I know, right?

I feel uneasy about being schadenfreudey, in case there's another shoe to drop, but what could it be?

Chron review:

After spending the last decade making bad movies, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has branched out in "The Last Airbender." He has made a really bad movie.

To be specific, he has made a dull, boring, poorly acted, limply written and thoroughly unappealing fantasy, featuring bland characters locked in a struggle of no interest. What's more, his film doesn't derail. It's off track from its first seconds,

The movie is in 3-D, and it's the worst use of 3-D in the modern era. It's unimaginative, not eye-catching and ends up actually emphasizing the fakeness of the effects and the landscape.

The cast is mostly made up of unknowns - Dev Patel from "Slumdog Millionaire," as the downcast fire Prince, is the biggest name here. Using unknowns presents an opportunity to discover talent, but the young people here make the kids in the "Twilight" movies look like scintillating wits. Noah Ringer, as the title character, just seems like a nice bald child. Nicola Peltz as the last waterbender barely registers, and Jackson Rathbone as her brother keeps spitting out his lines with tension in his voice and his eyes bugging.

They needed help from their director, but Shyamalan is incapable of guiding them. Scenes are shapeless, without punch and usually without point. He doesn't seem to know much about acting. He doesn't seem to know much about drama. Eleven years ago, Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" looked like the beginning of a brilliant career. Today it looks like a fantastic anomaly, like a flowerbed in an arid wasteland or some eighth wonder of the world.

Advisory: Kids may fall asleep and then have trouble getting to bed later that night.

"EARTH BENDERS! THERE IS DIRT UNDER YOUR FEET! THERE'S DIRT ALL AROUND YOU! WHY DON'T YOU FIGHT?" And everybody's like, "Whoa."

To be fair, this scene is straight out of an episode (one of my least favorites, actually). The actual line belongs to Katara and goes, "Here's your chance, earthbenders! (She grabs a lump of coal and raises it high.) Take it! Your fate is in your own hands!" (Well, that's after she gives a minute-long inspirational speech. Because she's Katara.)

So the line may me bad, but the sentiment is the same.

I used to have my LJ name set to Shyamaladenfreude, which I'm sure was from a review after his last bad movie came out.

hold on just a fucking minute.

look what they did to Appa!

[link]

Okay, that blog was written by a real nitpicker. It didn't seem like he cared as much about a movie as a reproduction of the cartoon--but you already have the cartoon. Some of his points felt esoteric.

14. Shyamalan envisions the Avatar as a non-violent figure of peace, which fits its similarities to the Dalai Lama. On show, though, Aang kicked all kinds of ass — it's hard to see how a pacifist Aang makes sense.

Huh? Aang in the show is also clearly pacifist. He spends the entire third season struggling with his desire not to kill Fire Lord Ozai!

16. When Zuko kidnaps Aang, he mentions that his sister, a firebending prodigy, is the favorite of their father, the Firelord. In the show, Zuko says, "Father says that she was born lucky. He says I was lucky to be born." It’s a better line than anything in the film, but Shyamalan doesnt' include it.

Aw, that's one of the best lines in the show!

I'm completely boggled that they changed the pronunciation of most of the names. I don't even...what's more than boggled? Croggled? Floggled? What on earth purpose could that possibly serve, other than to totally alienate whatever fans of the series were left after the racebending fail? How could anyone, let alone someone who claims that he mostly did the movie because his kids are such passionate and devoted fans of the series, think that was anything but an insanely bad idea?

What on earth purpose could that possibly serve

It's more ~*authentic*~.