four-part finale. It was supposedly being made for fans of the show, but obviously history would prove that to be a lie, especially with Shyamalan at the helm to not only direct, but also to produce and write the screenplay. And given that this was 2008 when this was announced, and "The Happening" was out at roughly the same time, that should have been the major warning flags.
Look, I'm just gonna be blunt here; I don't like M Night Shyamalan. Not just his movies, but him as a person as well. The dude has always shown himself as a self-centred egomaniac who cannot take even the slightest amount of criticism. Granted, some of this may have been due to the unreasonable hype he was given, with "The Sixth Sense" being No. 1 at the box office for the longest time and people praising him as "the next Spielberg", which no doubt already inflated his pretentious, overblown ego. But then something magical happened, as with each film after "Signs", which sucked by the way, he has been continuously slammed by the critics for his films being self-indulgent tripe. Even "Stargate: SG-1" wasn't afraid to take a stab at his work by questioning the logistics of aliens coming to a planet that is 2/3rds covered in water... when their weakness is water.
This was only made all the worst with his casting decisions, as he chose to make the characters predominantly white. All of this spawning with the casting of Nicola Peltz as Katara, a character who is based on Inuit culture and ethnicity. Because of this, any and all major players from the Water Tribes had to be consistently portrayed by white actors. Ironically, however, much of the Fire Nation, as opposed to obviously being based on the Japanese due to their customs and skin tones, is portrayed by Indian and middle-Eastern actors. This was likely due to the backlash of criticism for blatant ignorance of the cultural diversity the show had, but it also begs the question; "Why not just simply recast and start from scratch with the ethnically right actors"? This is a movie that is basically gift-wrapped for Asian actors, and thanks to Shyamalan, they intentionally got screwed out of these once in a lifetime roles! What the fuck, Shyamalan?!
To give people an idea of what I'm talking about, here are what cultures the four nations are based on:
The Northern and Southern Water Tribes; Inuits. The Earth Kingdom; the Chinese. The Fire Nation, the Japanese. The Air Nomads; Tibetan Monks and Indians.
What's worse, is that Shyamalan tried to actually justify his casting choices and, once again, treat his audience as idiots who can't fathom the idea of multicultural diversity. This is an actual quote from him:
"Anime is based on ambiguous facial features. It's meant to be interpretive, it's meant to be inclusive of all races, and you can see yourselves in all of these characters."
Where to even begin with this?
First of all, AVATAR IS NOT AN ANIME! Just because the animation style matches more of the anime style and incorporates various Eastern mythologies and iconography, it doesn't automatically count as an anime! With an anime, there is a expectancy and cultural trapping that basically forces even the most critically acclaimed anime to include certain things. This is why, in subtitled Japanese work, you always see the honorific titles being used when addressing someone, such as "Onii-chan" for brother or "San" if addressing an elder, or even "Sensei" when addressing someone with authority, like a doctor or a teacher; that stuff is only lost when an anime or Japanese film is being dubbed by English speaking voice actors. And since "Avatar" doesn't have these cultural expectancies nor has to rely on specific visual troupes for anime, it therefore doesn't count as one! It's an American cartoon with influence from Japanese works; no more, no less.
Second, we don't see ourselves in the characters because of their skin colour; we see ourselves in them because of how they are WRITTEN! If, to use myself for an example, I was watching a show and one of the central protagonists had autism or was on the autism spectrum, that would garner my attention and possible investment as I could relate to how the person's journey goes through the story. I wouldn't look at them and think; "Wow, this is a strong, accurate representation of what someone with a learning disorder has to go through, but I can't relate to them because they're ASIAN! We're nothing alike"! You wanna know why? Because that's just close minded, selfish and borders on potential racism! I'm not gonna act like EVERY person with a learning disorder are the same, but that doesn't mean we become less invested in them because of their ethnicity or cultural background!
Third, even if we were to accept ANY of this as truth, that doesn't mean that anime is inclusive of all races. In fact, the only reason we don't really see that much diversity with Japanese characters in anime is because the Japanese are homogeneous, thus we can instantly tell when someone in anime is not Japanese. At the very least, characters of different ethnic backgrounds are showcased. Don't believe me? Well, here are just a few examples:
Where's your "inclusive of all races" argument now, dickhead?!... MST3K, would you mind?
