THE LAST AIRBENDER hit American Screens back on the 1st July this year, unfortunately it did to some fairly shocking reviews and disappointing box office figures. Now its time for me to put in my 10cents.
I’ve always been a fan of M. Night Shyamalan but I do choose to ignore ‘The Happening’ as I still can’t grasp the whole concept and general shittyness of that film but when I heard that Paramount Pictures put and estimated 150million behind Shyamalan to make a film that wasn’t his original concept that intrigued me enough to get excited about it. I decided to go into this film completely blind as I knew basically nothing about the Nickelodeon TV Show – AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER and by the sounds of things that was the right decision.
Now I simply love visuals in any film, if I sit down and watch something on screen and I’m looking at everything, the background, the sky, the set dressing and not just the central character it just sucks me in and with THE LAST AIRBENDER it didn’t disappoint, I actually really enjoyed this film. Reading over what some of the critics have said it just really surprised me and honestly I was quite shocked by a few of there comments. The CGI in this film is that impressive it made me feel like the guys who made the Star Wars prequels were involved and guess what the Visual Effects Supervisor from Attack of the Clones was. James Newton Howard came back for the Seventh time to work with Shyamalan on the musical score which is as impressive as the effects, Howard recently received acclaim for his work with Hans Zimmer on the Score for the film ‘The Dark Knight’.
As always there are a few negatives, there is some really shocking dialog and some weak performances but when it comes down to look at the film as a whole I’m still really impressed in what they managed to pull off. Dev Patel who rose to stardom in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ stars as the villain Prince Zuko who at sometimes pulls off the role fairly easy but at other times seems to try way to hard. Jackson Rathbone who we recently seen in the ‘Twilight’ films plays Sokka who at occasionally convinces me he’s not a vampire but I still expected the fangs to come out and lastly Cliff Curtis (Training Day) who attempts to bring the Fire Lord Ozai to life who’s performance was just stale and boring. The Standouts are Nicola Peltz as Katara, Noah Ringer as Aang and Shaun Toub as Iroh, Zuko’s Uncle they always came across to me believable and seemed to put an incredible amount of effort into their perspective roles.
THE LAST AIRBENDER is a fun filled action adventure, its not perfect but as a whole visually sensational. I would love to see a sequel, there is no plans for one as yet but Shyamalan has written a rough draft and fingers crossed it gets greenlit. I enjoyed this film that much I went out and purchased season one of the animated series.
THE LAST AIRBENDER is in Cinema’s today and I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.