THE LAST AIRBENDER

As most of us know by now, M. Night Shyamalan had his sense of humor surgically removed shortly after puberty. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but when it involves a property as bright and fun as Avatar: The Last Airbender, the results can be fatal. What part of this story necessitated such a po-faced treatment? How does PG kung fu and cool elemental magic benefit from such a dreary and joyless approach? The Last Airbender has its share of grown-up fans, but they need to feel its buoyancy as much as the kids do. Shyamalan no longer possesses the ability to convey that.

His scriptwriting hasn’t improved much either. Forced to transpose a huge amount of material in a very short time, he resorts to clunky voice-overs, thudding exposition, and plot-driven dialogue which sucks the life out of every single character in the piece. You sense their potential beneath the calcified structure: the twinkle that fans of the animated series presumably came to see.

Admittedly, he has a tough job gathering all of the details of this universe into a single package. But he demonstrates so little trust in the audience with his need to explain each and every little thing, that our capacity to discover the world for ourselves gets flattened beneath his condescending bombast.

The short version is this: the inhabitants of an alternate, Earth-like planet practice magic (called “bending”) based on the four elements: air, earth, fire and water. A leader known as the Avatar possesses mastery of all four elements, but he disappeared a century ago, In the ensuing decades, the forces of fire have disrupted the balance and attempted to conquer adherents of the other three. Then a young man named Aang (Noah Ringer) appears, possessing powers of airbending long thought extinct. A pair of waterbenders (Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone) resolve to help him master the magic of the other elements, and thus restore harmonic balance to their world.

All well and good: enough to carry a breezy bit of summer fluff and perhaps make some new fans out of the property. But Shyamalan proves unwilling to depart from any other aspects of the cartoon’s narrative: stuffing the plot to the gills with all manner of extraneous detritus. One character appears for five minutes before making an immense sacrifice, which may have been moving had we learned a single thing about her beforehand. The firebenders engage in Byzantine scheming against each other, requiring chunks of ungainly explanations which barely distinguish one character from another. Aang’s motivations should be clear, but Shyamalan thrusts his backstory at us in an unwieldy chunk devoid of nuance or personality.

All of it suggests an effort to compress twenty-odd animated episodes into a tight 100 minutes. As much as it may pain the fans, that process demands sacrifices which The Last Airbender is unwilling to make. When coupled with Shyamalan’s painful dialogue and the needless 3D effects which cast a dull pall over the visuals, the film’s positive elements have no chance to flourish.

And contrary to the early buzz, it does contain positive elements. The world itself looks gorgeous (or would if they’d just brighten the image a little bit), suggesting a place close to our own planet but just a few degrees off. Shyamalan shows a flair for the fight scenes, as his camera swings elegantly through the combatants in long, unbroken shots, and the various bits of elemental magic display an appreciatively cool vibe. Though the characters remain ciphers (and badly articulated ones at that), you get the sense that they could bloom in a less restrictive environment, and that they would be well worth watching if they did. As badly as he’s stumbled lately, Shyamalan remains a consummate visual director, and his storytelling skills find fertile ground with such images as the firebenders’ iron ships and Aang’s strangely adorable mount/mascot.

Unfortunately, none of that makes a dent in the fatal cloak of pretension smothering the film tight. With an ill-conceived effort to cash in on the 3D craze and Shyamalan’s utter inability to let a fun little story be a fun little story, any sense of energy or excitement quickly fades from view. Aang is such a happy fellow in the cartoon. The Last Airbender can’t stand to let him smile, nor does it understand why we might enjoy seeing that. With material like this, nothing else matters.

THE LAST AIRBENDER: Official Movie Trailer