The Last Airbender

The Last Airbender is a live action movie based on the popular Nickelodeon cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender. (Due to obvious reasons they dropped Avatar from the title...thanks to James Cameron) The story is set in a world that is split into four regions; Air, Fire, Earth and Water. Certain people within the regions have the abilities to bend/manipulate the element with which they are born into. There is however one person, born again and again into a new being, known as the Avatar, who has the ability to bend all four elements. The story centres around the young Avatar, Aang (played by Noah Ringer) who after being accidently frozen for 100 years, is freed from two water tribe teenagers; Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone). Aang awakes to find that the Fire nation has taken over the world, killing all other Air people in hope of locating the Avatar. For many years the Water and Earth tribes have been suppressed by the Fire Nation’s violence but with the reappearance of the Avatar, hope is reborn and a rebellion begins. Aang and his water tribe friends, set out on an adventure, so Aang can learn how to bend the other elements, however the banished Fire Prince, Prince Zuko (Dev Patel) is on a hunt to capture the Avatar.
Written in one paragraph, although maybe somewhat confusing, the plot seems intriguing, unique and maybe even fun, which is exactly what the film is NOT. Writer, director and producer M. Night Shyamalan, has created a terrible film. The writing is pathetic, everything relies on dialogue, it seems that Shyamalan has forgotten the number one screenwriting rule; that is to tell the story VISUALLY. The dialogue itself is beyond corny; it is stiff, unrealistic and downright laughable. He wrote narration into the film, which could seem like a smart idea but it actually adds nothing to the plot, it just further confuses the audience and doesn’t really move the story forward. One could say that the acting is terrible, and I’m not denying that, but I think that even the world’s greatest actors could not bring justice to this poorly written and directed film.
The only redeeming factors are the martial art stunts, the fairly good CGI, more specifically the awesome way they visualised the bending of the elements, and finally, Dev Patel. He was easily the best actor in the film, you may recognise him from Skins series 1 and 2 and more recently Slumdog Millionaire. He is the only actor who actually attempts to develop a character, despite being heavily, and I mean heavily, weighed down by poor writing and direction.
I would suggest staying away from this film and I would instead watch the TV series, which unlike the film, is amazing, which makes me think that if anyone else had written, directed and produced the film, it may not be as bad, because one thing is for certain; the 150 million that M. Night Shyamalan spent on this film is better used as toilet paper.