Movie Avatar: The Last Airbender

Karihkinz

Karihkinz

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Karihkinz
So this movie is getting horrible reviews and I'm some what confused as to why. I'm a huge movie lover and thought it was pretty good, however, Rottentomatoes.com is listing this as a 7% which is the worst I have ever seen any movie get. Ebert gave it a half a star. Am I missing something? In general, I found it to be beautiful with the graphics, the lines to be somewhat campy (but expected such due to this being a nickalodeon original cartoon), and while some things could have been better, I don't get the horrible reviews.

I've been reading prior to release that there is some backlash going on against M. Night because he casted so many Indian ethnic actors, crying prejudice in his casting. Do you think that could be why so many people are displeased? A friend of mine went to the midnight showing and said a majority of the crowd boo'd and some even walked out half way through.

Consider me mind-boggled.
 
The mainstream reviews appear to be panning it for having horrid acting and bad cinematography, particularly during the action sequences from what I hear.

The people booing it are all in a tizzy because the cartoon is supposed to be set in an Asian world and the casting calls sent out were requesting a bunch of white people instead of throwing the call open to everyone.

Chalking up the camp factor to it "being a Nickolodeon orginal cartoon" would usually be a good guess, but that's not really the case with this one. The actual show had ridiculously good production quality both in the art and the writing departments. I'd peg it more as a show that got released on a children's network than as a children's show.
 
I actually loved the show, and found it to be similar to Harry Potter in that it started off very childish and gradually got dark. I did think it was odd that the mostly Asian cast was either Indian or White. As for the cinematography during action scenes, I would say they were very well done and probably the better part of the movie itself.

I agree with the camp factor :) I probably could have worded that better hehe.
 
I'll be seeing it tomorrow, but my hopes of getting a decent experience out of it are slim. Shyamalan is one of those directors who won my devotion early, but has been driving me away more and more with each movie. The Happening had one or two decent set pieces, but mostly seemed tailor-made to make me hate him. The Last Airbender will probably be the last straw. At this point, I'm just going to gawk at the train wreck. Thankfully, any crimes he's committing on the big screen will not affect my love for the cartoon.
 
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I read all the bad reviews before going and was almost tempted not to. However, I had made such a big deal about going for weeks that my fiance was not letting me out of seeing it because I had gotten him all excited lol.

Go in with an open mind despite the reviews. I did, and I really enjoyed it. It's not perfect, but loving the cartoon made it entertaining :) And the battle scenes were done amazingly smooth imo. M. Night's influence doesn't even hint through the movie itself. It's not like anything else he's done and I'm grateful for that. I loved him early on as well, and quickly stopped after The Happening. It's not some random plot twist movie. You know what the basic plot is.
 
I'm going to see it on Saturday. From almost all of the reviews that I've read, the reviewer had no experience with the show before watching it. Most of the acting complaints that I've seen have been bitching about characters who are true to the show, or were contradicting themselves over if they liked the martial arts or not. The only unanimous thing I've seen is that the 3D is absolutely not worth paying for, which is really disappointing to me.

There is apparently a lot of exposition in the movie, which I think it perfectly understandable since they're compressing a whole season into a 2 hour movie. They have to set up a bunch of different characters, create the world and all of it's mythos, as well as tell the plot of season 1. That's a shitload of stuff to compress into a movie. Things will be much easier in Books 2 and 3, since they don't add that many characters, and only Toph really needs a back story for Book 2.

I can understand Sokka/Katara being white in this, since they look more like actual Inuit now. Zuko being Indian makes zero sense, though. Of all the other characters, the only one who was clearly asian was Toph; Aang looked more white than anything else. I think it's a pretty stupid reason to hate the movie though.
 
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Reading reviews on rottentomatoes.com was your first mistake. those cynical fucks trash every movie. i've never seen the cartoon this film is based on, but will likely enjoy this film none the less because i wont have some foolish set in stone idea what the film is supposed to be.
 
