Curse You, M. Night!
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender. I own all three seasons and rewatch them frequently. The words “PREE-viously, on AVATAH” make me quiver and thrill. I have thought long and hard about which element I wish I could bend, and doggone it if I haven’t had to wuss out and just decide to be the Avatar (who can bend all four) because I can’t decide.
This is the long way of saying that I am what is known as an “Avatard.” (And no, those obsessed with James Cameron’s epic special-effects extravaganza are more properly known as “morons.” We had the name first.)
So naturally I was wary when I heard M. Night Shyamalan was going to adapt the cartoons as a feature film trilogy, given that the last movie of his that I’d watched and liked was Unbreakable in 2000. I winced through Signs and rolled my eyes through The Village, and didn’t even bother to see The Lady in the Water or The Happening. He had descended to hackery; he had lost me.
I gave him my guarded approval, however, once I’d seen the interviews he did for the series DVD extras, where he talks about his deep love for the original series in almost fanboyish tones. After all, how could someone do wrong by something they love so much?
Well! Well. It turns out he was either lying about his love for Avatar or he has a completely different take on “love” than I do. Just take a look at Roger Ebert’s review, which begins with the paragraph,
“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.
Or the Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer,” where The Last Airbender is currently hovering at an “8% fresh” rating—i.e., 7 non-panning reviews out of 89.
Note that most of the negative reviews I read mention the original TV series favorably or at least neutrally, and compare the film to it in extremely negative terms, so it wasn’t the premise or the underlying story that was the problem. The film was just shitty from start to finish.
So M. Night! This is my message to you: Thanks for taking one of my favorite things, killing it, reanimating it as one of the vile undead, dismembering it, and then shitting on its twitching corpse. Curse you!
P.S. I’m still undecided as to whether I’ll watch the movie. Probably not is where I currently stand. The sliver of me who still wants to see it is a masochist who is looking forward to the suffering and subsequent Twitter and blog posts it would generate. I shall do my best to squelch that pain-seeking/exhibitionist part of myself, but I make no promises as to the outcome.
