There was a point, about three quarters of the way through "The Last Airbender" that I thought to myself "I made it all the way through "Salo". I can make it through this."
Believe me when I say that this movie was one of the most painful, badly written, badly acted, incoherent jumble of horseshit I've ever sat through. I was all geared up to talk about my favorite Italian Cannibal movies with this entry when my girlfriend suggests going to see this and the entire course of my life was changed. Everything. It's not just films. The taste of my food has been altered. My very body chemistry has been changed by watching this movie.
Lemme start by muscling through what I will loosely term "the plot". Bear with me though, I'm not entirely sure I get it.Also, there might be spoilers only because I'm not sure which plot points are a) common knowledge in the Airbender mythos, b) badly telegraphed in the movie due to terrible screenwriting or c) being completely misunderstood by yours truly.
Ok so the movie opens with both an opening crawl and a voice-over narration, because if you're going to use one hackneyed, drama-murdering exposition technique, why don't you use two?
"Why didn't I think of that?"
The crawl and voice over inform us that the world is split into four nations based on the four elements of Hellnic physics; Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Which is sort of weird, because as we'll soon see, this world is very, very, very Asian (except for the white people, more on that later), so it probably would have made it ring a little truer if it was based on the Chinese elements of Fire, Earth, Water, Metal, and Wood, but I suppose "The Last Woodbender" doesn't really sound all that mythical. And hey, if I can give the Legend of the Five Rings a pass on that, I won't harp on Airbender too much for it (although maybe I should, because it came nowhere near providing me with as much joy as L5R does).
Anyway, I guess the Fire Nation are kind of a bunch of dicks, because they want to take over the rest of the world and, as we learn a little bit later, want to overthrow the power of the Spirit World, which is sort of a parallel-dimension where kindly spirits watch over the mortal realm and give us guidance and protection and candy and stuff. Now I'm not really sure WHY the Fire Nation want to severe mankind from the otherworldly protection of benevolent immortals, but I'm sure they have a good reason. Maybe the Spirit World levies really exorbitant taxes on protection and guidance. Or maybe the Fire Nation are just a bunch of determined militant atheists.
Typical Fire Nation Resident.
Anyway, in continuing with the whole Hellenic physics thing, each of the four elemental groups (The Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, the Air Nomads and the Earth Anarcho-Communist Collectives) occasionally birth wizards who can manipulate their elements. These wizards are called Benders.
Benders can control, throw, move, and otherwise use their respective elements to beat the holy hemorrhaging fuck out of other people. Once in a while, somebody called the Avatar is born, who is the only person who can manipulate ALL the elements and talk to the Spirit World. And naturally, The Fire Nation want to stop the Avatar from talking to the Spirit World because....they're the villains, and shut up.
Now we start off with the two whitest Eskimos in the world finding a little boy and a bantha frozen in a huge ice ball. The girl whiteskimo is called Katarra and her brother is called FUCK YOU I HATE YOU SO MUCH DIE YOU OBNOXIOUS CUNTBAG. Or Sokka, for short. Sokka is a complete simpering moron who can't do anything, while Katarra is a fledgling waterbender. They free the boy and the bantha (who can fly), bring them back to their little Aryan-Inuit hunting village, and wouldn't you know it, before you can say "the Mighty Quinn", their beloved peasant village is beset by the legions of the Fire Nation.
"Sup?"
The Fire Nation are a bunch of Indians (dot, not feather) in samurai armor and pimp coats, under the command of the kid from Slumdog Millionare, Prince Zuko. It turns out Prince Zuko was thrown out of the Fire Nation by his dad for...
