Avatar: The Last Airbender

[Simba]

Jul 27, 2010 17:18:17 GMT -5 Lu said:

Midnight showing, ey?! Oh, I hope you get some sort of enjoyment out of it. It wasn't as good as it could have been, but it had its moments where it was a good watch.

The films gross reached £120 million last week and it still hasn't opened up in most countries. Not sure if that's good or bad, but hey, we should find out in a month or two. XD

You know, I've set my expectations so low that I think I might actually think better of it than I thought. But that means they're going higher again, which means it's NOT going to be good, and now they're low, which means it WILL be good, and now I'm rambling and going in circles. -.-

$120 million? I have nooo idea if that's good, but I did read somewhere on IMDB that it was moving it's way high up the box office. IDK, I could be wrong.

Yeah, it was. Only a little bit though. If you compare Aang's voice in the first season and the third, his voice in the 3rd is a little bit deeper.

Well it's good that it did, I was scared of another Justin Bieber.

I got a little bit of info on that from my friend though - Zach's voice was breaking, they were going to make an episode on that, but they scratched it and raised the pitch instead. -.- That would have made a fabulously funny episode! Come on!

[Lu]

Yeah, the main reason why I think I enjoyed TLA so much was because my expectations of the film were so incredibly low. XD I did enjoy it though, especially the end...From a symbolic point of view.

Haaa, I actually LOLed at the Justin Bieber comment. XD Poor kid. Yeah, I heard about them doing that to Zach's voice too. They pitch shifted it in some episodes of the third season, just so Aang's voice wouldn't be too deep for a 12/13 year old. I would have LOVED for them to have done an episode on it though, as you said, it would have been absolutely hilarious! Sokka would have been teasing him oh-so much. ;D

Tell us your thoughts on TLA when you come back from the cinema!

[Simba]

Ok so u guize. I iz back from the cinema and I has a reviewz.






I liked it.




(^LolDrama)





I agree with Lu - I enjoyed it because my expectations were EXTREMELY low. I'll say one thing for Shyamalan - he did a good job of squishing more than 10 hours worth of episodes into a one and a half hour film. It could have been better - there were parts that needed a LOT of polishing - but I enjoyed it.

The sets were FANTASTIC. Definitely a high point of the film. Besides being completely cannon (with the exception of the Fire Nation - I'll get to that later), they were...nice on the eyes. The room with the statues of the past Avatars and the Spirit Cave were easily the best, and from what I could tell, the interiors of the Fire Nation palaces were pretty darn good too. My only problem was, like I said above, the rest of the Fire Nation. It was too field-y - like I must have mentioned when those previews came out. Plains and grass just doesn't do it for me - I expected it to be more industrial and...city-like. And I really wished we could have seen more of the Earth Kingdom aside from the small little camps. I missed Ba Sing Se and Omashu. The Earth Kingdom HUGE, absolutely HUGE, and it didn't seem fair to me that we only saw such a miniscule part of it.

The actors were...good. I was particularly surprised at Noah Ringer, because I didn't expect him to be good at all - but he was. He was very Aang-like - and he had his smile, even though we saw it about twice in the movie. The problem with Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone was that they're good actors, they really are, but their characters were completely different from the ones in the cartoon. The only reason they weren't great was because they just weren't Sokka and Katara. I don't blame them for this at all - it was after all Shyamalan's job to keep them in character. Dev, I was also impressed with. He wasn't the character he's supposed to be in the series, but for me, that wasn't a bad thing, because I found Zuko QUITE annoying in the first season. But yet, he managed to depict Zuko's anger and determination pretty perfectly. Me = happy. I don't have much to say about Iroh, because he was hardly there - but from what I saw, I liked him. Yue was bad, though. She was literally smiling when she shouldn't have been, and her speech was dull and flat. Could have been a lot better.

They could have done a LOT better job with the characters themselves though. Sokka didn't have his sarcasm and humor, but that's only one aspect of his personality. He just wasn't Sokka for me. He was frankly, quite boring. Katara's determination and stubborness and simply the fact that she was so strong - that was all missing. I was sorely disappointed with these two. In fact, they were totally unnecessary - I'm sure Aang could have gone on just as easily without them. Iroh's character was done fairly well - I like that they kept his affection for Zuko. Like I mentioned, Zuko wasn't as emo as he was supposed to be, but no complaints there.