Thanks!
So yeah, even before talking about this film, we're on shaky ground. Even if someone were to see this film for the first time, without any knowledge of the show or the behind the scenes bullshit,... this film has 6% on Rotten Tomatoes, how do you THINK it'll turn out?!
The film adapts about 8-9 episodes of the show, all done horribly I might add. As expected, the story (or lack thereof) is of Katara and Sokka trying to get to the North Pole and help Aang learn Waterbending, all the while being chased by the banished Fire Nation Zuko, his unassuming uncle Iroh and his rival, Admiral Zhao. But of course, in Shyamalan's mind, that's NOWHERE near as interesting as the characters just lazing around and talking... oh, and I don't mean interacting with each other or talking about how they feel about the whole thing; I mean just talking. No character growth, no banter, no jokes; just talking!
Immediate problem; the dialogue (of which there is far too much) is horrible. None of it is about how the characters feel or giving the audience insight into their personalities. All the dialogue in this film is just exposition! There are entire scenes just focused on the characters having to explain something to the audience -- I mean, each other! And because of the wooden acting that even "Man of Steel" would be calling too flat, you will quickly lose focus as you get the idea that the actors don't care about what they're talking about! I think the Nostalgia Critic summed it up best:
Thanks, Cri --
Dammit, Casper!
Still, even with how badly the dialogue is written, do you wanna know the worst part about it? MOST OF IT WORTHLESS! There's a small moment when Aang is trying to commune with the spirits and before he does so, he feels the need to explain how someone meditates... I'm not even kidding! His exact lines are:
"To get your Airbending tattoos, you have to meditate for long periods of time without losing focus. Some of the great monks can meditate for four days". This is a detail that's completely unnecessary, as it comes right the fuck out of nowhere, especially since Shyamalan could've SHOWN THIS VISUALLY!! Shyamalan has been in Hollywood long enough to realise the rule is "Show, don't tell."
And this is then followed by Katara trying to talk to him, thus interrupting his attempts to meditate, showing that she didn't even listen to him; making the line entirely pointless! And that's nothing; this is how our villains back story is revealed, as Zuko just asks a random boy in a Fire Nation colony to tell him and Iroh about how Zuko was banished due to speaking out against a strategy and being physically scarred by his bastard of a father. We didn't need this as, due to the fact that Shyamalan actually filmed the scene of Zuko being scarred, this could've been a flashback from Zuko's point of view to remind himself of his failures, or Iroh talking to the crew to explain his attitude! Shyamalan had ways around this, and he chose the fucking lazy route!
Then again, it wouldn't matter if it was done visually or entirely with dialogue. Why? Because the characters have been reduced from entertaining, multi-layered individuals to stoic, boring, exposition spewing robots! This is probably more insulting than giving them shitty dialogue, because the characters in the show are written as human fucking beings, with their personalities and ideals shining through before we needed to know their role in the story. In this film, Shyamalan spends more time on establishing the role of the Avatar and his powers... before we even get his fucking name at the 25 minute point! This clearly shows that Shyamalan didn't give an iota of a shit when it came to the characters, just their role in the story and never treating them as people! This is more of an obvious indication that he had never seen the show, as the idea of treating someone more as a tool and not a person was the EXACT reason Aang ran from his responsibilities in the first place!
But the most insulting example has to be with Katara. Being a strong, independent, multi-faceted person with her own flaws and issues, Katara from the show shown herself as how to do a strong female character without having to conform to making her a generic tomboy. Katara in the film? Not even close! She virtually does nothing in the entire film to warrant her existence let alone someone to portray her! She does nothing, affects nothing, makes no convincing argument and takes a back seat to the horrible exposition and acting to even stand out! This isn't just a bad depiction of the character, but one that borderlines on being a sexist depiction; the same sexism that Katara in the show railed against and made a significant stand against to get female Waterbenders trained in combat. Hell, much of the bullshit casting choices were because Shyamalan wanted Nicola Peltz to be in the film, thus obviously didn't give a single shit when it came to her characterisation! I hate that I have to keep using this clip, but:
And you know what else is missing from this film? The lore! "Avatar", even if they botched it up in season two of "Legend of Korra", had some terrific and compelling world-building and lore. So much to look in to, analyse and compare to other great fantasy stories; "Lord of the Rings", for instance. But with this film, we don't get any of that! All we get is just the bare-bones minimum of storytelling, with little to no reference to the Avatars that came before Aang, or an expansion on Katara's tragic backstory with the loss of her mother. Even the more rudimentary stuff like Master Pakku's lost relationship with Katara and Sokka's Gran-Gran, or Aang's feelings of loss, despair and responsibility at the discovery of the genocide of his entire culture; all of this stuff was used brilliantly in the show to inform us of how the characters acted and what their motivations were! If you cut that out and give us stock, generic protagonists with no personalities, then that's you going out of your way to basically give a cinematic middle finger to the audience! I don't even feel the need to re-use the "Just didn't care" clip at this point; you're already thinking it!