...ok really I'm trying. They do explain it, and there's even a flashback to show it, but I'm not sure I followed. Prince Zuko had some friends who were going to die in some battle and he did...something to stop them from dying and his dad-king got mad and said you're moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air. Zuko had
to... fight in a magic duel (Zuko is a firebender, as is EVERY OTHER MEMBER OF THE FIRE NATION WHO GETS A NAME) to...prove he was innocent? As punishment? No, no, being kicked out was the punishment, so the duel had to be a trial. Anyway, Zuko refuses to fight in the duel and his dad burns his face and then tosses him out but still gives him a big steampunk death ship, a retinue or armed guards and allows his uncle to travel with them. The Fire King says ol' Zukes can come back when he catches the Avatar, who the Fire King somehow knows is still around, even though they massacred the monastery the Avatar was supposed to come from a hundred years ago.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Anyway, to absolutely no-ones surprise, the little kid from the ice ball is the Avatar. They know this because he is an Airbender, and all the airbenders were supposed to have been killed a hundred years ago at that Monastery. They capture the kid, whose name is Ang, and take him onto their deathship, from which he immediately escapes and flies away with the two Caucasian Eskimos to his monastery, which of course is a hundred years abandoned and full of skeletons. It turns out Ang did the classic "I don't want to be the savior of the earth" thing and ran away right before the Fire Nation came storming in a fucked up all the monk's shit.
The reason he did this kind of baffles me, because as Ang relates the story, the monks told him the Avatar can't have a family and I guess Ang really, really wanted to have a family, because that's enough to make him go "Fuck my destiny, I'm flying away on my sky-bantha and crashing into the ice and being frozen in stasis for a hundred years! That'll show you for ruining a nine-year old's dreams of domestic tranquility!"
"I WANNA KNOW WHAT LOVE IS!!!!!!! I WANT YOU TO SHOW ME!!!!!"
I found this really weird because he was raised by MONKS, one of which he said was basically like his father. And he was surrounded by other children, who would certainly have been like siblings. So he sort of already has a family, which means I can only assume they mean he can't get married. And why would he have wanted to get married, even before he found out he was the Avatar? He was raised by monks, clearly with the intention that he too would be a monk. Why would he even consider getting married? Wouldn't it have been ingrained in him from very, very early on that as a monk, he wouldn't get married, and that by denying himself that, he would be more enlightened since he wouldn't waste his energy on sex and banking and re-shingling the roof and quietly resenting the heifer in stretch pants that had once been the tight nineteen year old waitress he married?
So Ang confesses to Sokka and Katarra that because he was a big old baby and ran away from destiny, he never learned any of the other Bending techniques, and they decided they have to bring him to the Northern Water Tribe to learn how to waterbend since that's the "next element in the cycle"(whatever). Despite the fact that they have a flying bantha, and despite the fact that they bring the audiences attention to this by saying "Hey, we have a flying bantha. We should ride on it to the Water Tribe!", they seem to walk the whole way, stopping by other villages and fighting the Fire Nations as they go. Aren't they trying to avoid being captured?
I have another question.
They couldn't have gone THAT far from the Sokka and Katarra's village, right? Why didn't they just go back and learn about waterbending there? I mean, I know Katarra is said
to be the last of the Southern Waterbenders, but her mom was a waterbender, wasn't she? She probably has some books on it, is all I'm saying. Katarra isn't learning her own waterbending in a vacuum.
So in addition to being dogged by Zuko, they're also being chased by the Indian guy from the Daily Show, who is a general in the Fire Nation. He not only wants to
capture the Avatar himself, he also wants to kill Prince Zuko because....
...
Anyway, there's a lot of painfully bad dialog, Ang gets captured by the guy from the Daily Show and rescued by Zuko in a ninja costume, and then Zuko gets knocked out and Ang runs back to his friends, they get to the Northern Water Tribe and Ang begins to learn waterbending. Daily Show Guy somehow figures out that the ninja who rescued Ang was Zuko and reports this back to the Fire King, because Daily Show Guy can be anywhere at anytime should the script dictate it. The Fire King says for Daily Show not to harm Zuko, but Daily Show blows up Zuko's deathship anyway, and then the Fire Nation sails to attack the Northern Water Kingdom, because in addition to being able to see through demonic ninja masks and being able to teleport, Daily Show can also figure out precisely where Ang and his friends are going, out of all the places in the ENTIRE WORLD.
