Spoiler Alert: It's Awful.

                During long car rides or nighttime walks on the beach, my friends and I usually find ourselves involved in a game of choice, where players are expected to pick the less awful of two horrendous options. For example, I may have to decide whether I would rather freeze to death or drown. After my recent viewing of M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender,  I am a strong believer in the fact that no option my friends provide could be worse than the potential of ever having to see that movie again. If I had one opportunity to go back in time, complete with the ability to erase one event from my life, I would prevent myself from shelling out $11.50 to view what is, bar none, the worst movie I have ever seen.

                

             I will preface this scathing, and at very least strongly-worded, review by saying that I think the show is great. I recognize that it’s silly and kind of pointless/predictable, but at least it is entertaining, which is certainly more than I can say about the movie adaptation. I was not expecting a “good” movie. I knew that the script would probably be awful, and that the acting most likely would not win any awards, but no amount of cynicism could prepare me for the utter catastrophe that played out before me.

                

                   When I watch a movie, even if I don’t like it I try to find something positive it has to offer. At first, I thought that the action scenes would be interesting and visually pleasing. They were neither. For a movie about people who can physically control the elements in any which way they please, there was not very much “bending” going on. For every half-hearted blast of fire or water, there was a several minute precursor which I can only describe as a ballet routine. Maybe it was martial arts, and maybe I’m a jerk for not being able to see the art in it, but the long exercise made the already-kind-of-boring element bending even less exciting.

                

                   Similarly, I was ready to give the acting a chance. I was hoping that at least Dev Patel would be good, but I quickly realized that his film career went from Slumdog Millionaire to The Last Airbender. I almost don’t blame him for not even trying to act. The other characters, funny and vibrant in the show, were monotone excuses for their cartoon counterparts and made the 103 minute runtime almost unbearable. The plot was also non-existent, skipping from storyline to storyline with utter disregard for any sense of lucidity or tempo. Every comic bit from the series was left out, and the characters, even if they hadn’t been played like robots, were written to be shells of their developed selves (at least, developed for a children’s show on Nickelodeon).

                 

                I was actually excited for this movie. In my heart of hearts I knew it was going to be terrible, but even the twisted depths of my imagination could not predict how terrible. It’s almost like Shyamalan was playing a joke on the world. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad, didn’t take itself so seriously or make me so angry. It is safe to say that I have never been so disappointed with a cinematic experience in my long movie-viewing career, and I hope that I can recover from the shocking failure before I give up watching movies all together. If The Last Airbender is representative of where the American film industry is headed, consider me an expat. Seriously? Save yourselves.

It would hurt me too much to post either a trailer or a quote on this blog...