"That...wasn't a good play."
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Written by M. Night Shyamalan
Starring Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Dev Patel, Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Toub, Aasif Mandvi and Cliff Curtis
M. Night Shyamalan really, really hates his children.
This may seem a harsh and libellous thing to say about a man who, to all intents and purposes, comes across as a fairly soft-spoken and affable filmmaker in interviews and press events. But honestly, it's starting to look like the only possible explanation for the events of the last few years. Take, for example, the fact that the universally-hated Lady in the Water was based on a bedtime story he created and told to his kids: how is that acceptable behaviour by anyone's standards? Most people found watching the film in cinemas to be traumatising enough; now imagine having some Indian guy coming into your bedroom and relating that stupid, stupid story to you while you're trying to sleep.
Similarly cruel and malicious intent can be detected in Shyamalan's latest film The Last Airbender, an adaptation of the award-winning, critically-acclaimed and generally beloved Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender. As he tells it, the director was first inspired to take an interest in creating the film when one of his daughters approached him at Halloween, telling him that she wanted to dress as the show's female protagonist Katara. Which, of course, he seems to have taken as a cue to launch an elaborate multimillion-dollar passive-aggressive assault on her hopes and dreams.
Child: "Dad, I want to dress as Katara for Halloween."
Shyamalan: "What's that, child? You want me to create an incompetently-made and hideous film rendition of your favourite cartoon show, thereby permanently damaging its previously pristine reputation in the eyes of the general public for all time?"
Child: "Uh, actually, no, that's not at all what I..."
Shyamalan: "Come now, it'll be great. It'll be like that time I told you that story, Lady in the Water, then made a film of it. That was fantastic, wasn't it?"
Child: "Jesus Christ."
The Last Airbender, then, is M. Night's first venture into the fantasy epic genre, and opens with the subtitle "Book I: Water". Here is the official plot synopsis:
"For nearly a century, the Fire Nation has waged its deadly campaign for global domination over its fellow tribal nations of Air, Water and Earth. Backed by enormous armies and weapons of destruction, the firebenders have already eliminated every airbender on the planet and now, they turn their attentions to the Water Nation, headquartered in their northern fortress. One day, young waterbender Katara (Nicola Peltz) and her brother Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) discover a young boy named Aang (Noah Ringer). As the prophesied Avatar-the only one who can control all four of the elements-the young airbender is the lone weapon that can repel the Fire Nation's onslaught and ultimately restore balance to the war-torn world. But can he master his bending skills and become the hero he needs to be before it is too late?"
This plot outline will be instantly familiar to fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender as essentially being the premise of the first season of the show, also entitled "Book I: Water". And yes, nominally, The Last Airbender is an adaptation of the show's first season. Having seen the film, however, this writer would like to offer up a different synopsis.
"Aang, Katara and Sokka reach the Northern Water Tribe, where Aang must learn waterbending from a local master. However, their efforts are interrupted by the arrival of the Fire Nation navy, who have come to lay siege to the city and strike at the source of the Water Tribe's power. Can Aang and friends find a way to stop them before it's too late?
Before that, a whole bunch of crap happens."
If the bulk of that synopsis also seems familiar to fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender, it's because it's the plotline of "The Siege of the North", the two-part story which concluded the show's first season. It seems evident that Shyamalan was fond of those two episodes, because the film he has made is essentially a faithful (though hamfisted) 30-minute adaptation of the cartoon's first season finale, preceded by a completely incomprehensible 60-minute montage that pulps the remaining 18 episodes of the season into a viscous paste. The Last Airbender is one of the most bafflingly structureless films ever put to screen, gabbling its way through scenes, plot points and would-be character drama in an insane, incoherent frenzy, hoping that if it can reach its third act fast enough, nobody will notice there wasn't a first or second one. Events happen seemingly at random, with no attempt to make any scene gel with the ones bookending it; meanwhile, other sequences seem to serve no function whatsoever, even to those who watched the series and know what the point of them was originally.