Oh, Zuko also magically survives being blown up. There is no explanation for this.
So they get to the Northern Water Nation, who are less like Eskimos and more like Tolkien elves trapped in the It's a Small World ride for all eternity, and Ang begins to learn waterbending while Sokka yearns to put his little woodbender into the Water Princess.
This "romance" "subplot" is perhaps the worst part of a movie full of parts that would already be the worst parts in a dozen different movies. Sokka and Princess Snowblood or whatever her name is are onscreen together four times in the whole movie, never for longer than a minute and a half at a time. They only actually speak to each other in the third scene, and by then, its clear that they're deeply, deeply in love. Or at least, it's clear that their dialog wants us to believe they are deeply, deeply in love. All I got out of it was a feeling that this movie was originally fourteen hours long and they cut out all the character development to get it under two hours. This is the worst romance in cinematic history. Anakin and Padme had a more believable courtship than this.
"Sand."
As the Fire Nation's ships approach, we learn that Daily Show has found the location of the Spirits of the Ocean and the Moon, the two powerhouses which influence waterbending. His plan is to kill these spirits and therefore leave the waterbenders' magic impotent and ineffective. So as this huge battle is going on, Daily Show and Zuko's uncle sneak into the cave where the spirits are to kill them. The spirits have taken the form of two fish, Yin and Yang, and are merrily swimming around this little pond in the cave. Daily Show grabs the Moon Fish and is about to stab it, when Unkie has a change of heart.
Again, I have some questions.
I understand that both the Moon and The Ocean god-fish would have affect on waterbenders, because of the moons effects on the tides, yatta yatta. But wouldn't it seem...I don't know...a hell of a lot more sensible to KILL THE OCEAN GOD-FISH? To cripple the power of the moon is one thing, but if you destroy the physical incarnation of the OCEAN, don't you think it will have an even more devastating effect on people who manipulate water? But no, whatever Aasif, kill the Moon god-fish thing, whatever.
Wait, I'm not done questioning this scene.
Like I said, Unkie has reservations about killing the fish-god. Destroying one half of Yin and Yang, he says, will have a devastating effect on the natural order of things. The World will be thrown into chaos, the elemental balance will be undone, blood will rain from the sky, cats and dogs will live together, etc. etc.
And what does Daily Show say?
He says "This is no time for childish superstitions." as if his killing of the fish will have absolutely zero effect on anything, and Unkie is completely retarded for worrying about magic and elemental balance. And then he kills the fish.
Hold on a cotton-pickin' second there, Aasif. What childish superstitions are you talking about? You mean the childish superstitions that these are God-fish with magical powers that affect the strength of primal Water? One of the very real elements that infuse and surround the world you live in? Another of these elements being Fire, which you yourself, as a FIRE WIZARD, are able to manipulate? That childish superstition? The one that forms the very backbone of YOUR ENTIRE PLAN OF ATTACK? The one you were planning on being true, because the whole point of killing the fucking fish in the first place was to fundamentally damage the elemental cycle and throw everything out of balance? You know, THAT CHILDISH SUPERSTITION?
AGAGAGAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
God, at this point, who gives a shit anymore. The bad guys lose, the good guys win, the elemental balance is restored, Daily Show graphically drowns in a water-death-sphere, and Zuko might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says "I WILL BECOME A GOOD GUY." There's a hook for an inevitable sequel, which hopefully, after how bad this one wound up, will now become a whole lot more evitable.
There isn't an ounce of charm in this movie. The acting is terrible, wooden, Star Wars prequel level. The plot is a tangled mess of dangling threads and gaping holes. Everything feels rushed, condensed, and underdeveloped. The special effects were actually pretty decent though, although as I understand it if you went to see the 3D version it looked like total crap.
I hate this movie.
I could have been talking about Italian cannibal movies, but noooooo.
There is nothing in the world worse than "The Last Airbender." Nothing. I can't even make an Avenged Sevenfold joke here. To call this movie the worst movie ever is an insult to Battlefield Earth.
