The Last Airbender is the Worst Film Ever Made — HERE'S WHY

i i just get flashbacks all the time are you the avatar wrong my brother and the princess became friends right away bring me all your elderly i can still see them and what is it tim that you see the the terrible bending [Music] in my mind it keeps going back to the dialogue as you know i conducted a raid on the great library which most said didn't even exist get on with it they were just so so terribly paced i believe tim there is only one way you can deal with this trauma you know what it is it is your destiny you're right i know what i need to do [Music] [Music] now when i say this video is brought to you by my patrons i mean that i stupidly promise that if i reached 1500 i would make this three-hour video on this dumb film thinking well that would never happen well here we are here's to you you freaking sadists now i usually try to keep it pretty positive on this channel so consider this an exception to the rule an exception you better have damn well enjoyed because this took a lot of work book one as you know i conducted a raid on the great library which most said didn't even exist terrible film adaptions of things i love and treasure are really a dime a dozen these days but it's difficult to understate the sheer magnitude that shyamalan seemed to manage with the last airbender and hey don't trust me i asked the experts but i don't want to kill all of them some deserve to live some yeah hi what what talking yeah it's terr terrible terrible it's abysmal i would say i would say qualifies get out yeah aragon was terrible but it was at least moderately competent on its own artemis fowl is a step even worse going out of its way to disrespect the characters but the scripting and filmmaking was fine the last airbender on the other hand fails in every way you could expect it to fail and six other ways that you didn't both as an adaption and as a film by itself ten years this wound has fested i did my weighty it has all led me to this it's time for an autopsy scene by scene this will be painful so let's start at the beginning a hundred years ago all was right with our world prosperity and peace filled our days the four nations now you already know that this film has a problem with bad exposition but i want you to understand just how bad and deep this problem goes katara takes a big exposition dump in the opening seconds of the film and it's done in one of the absolute laziest ways that you can do it because one it's self-aware it knows it's telling us a story so everything is spoken slowly and plainly and secondly there is no context whatsoever to even disguise that you are giving the audience exposition words even show up on the screen to make sure that we know what she's saying that we focus on it we have literally nothing else to focus on or distract us from this and films have a lot less time to play with than television so this must be pretty damn important shyamalan right right typically this technique is only ever used when there is complex information that absolutely needs to be known before the film starts and cannot be communicated easily in the story itself now my favorite film ever is blade runner 2049 and it actually opens with a title scroll similar to this one but every single piece of information there is complex and essential to understanding the opening of the film the first scene has k hunting someone down the opening title scroll tells us that a group of old replicants are currently being hunted after a number of them went rogue which we partly saw in the original blade runner from this context alone we can deduce exactly why what is happening here is happening and none of the characters have to give any clumsy expositional dialogue to do so this information would have been extremely difficult to communicate naturally minimal dialogue is used in the beginning to build tension and tone to give weight to each line these two men have but it's also used to build character to highlight kaye's loneliness having him speak about something so distant and unimportant to him would be unnatural so the question becomes what do we actually learn in this title crawl that is complex needs to be known before the story starts and cannot be easily communicated in the story itself well we learned that the avatar was the only person born amongst all the nations who could master all four elements which include air fire water and earth and then a hundred years ago he just disappeared and nope nothing else that's that's it that's all we get knowing that it was peaceful beforehand isn't as important as knowing that the fire nation started a global conflict that's been going on for a hundred years but we don't even learn that here and it would also imply that there was peace prior shyamalan also weirdly included that great respect was afforded to all those who could bend their natural element but why do we need to know this it sets up this strange expectation that this is no longer the case that benders are not respected but this is not true at any point in the film nor even remotely related to any of the conflict vendors are respected as leaders and politicians and military commanders so why include this but not that the fire nation attacked and the rest of it could be mostly communicated through the environment and story say a color-coded map which is later clarified when firebenders turn up to a village with people bending water and ice the social dynamics between benders and non-benders should be communicated and how they relate bowing uniforms their rank how they speak to one another and read this actually read what is written here it reads like a child copying an essay off the internet and