This is not, however, because the film is short on explanations. Perhaps sensing that ripping the structural spine out of the show's story may have had a negative impact on its overall comprehensibility, Shyamalan has resorted to inserting expository dialogue at any point where the plot has become unclear, ie for the entire duration of the film. Instead of having meaningful dialogue, emotional depth, humour or personalities, every single character has been transformed into a sock puppet through which Shyamalan explains various things to the increasingly distressed audience, while a voiceover explains the same thing again, after which the film moves on to the next scene, in which other characters recap the same thing that was explained in the previous scene. If you think this sounds frigging boring, then you'd be correct, but you would also be failing to take into account that all of the explanations are terribly written, frequently irrelevant and generally make no sense, thus making the experience either sidesplittingly hilarious or coma-inducing, depending on your appreciation of cosmic irony.
Frankly, it's hard to tell exactly how an Oscar-nominated writer-director was able to produce something this comedically incompetent. This writer was never the biggest fan of The Sixth Sense, but that film – along with the likes of Unbreakable and Signs – were clearly crafted by someone with a fairly decent understanding of the rhythms, disciplines and techniques involved in making a film. The Last Airbender contains passages of acceptable material, but the overall perception emerging from the experience is one of a man who has learned filmmaking from a "For Dummies" guide book with half the pages ripped out. One particular sequence – in which Aang liberates a village of earthbenders from the oppression of the Fire Nation – is quite possibly the most laughably awful three minutes of film ever featured in a production budgeted at over $10 million, a perfect storm of belief-defyingly terrible writing, plotting, directing, acting and staging which will induce tears, either of laughter or spiralling despair.
In fact, the brain-searing awfulness of Airbender's overall construction is enough to render the casting controversies something of a non-event. Certainly, it goes without saying that the acting on display here is terrible, but it's difficult to see what anyone could have done with actor-proof material that surgically removes every single character's defining traits. Aang isn't fun-loving. Katara isn't spirited. Ozai and Zhao aren't threatening. Sokka...doesn't appear to have any personality whatsoever, and seems to have been re-conceived as someone whose primary characteristic is "staring blankly". As such, most of the cast actually end up delivering as effective a performance as the writing allows, and it's hard not have some sympathy for the likes of Noah Ringer and Nicola Peltz, who are clearly giving it the best shot they can muster, or adult performers such as Shaun Toub and Cliff Curtis, who are attempting to do a professional job despite their obvious confusion as to what the hell has gone wrong in their careers and lives. In the final analysis, the only actual disappointments in acting terms come from crazy-eyed Dev Patel, whose attempt at playing Prince Zuko involves muttering through gritted teeth and SHOUTING AT RANDOM, and the woman who plays Gran Gran, who somehow fails at the meagre task of being a believable old woman, despite her innate genetic advantage of being an actual old woman.
What's perhaps most galling, though, is the fact that through this suffocating fog of crapness, there are occasional flickers of mild potential, moreso than the entertainingly toxic mainstream press and fan reactions would have you believe. Although there was plainly never a cat in hell's chance of this film being actually good, many of its components could have been used in a decent Airbender movie had a different, competent filmmaker been put in charge. The film's overall look – though hideously marred by possibly the worst 3D conversion ever seen – is actually quite gorgeous, with excellent set, prop and costume design and a selection of lovely locations that serve the material well. James Newton Howard's score is stirring, effective and memorable. And to Shyamalan's mild credit, once the film actually does reach that final 30-minute "Siege of the North" home straight, it does settle into being an acceptable if amateurish imitation of the TV show, eliciting a similar level of catharsis and viewer satisfaction as a school play, albeit a mediocre one that you're only watching because your neighbour's son is in it.
Of course, this doesn't really do a lot to alter the overall perception that a) The Last Airbender is a pretty comprehensive balls-up, and that b) this is completely that tit M. Night Shyamalan's fault. With that in mind, it's difficult to see exactly how this would-be franchise will progress from this point; making Book II: Earth and Book III: Fire was surely the director and studio's intention, but given that Book I: Water has laid down no usable foundations in terms of an engaging ongoing story, capable casting choices or audience goodwill, it would seem likely that any future live-action sequels would be greeted by torches and pitchforks rather than warm anticipation. This, combined with the first film's relatively tepid box office performance, would seem to suggest that this probably IS the last Airbender film, at least from the present creative team, leaving M. Night Shyamalan to return to the Shyamalan-Cave and find a new property upon which to inflict his horrors. Which is good news for fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but will likely be giving his poor daughters yet more sleepless nights.
But the effects were decent.
3/10
No comments:
Post a Comment