The cinematography and direction in this film is complete and utter shit, once more done as a means of Shyamalan showing of that he can do entire scenes in one take! Granted, doing stuff in one entire take can be impressive, but only when used for the right moments. To again draw a parallel to myself, one of the final assignments for my first year at University was that we had to create and film a short 5 minute piece that focused around the overall theme of "dystopia". To capture this feeling, we shot an actress walking through the park listening to this ominous and incorporeal voice warning her of something that will happen. We did the piece in one take, because we wanted to create an uncomfortable setting and atmosphere, accented by having the camera focused mostly on the actresses face and her reactions to the voice and what it is saying to her, as only she could hear it. Shyamalan however just does entire conversations in one take just to show off his ego and "skill" as a director. It's artsy just for it's own sake and just makes the film feel even slower than it already is!
And it's not like the choreography of the fights is any better, with far too much emphasis on showing off an entire katas worth of martial arts only to result in a puff of air. Keep in mind, I'm a guy who likes watching Japanese content that feature high-tier, fast paced choreography... on the budget of a TV show. Granted, not everyone is familiar with stuff I watch, such as Kamen Rider or Super Sentai, thus can't tell when the choreography is done well. But an easy way to spot is how fast and fluent the movements are. In well directed stunt work, even if you have initial trouble keeping up with the fight, playing back in your mind reminds you of how well-versed and fluent each action is, which all culminates in the event of the fight itself. In poorly directed stunt, you can tell when someone is just waving their limbs around and when their fists don't connect to the opponent, especially when their actions don't result in the effect that should come from it.
Just to give you an example, here's the (sadly heavily edited for YouTube to avoid copyright) final battle from Kamen Rider Ex-Aid, a show made on a TV budget:
It's fast paced, sure, but you can see all the time and effort being put into every move and how each action results in the right effect. It is legitimately fun and exciting!
By contrast, here's a fight scene from the film, which had a budget of roughly $150 million:
See the difference? This one, in spite of higher productions values, has less going on. It's slow, lazy, unfocused and, worst of all, BORING!!! For most of the scene, you're just waiting for something fun to happen, but all we get is just people standing around looking like idiots! You can't fail more than that!
And really, that should have been the real promotional quote on the front of the DVD case: "The Last Airbender: You can't fail more than THIS"!
If the extensively long paragraphs worth of rants were indication, not to mention the title of this blog, I think it's save to say that I fucking hate this movie. It's one thing for a film to try and fail, but to not even try at all is even worse. The acting is monotone for the entire cast, with no-one giving even a semblance of emotion; the action scenes are slow, being both poorly choreographed and directed; the effects are cheap, never once do they ever look like they're really there; the storytelling is horseshit, it's uninteresting much in place of something that should be awe-inspiring; the characters are horrible, coming off as emotionless, useless planks of wood used only to facilitate bad exposition and dialogue. It's not even enjoyably bad; it's BORING! But at the same time, it's insulting, knowing that it came from such a great show. Literally nothing about it works! Fuck this movie to the end of days! Fuck the plastic that was used to make the DVD case! Fuck the lumberjacks who cut down the trees that were turned into the paper that was used to write this movie! And most importantly:
FUCK! YOU! M NIGHT SHYAMALAN!!!
... Okay, one more time:
I want to thank you all for reading these reviews over the last 6 months; I never would have come this far without your support. Here's hoping that the next line of reviews will be more relaxing than this.
Til next time, this is Callum Lewis, the Media Man, signing off!
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