The Gaming Den

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOf73ULgDzo

I don't know how or why, but I have an intense desire to NOT see this movie. I knew MNS has been shitting it up since after Unbreakable, but this just seems atrocious.

Keep that man away from anything.

To give you an idea of how badly he fucked up the adaptation, the North Pole tribe is instructed to put out all their fires prior to the siege beginning, to deny the enemy a source of fire. As if Firebenders don't straight-up create their element.

That looked like the least entertaining fight between two elementalists. Ever.

I know, right? I think you'd do better with a Jackass-like scene where one person has a flamethrower and one person has a fire hose.

The clip isn't that bad. Or rather, the choreography isn't unsalvageable.

Zuko and Katara's actors just need to act more seriously and the fight needs to be sped up. Not Benny Hill-style, just that the movements needs to be quicker and the elements get manipulated faster.

If you've seen the cartoon, one of the things that will strike you is how fast the attacks are. It's not fast in a 'super-speed' sense but fast in a 'everything flows together and there's little time to react'. It's very striking if you watch Avatar after watching another action show with a more stately pace, like, say, Yu Yu Hakusho.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Zuko and Katara's actors just need to act more seriously and the fight needs to be sped up. Not Benny Hill-style, just that the movements needs to be quicker and the elements get manipulated faster.

Dear Lord, yes. ATTACK! BLOCK! pause? What? Who pauses to glower in a fight?

Such a great TV show, such a bad movie. What a waste. I'm waiting for a fan-made movie to come along, because really, it seems like a trained monkey could do a better job at this point.

This fight needs faster moving fire. I mean seriously, those fireballs are so slow that I don't think anyone needed to block them, just walk out of the way.

And why is Zuko really Indian? And where is his scar?

I have to say that my biggest problem is that it doesn't seem like A Zuko knows what he is doing, B that neither of them seem to be doing anything other than going through the forms, and C yes the fire is so slow that if not for the Avatar being right behind her I think she seriously could calmly walk out of the way of the flames.

Akula wrote:
And why is Zuko really Indian? And where is his scar?

Because MNS is Indian.

And they half-assed the scar with just a bit of skin-tone changing. Instead of giving him something like a real-life version of the show (wrinkled and pretty nasty).

Your opinion is shared by many:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/last_ai ... _order=asc

Ebert gave it half a star. Choice quote:
'"The Last Airbender" is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here.'
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... /100639999

well, as my friend keeps defending some of the minor changes, it can be seen as more of a reimagining of the series than a direct adaptation. This explains a few things:

• Name pronunciations. Everyone in the movie-verse pronounces A and I as if they were Japanese, meaning people are referring to the Aang as Ong, pronunciation wise, and pronounce Avatar as Awvitar. And Iroh is pronounced with Japanese vowels to be Eroh.
• Different amalgams for the nations' cultures. The fire kingdom of the movie verse is a Japanese/Roman amalgamation portrayed by Indian actors. Except Ozai, who just looks Roman.
• The changes to how bending works. EVERYONE needs their element in evidence to bend, even firebenders.

However, a reimagination does not mollify the following issues:

• The names are distracting. I tried to just go with them, but every time Aang, Iroh, or Sokka's name was said, it was so distracting I started cringing.
• They had no clue what they were doing with the nations. Fine, make the Fire nation a Japanese/Roman imperialistic, manifest destiny culture. Fine, have Indians play them. But DO something with it more than figure our how to dress the actors and sets.
• Every bender is microscopic in the pants compared to Aang, and a lesser extent, Katara, unless they're an old master. There's a scene in the Fire nation's earth prison (which isn't on a boat in the movie, just normal earth) which has 12 guys working together to lazily float a rock the size of a basketball at some Fire guards. Seriously. 11 guys do a form to create the rock, and one directs it to fly like a giant bumblebee. Zuko needs his element in evidence to bend, when, even if you want to say the rank and file fire benders of the cartoon needed a pre-existing flame, no named fire bender ever did.

Then there's the fact that they're clearly trying to make Zuko's Heel Face Turn easier. This is vaguely understandable, but takes away almost the entire spirit of the character. It's why they made his scar less severe (though it's definitely still there), it's why he's got his second/third season hair, and it's why they're not showing his drive to capture Aang. I mean, hell, this Zuko is a lot more apathetic. "I need to catch the avatar for my honor. ...Oh, he flew away. damn."

Katara's being played by an ambulatory rock. No real emotion, no inflection, nothing. Doesn't even look the part. Hell, she doesn't even look like Sokka.

Sokka's being played much more seriously, which is a shame. They should give him more humour. Maybe not his lame jokes, just more moments of comedy.

