When M. Night
Shyamalan set out to adapt Nickelodeon's landmark animated series,
Avatar: The Last Airbender, he
intended to keep the title intact. But
after the 3-D smash Avatar rocked popular cinema, he had to
dropped the “Avatar” and settle on just The Last
Airbender. In hindsight, the name change was nothing short of
prophetic: Shyamalan's film is a sharp departure from the celebrated
cartoon series from which it draws its inspiration. Where the
Nickelodeon original is whimsical and child-like, Shyamalan's Airbender plays it completely straight, replacing comedy with
conflict at every turn.
The Last Airbender is part of a
planned trilogy; it chronicles just the first book of the Avatar
narrative. The film does an adequate job of establishing the series’
groundwork: Brother-sister duo Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) and Katara
(Nicola Peltz) become surrogate leaders of the Southern Water Tribe—a
community of peaceful Inuit types--when their parents are swept up in
a century-long war with the local evil empire, the mechanized Fire
Nation. While hunting on the polar ice, they come upon Aang (Noah
Ringer), a mysterious young boy frozen during a distant age. When a
Fire Nation task force, led by exiled Prince Zuko (Slumdog
Millionaire’s Dev Patel), descends on the tribe to capture
Aang, Sokka and Katara realize their new friend plays a key role in
the elemental war. The boy from the iceberg is really the
long-awaited Avatar, the only human capable of lobbying for peace in
the spirit world. Though he poses an immediate threat to the Fire
Nation's conquest, Aang must first learn to control, or “bend,”
all four elements—air, water, earth, and fire—in order to claim
his mystical birthright.
In this first movie, Aang, already an Airbender, struggles
to evade the Fire Nation's traps as he seeks to master the art of
Waterbending.
Shyamalan has a steady, if selective,
grip on Airbender canon, painting the world of the cartoon
with the broad strokes of a fantasy epic. His vision is dominated by
the movements of unstoppable armies and the stirrings of ancient
prophecies. It seems he wants to boil the original series down to a
desperate, high-stakes adventure in an imperiled world. The cinematic
alchemy is impressive and, in its best moments, makes for a worthy
and enchanting fantasy film. It's clear throughout, however, that
Shyamalan has failed to discover his source material's most basic
essence.
An example: In the animated series,
Sokka—one of the most prominent characters without the magical
bending ability—often served as comic relief. “I'm just a guy
with a boomerang,” he sighed early on. “I didn't ask for any of
this.” By contrast, Shyamalan images Sokka as a reluctant patriarch
of his scattered tribe, an edgy teenager forced to become a
decision-maker too early in life. He simply doesn't have time for
bungling—that’s kid stuff. The Last Airbender treats all
of its child characters the same way, focusing almost exclusively on
fitting them into the epic framework. When moments of wonder do find
their way into Shyamalan's story, they inspire terrible awe more
often than a quiet appreciation.
At its core, Shyamalan's Airbender
is a story about loss. Certainly, this was one element of the
original series, but here it is the principal dramatic force, the
driving movement behind every triumph and setback. Prince Zuko has
lost his standing with the Fire Nation; Katara and Sokka have lost
their parents; Aang, even, has lost much more than he initially
realizes. The need to deal with this loss—to accept it as part of
the magical, living world—leads Aang and company toward further
adventures. Here, discovery is a dangerous act, and knowledge always
has the potential to harm. Shyamalan handles these conflicts
responsibly, and—true to form—accomplishes his best narrative
work at the film’s end when Aang grapples with his emotional
journey. Still, it's difficult to reconcile Shyamalan's landscape of
trauma with the original show’s enchanted world.
Overall, the Shyamalan Airbender only occasionally finds the right idea. The movie's fusion of mystical and martial arts
is especially noteworthy; Aang and Katara performing Tai Chi to
command streams and oceans just fits perfectly. Shyamalan isn't wrong
in recognizing and celebrating the steps taken by his source material
to legitimize and advance serious animated storytelling. For some
Avatar fans, however, it may be that the
writer/director/producer has applied the original's undertones of
danger and strife somewhat too liberally. The epic he has crafted
from this shard of the animated series is a valid interpretation,
but an essentially unsatisfying adaptation. There simply isn't
enough of the story Shyamalan wants to tell to be found in the true
Avatar world.
Sum...ology: Though it means
well, Shyamalan's film reduces a groundbreaking series to a merely
half-hearted epic.
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