Zaltana said:
Reading reviews on rottentomatoes.com was your first mistake. those cynical fucks trash every movie. i've never seen the cartoon this film is based on, but will likely enjoy this film none the less because i wont have some foolish set in stone idea what the film is supposed to be.
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Not completely accurate. Most of the time if something gets something as shitty as 5% it usually deserves it. I haven't seen this so I can't judge but I'm definitely not going to theatres to see it.
 
its all a matter of opinion. however, more and more people are becoming obsessed with their own opinions and just grind anything that doesn't conscript to their idea into the ground. especially when it comes to movies. RT is a perfect example. give me a movie critic that has a truly unbiased opinion about a film and i'll listen to him/her, not a bunch of cynical fools that dig for a reason to dog a movie like a greed monger digging for gold.
 
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Zaltana said:
its all a matter of opinion. however, more and more people are becoming obsessed with their own opinions and just grind anything that doesn't conscript to their idea into the ground. especially when it comes to movies. RT is a perfect example. give me a movie critic that a truly unbiased opinion about a film and i'll listen to him/her, not a bunch of cynical fools that dig for a reason to dog a movie like a greed monger digging for gold.
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Oh Im well aware. I usually use RT scores with a grain of salt, unless something is on one of the extreme ends. Its generally safe to assume something below 10% is pretty bad and something in the 90s is atleast decent. In the end it still comes down to taste, but I'm sorry I'm not spending my money to watch a movie which is by a director that has been failing and is sitting at 6%.
 
I refuse to agree with the 6%. I've seen movies that I just wanted to sleep through or walk out of because of horrible plots and bad acting that got 20-30%. It's all a backlash about the race castings from the research I've done to figure out the bad ratings. Racebending.com has been a huge role in making sure this movie doesn't see much positive feed back.
 
I'm not completely convinced fanboys affect critic reviews lol.

But if you liked the movie, hey you're entitled to your opinions.
 
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I'm not a fanboy :P I saw the two seasons a few years back and the story was impressive. That hardly qualifies me as a fan boy (girl).
 
Wasn't referring to you. I meant the people who are angry about it for the castings. I don't think that impacted the reviews I've read very much.
 
Karihkinz said:
It's all a backlash about the race castings from the research I've done to figure out the bad ratings.
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I don't think that could account for the sweeping condemnation. It's entirely possible it's just a bad movie. Shyamalan doesn't handle action or emotion or... well, movement in general. I was wary when I heard he'd be handling such an action-intensive storyline, considering the actors under his direction are so wooden it would make George Lucas ask him to liven things up. I certainly didn't think Quentin Tarantino had Kill Bill in him after all the talky stuff he'd been known for, so I was eager for Shyamalamadingdong to prove me wrong.
 
It's not just rottentomatoes.com that gives it a very low score. As of writing this, it's metacritic.com score is 21. Like Hali said, there is the possibility that it's an extremely poorly executed movie. I never saw the series as I was well past my Nickelodeon days when it started airing. If there are several seasons worth of episodes, there is no way you can condense all of that down into a good, coherent movie because you're going to have to leave out a lot of elements. Again, as others have also pointed out, Shyamalan's storytelling ability has been getting progressively worse, and this is coming from someone who loved Village and was at least intrigued by the premise of The Happening.
 
Zaltana said:
its all a matter of opinion. however, more and more people are becoming obsessed with their own opinions and just grind anything that doesn't conscript to their idea into the ground. especially when it comes to movies. RT is a perfect example. give me a movie critic that has a truly unbiased opinion about a film and i'll listen to him/her, not a bunch of cynical fools that dig for a reason to dog a movie like a greed monger digging for gold.
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But that's the beauty of RT. It's an aggregate score. Usually involving over 200 critics.
 
I saw this movie and thought it was just ok. The actor playing Aang was horrible and the editing seemed weird, but Patel did a really good job as Zuko. I have watched the animated series but went in with an open mind. In the upcoming sequels I hope that the films have more humor and less talking in some parts.
 
I never saw the show so I had no idea what the movie was about. My gf usually goes to RT for reviews but forgot this time, a friend invited us who was a big fan of the show, and despite the different worlds we all come from all of us really enjoyed it! I don't understand the bad ratings at all. Cinematography was gorgeous, acting wasn't THAT bad, and the action was there. Didn't watch in 3D though since over where I live at least the 3D doesn't come out for a few days. Can't wait for the obvious sequel. I would've rated this movie in the 70-80's. Had no idea Shyamalan was involved at all and it didn't show. imo its worth the movie ticket~
 
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