Iroh is perfectly fine in spirit. The spirit of the character is conveyed, even if the picture is completely different.

There is no plot or character development. Everyone's just got a few coins of each in their pockets and hands one or two to the audience periodically.

Appa is not a character in the movie.
He's a relatively small set.

Prak_Anima wrote:it can be seen as more of a reimagining of the series than a direct adaptation.

Is any imagination in evidence? If not, it's just a bad adaptation.

They actually only have two Indian actors in the movie. The rest of the characters are european/white. None of the other fire nation characters are played by Indian descent actors.

Why would you re-pronounce names when there's only one audio track originally? Why the bad yellowface accents? WTF?

-Crissa

It seems like MNS destroys everything that he touches. Oh well - couldn't be any worse then The Happening, right? I mean, the main villians in that movie were TREES and WIND. He can only go up from there!

Prak_Anima wrote:

• Name pronunciations. Everyone in the movie-verse pronounces A and I as if they were Japanese, meaning people are referring to the Aang as Ong, pronunciation wise, and pronounce Avatar as Awvitar. And Iroh is pronounced with Japanese vowels to be Eroh.

Wouldn't Japanese pronunciation of the vowles (based on spelling) be Aang: 'eŋ' -> 'aŋ', identical pronunciation for Katara, Azula, and Zuko, Sokka: 'sakka' -> 'sokka', and Iroh 'aiɹo' -> ' iɹo'?

Japanese phonetic vowels:
Ah
I (ee)
U (ooh)
Eh
Oh

so Aang was pronounced Ahng, Sokka: Sohka, Iroh:Eeroh

Those are actually South Asian pronunciations. Iroh is pronounced "Ee-roh" because that's how it would be pronounced if that was an Anglicized transliteration of an Indian word. He said that specifically in an interview. That was right after Shyamalan went on a tirade about how exciting it was to be working on a project with "Hindu morals."

What I don't understand, is how anyone on that project could be that fucking ignorant. Shouldn't someone at some point brought up the fact that Iroh's name is written in the show as "艾洛" and that the first syllable is a Japanese/Chinese/Korean "Ai"? How could he have gotten all the way to the stage of filming the damn thing without anyone pointing out that it is fucking Buddhist, not Hindu? I understand that Buddhism and Hinduism share a common root, but for fuck's sake that is like doing a remake of Fiddler on the Roof where everyone is Muslim because they all worship one god and the women wear scarves on their heads.

-Username17

If a white guy had done this, he'd never work again. I'm just sayin'.

Edit: To clarify, I'm saying that MNS should never work again after this, not that white people should be able to get away with this.

Nihlin wrote: Ebert gave it half a star. Choice quote:
'"The Last Airbender" is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. The laws of chance suggest that something should have gone right. Not here.'
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbc ... /100639999

The mos damning and weird sentence from that review or me was this one:

Roger Ebert wrote:The story takes place in the future, after Man has devastated the planet and survives in the form of beings with magical powers allowing them to influence earth, water and fire. These warring factions are held in uneasy harmony by the Avatar, but the Avatar has disappeared, and Earth lives in a state of constant turmoil caused by the warlike Firebenders.

And I am like:


Seriously, at what point was Avatar set in the future of Earth? The eco system isn't devastated and there are no relic computers.

-Username17

Because the intended audience are tiny-minded braindead drones who can't possibly accept any environment that isn't some analogue of earth no matter how tenuous the connection is?

... yeah, I got nuthin'.

FrankTrollman wrote:Seriously, at what point was Avatar set in the future of Earth? The eco system isn't devastated and there are no relic computers.

Is this a fuckup mis-read on Ebert's part, or has this setting detail been shoehorned into the movie?

FrankTrollman wrote:Seriously, at what point was Avatar set in the future of Earth? The eco system isn't devastated and there are no relic computers.

-Username17

I think at one point where Roku's talking about Sozin's Comet he says something to the effect of, "Every one hundred years it passes near earth." (Emphasis mine.) Or maybe he says "the earth" or "Earth". But yeah, that's really all I got.

I am seriously waiting for someone to make a fan adaptation.

EDIT: In case anyone cares to double check, I think it's in Season 1, on the Winter Solstice.

OK, it has produced the best pithy review I have ever seen:

e-critic, on Shyamlan's Airbender wrote:It is so bad that not only could Uwe Boll make a better movie than Shyamalan has done here, he already has.

-Username17

I don't know, after watching it last night, it really wasn't as bad as the Happening. The dialogue was uninspired and the acting was pretty wooden, but for an action flick it was about standard. The best part is that it did cement the need to see the series in me.