Also, some parts of the story just didn't make sense. The imprisoned Earthbenders could have fought those soldiers anytime on their own, they were SURROUNDED by earth. I'm sure they didn't need Aang's pep talk (and WTF, that was supposed to be Katara! I'm SURE I would have thought a lot better of her if that part of her had stayed in). And if you need a source for firebending, how did Zuko manage to burn that ice away? I know Iroh did it with extreme concentration, but considering the fact that Zuko was UNDERWATER, that's not possible. This one part was particularly stupid - towards the end during the Siege of the North, at that one shot; WHY was he just standing there, and WHY were the enemy completely ignoring his existance? And it didn't make sense to me why Katara and Sokka just agreed to follow him. I know all that 'destiny blah blah blah' crap, but other than that they just decided to play hero and go with him when they didn't have to. At least they had a reason in the cartoon. Plus, when Aang raised that GIANT wave, he didn't even scratch them with it. I mean, WTF?! He's 'not supposed to hurt people', yeah, but COME ON. What was the POINT of that wave? -___-

And as flashy as some of those martial arts moves were, some of it was really unnecessary. It got boring to have to wait for about ten minutes for them to start bending and just watching them dance around. Another stupid part - six Earthbenders to move ONE rock? I was laughing at that scene - literally laughing.

But I've always thought that in the case with the HP movies, they're GREAT films when you don't take the books into consideration - as adaptations, most of them aren't that great. But with this one it was completely the opposite - it was rather faithful (e.g, the Blue Spirit scene was done almost exactly the way it was in the cartoon), but it was an okay movie on its own. But don't get me wrong, I still rather enjoyed it - although, if my expectations had been high, I would have been disappointed. Thank God for bad reviews sometimes.

So...

Effects: 8.5/10
Sets: 9/10
Acting: 7/10
Character Adaptations: Aang - 6.5/10, Katara and Sokka - 3/10, Zuko: 7/10, Iroh: 7.5/10, Ozai and Zhao: 7/10. Overal - 6/10
Overal: 6.5/10

[Lu]

Simba, if we still had the karma system in place, I would exalt you at least 10 times for that review. XD I agree with everything you said. I'm so happy you took away some enjoyment from it.

The sets really were beautiful - I'd definitely put that as a high point of the film...I mean, the SWT looked stunning. I also think that if there was more character development between the Gaang, then it would have been received a lot, lot better. I hope that if they do get to do the sequel, M. Night does not get his script passed...or it at least gets reviewed by an actual scriptwriter. Jackson, Nicola and Noah have potential to be the Sokka, Katara and Aang we all know and love if the script is done right.

About the Earthbending camp - hahahaha, IKR?! Six earthbender's for ONE ROCK?! I mean, seriously. I did burst out laughing at that part.

Did the name changes bother you at all?

[Simba]

Haha, thanks xD


You know, it was weird, but the name changes DIDN'T bother me much. Mostly because those words were hardly used, and also because they kept switching back to the original sometimes. I was like "lolwut" at first but yeah.

[Lu]

I felt the same. And yeah, I noticed that too...Sometimes they went back to the cartoon/anime pronunciations. XD Very confusing. The only one that really annoyed me was "Agni Kee" instead of "Agni Ki" - but I think that was just because I wasn't expecting that to be changed.

Even though the end was anti-climatic, I still enjoyed it, because of the whole symbolic aspect. From that awesome shot of Aang fighting 4 Fire Nation soldiers in succession to when he summoned the wave and then eventually bowing and accepting his role as the Avatar - I just loved it. XD The music that was playing through out the duration of that scene was just perfect.

Oh, aaanddd Korra now has a more specific airdate - November 2011. Long, LONG wait ahead of us. D:

[Simba]

LOL when me and my friend heard "Agni Ki" we just went "WHAT?!" out loud in the theatre. It was embarassing. xD And yeah, I really liked the scene with him bowing back to the people, although must I ask why were Fire Nation soldiers amongst that croud too?


NOVEMBER 2011??!!! That's like. More than a year away. D: I was expecting like April or May o.O B

[Simba]

I saw those as soon as I got back The panel with Zhao rambling on about the Library was hillarious. xD

[Natalie ♥]

GROSS. Aang and Katara had a kid? Can't unsee!

[Natalie ♥]

If I wrote the show, I would make sure it was Zutara-fabulous.