
Variety
This is all enormously disappointing, of course, since the best we could hope for from a live-action "Avatar" adaptation is the mind-blowing equivalent of our first encounters with wire-fu, rather than this cartoony nonsense.
Full reviewM. Night Shyamalan's (The Sixth Sense, The Village) adaptation of the hit cartoon show Avatar: The Last Airbender (see more on the show here). The story follows the adventures of Aang, a ten-year-old successor to a long line of Avatars who must put his childhood ways aside and fight the Fire Nation from enslaving the Water, Earth and Air nations!
Includes Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel as the villainous Zuko and our own Cliff Curtis as Firelord Ozai.
LessThis is all enormously disappointing, of course, since the best we could hope for from a live-action "Avatar" adaptation is the mind-blowing equivalent of our first encounters with wire-fu, rather than this cartoony nonsense.
Full reviewHalf a star for James Newton Howard’s imperious score and another for Andrew Lesnie’s lensing. But even that’s marred by muddy 3D in a film lacking any sort of dimension.
Full reviewThe problem -- the catastrophe -- of The Last Airbender is not in the conception but the execution. The long-winded explanations and clumsy performances are made worse by graceless effects and a last-minute 3-D conversion that wrecks whatever visual grace or beauty might have been there.
Full reviewThe Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.
Full reviewAirbender, whether intentionally or not, is pegged almost exclusively to a small-fry state of mind.
Full reviewEven during the climax, the film still is struggling to introduce the world of the film and its strange rules.
Full reviewFar from the catastrophe the US bewailed, but still disappointingly clunky. Notch it between Eragon (below) and Dragonslayer (above) on a sliding scale of fantasy filmmaking.
Full reviewCHARLIE GATES is unimpressed by a career nosedive from director M Night Shyamalan.
Full reviewThe Last Airbender is available to stream in New Zealand now on Netflix and Google Play and Prime Video and Apple TV.
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