The Last Airbender

2010 • 103 minutes

About this movie

Experience the thrilling live-action adventure based on the hit Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender. Join Aang, an extraordinary boy with incredible "bending" powers, as he journeys through an exotic land filled with magical creatures and powerful friends. As the Avatar, he is the only one who can end the age-old conflict between the four nations, Air, Water, Earth and Fire. An inspirational journey, The Last Airbender is exciting entertainment for the entire family!

Ratings and reviews

The Last Airbender is exactly how I expected it to be: The Last Airbender is a truly awful movie in just about every single way; It fails as a family film, it failed as an example of it's genre, and it really fails as an adaptation of the beloved animated series from 2005 (Avatar: the last airbender) for many reasons. The entire story is a retread/rehash of season 1 of the animated series. That makes the narrative choppy, soulless, unoriginal, Incohesive, flimsy, and the entire pacing is off. Even if there is another way to improve the story of the film, that wouldn't be pleasing either, now, would it? This is also inaccurate compared to it's source material and unfaithful to it's source material; unlike the Avatar cartoon, the tone of the film dark and grave like "The Golden Compass" from 2007. the elements with the "bending" is unremarkable, because the effects team is lazy to match the speed and accuracy of the bending and there are moments where the visual effect powers does not keep up with the hands of the cast. The casting is such a bad idea; actors who can't really act, or show facial expressions that much, or even reflect the personalities of the cartoon. I did not even care or root for the characters because of the fact that they are soulless cardboard cutouts with inaccurate personalities, and the acting is stupid, awkward, underwhelming, poorly directed, and the characters are so complicated to be taken seriously. Even the villains were not taken seriously, they are just like the protagonists but even weaker. Even though the movie has depth, the movie randomly wastes it's time in spades with way too many flashbacks, backstories, and explanations (a lot more bark and a little less bite). Let's get into detail: what makes the film untidy is that the screenplay and script lurches from plot point to plot point when one of the villains ask a question, but immediately moves on with no answer, and the screenplay also lacks focus by having another different shot and not paying attention and staying focused with one particular scene where it was set. The film has too much dialogue, but when the film does settle down with the dialogue, there are moments where there is inaudible talking and just the score playing, which doesn't make sense, there is more narration here than the narration from the cartoon, the narration should only happen in the intro. Some of the imagery has the useless close-ups towards the protagonists faces. The arrow tattoo on Noah Ringer's head (Noah ringer played Aang). The costumes are the closest resemblance of the clothes that the character were wearing from the cartoon so that's about as good as it will get. But, the protagonist's names were pronounced incorrectly, the characterizations for every character is inaccurate and unfaithful to the source material. The choreography of the fights are mediocre at best. Just as expected; The entertainment value is empty; no punch, no emotion, no thrills, and no flavor. When it comes to such a depressingly boring movie and a horrible one at that, "The Last Airbender" is on par with "Free Jimmy" (a 2006 Norwegian British adult computer animated comedy film). I did not even appreciate the film for basically what it is and how it is. There is not even a single surprise in this film. Even though the film has a respectable production design, and even the film has solid CGI effects, and even Dee Bradley Baker reprises his role as the vocal effects of Momo and Appa in this movie, and especially even the composer (James Newton Howard) wasted his time creating such a powerful and majestic music score, this movie fails! 1.5/5 Not Recommended.

Like many other people, I have seen the TV series this is based off of, so my opinions will always be colored by that fact. If you try and forget the TV series though, this movie is still ok. In the first half or so, the acting, dialogue, and story-line could definitely be improved. Some more details about what's going on in the world would have been useful to make the character's actions and decisions more believable. The second half has some pretty good character development, particularly for the main character. The special effects also get much better at the end. Overall, this is definitely a good family movie, particularly if you haven't seen the TV series.

Any person self respecting person who has seen the series will agree that this movie is an embaresment to the series. All the people who say that this movie is good.....is sadly mistaken. This movie should be deleted from history. What really grinds my gears is that M. Night got the names wrong on 3 of the main characters. Also several key events in the movie weren't even acknowledge. All in all this movie is trash, so don't even bother paying for it.