changing a few words desperately hoping that they won't get caught the original line only the avatar mastered all four elements became the avatar was the only one born amongst all four nations who could master all the elements it's just needlessly more wordy and awkward and i'll be the first to admit that the opening exposition of the show and the boy and the iceberg is not perfect but it at least communicates efficiently and it also includes this line which shy milan omitted some people believe that the avatar was never a born into the air nomads and that cycle is broken but i haven't lost hope i still believe that somehow the avatar will return to save the world this is katara speaking and a sneaky little bit of exposition about the air nomads and the avatar cycle but it also communicates a vital part of who katara is in the story she's hopeful remember my heart is so full of hope that it's making me tear ben [Music] and oh oh this is only the start of shyamalan's exposition problems shyamalan repeatedly has katara give badly written exposition in hopes it might hold together the plot points which are like any relationship from the big bang theory poorly connected and sometimes it's just entirely unnecessary because just two minutes later shyamalan's katara give even more exposition as he leapfrogs from plot point to plot point my brother and i live in the southern water tribe which was once a big city our father's off fighting in the war my mother was taken prisoner and killed when i was young in this time of war food is scarce my brother and i often go hunting for food but unfortunately my brother isn't the best hunter in the world and there is not a single word here that we needed to hear why do we need to know that the southern water tribe was once a big city if it's to establish a sense of loss then this is way better communicated through ruins in the environment and set shyamalan shows us not a few seconds later that soccer isn't that great of a hunter so he's repeating what we should already be able to figure out wasting more of his and our time good exposition delivery is partly about knowing which stuff you need to spell out for your audience and which stuff you can let them figure out or wonder about katara saying i thought about mom in her opening scene when she water beans is yeah clumsily delivered but it at least tells us that their mother is probably dead or gone and she misses her but this exposition here is completely devoid of any character dimension that makes this knowledge meaningful it doesn't tell us anything about their relationship or what she meant to each of them the critical writing sin here is that shyamalan leaves no room for subtext information not explicitly delivered in the text but inferred or implied by telling us everything here so explicitly he's not letting us figure anything out we're engaging with the film on a very shallow level unlike the icebergs of the southern water tribe you might say everything is on the surface and let's pay close attention to how the show handles this reveal in comparison we learn about katara's mama the first episode so early on just the same when katara yells ever since mom died i've been doing all the work around camp while you've been off playing soldier this line has character and relational dimensions it delivers exposition yeah but the focus is on how katara has had to step into motherly responsibilities which partly defines who she is and her frustration with soccer's dismissal of her just because he wants to be a leader like their dad this dialogue is full of subtext i mean why didn't shyamalan get this it's not hard he watched the same show as me i presume despite all evidence to the contrary look give us this or don't give us the information at all because the information isn't the important part here what the show was really giving us was character shyamalan's exposition just gives us information and shyamalan does this sort of thing over and over and over again not just in katara's narration but in how the other characters talk as well kind of seen not long after shoehorn in this talk about the spirit world that nobody characters or audience asked for i mean qatar even says no grandma we don't have time because shyamalan knows nobody is asking for this it foreshadows the moon and the ocean spirits that do turn up later in the film but shyamalan fails to use any techniques that make this information easier to swallow oh and shyamalan just manages to jam it along about hama you know that character who doesn't appear in this film at all or even this book or even the next book gotta get that sweet sweet sequel bait let's talk again about how blade runner 2049 manages its exposition because that movie is god damn perfect it uses mystery to make exposition like this more interesting it waits until characters and therefore viewers want to know something about the world and then it shares it with us in this case k is investigating records during a period known as the blackout when virtually all digital records were wiped photos videos files and so on they didn't shove this in at the beginning despite how important it was to the plot because a it wasn't necessary to know at the time and b no characters wanted to know so the audience didn't either this is a textbook mistake on shyamalan's part forcing characters to sit down and listen when they express no interest in learning whatever it is at all i mean as i said katara literally says hey grandma we don't have time for this it's just so transparently for the viewers benefit alone when this information about the spirit world would have worked much better as a mystery because if you get viewers wanting answers like they get us wanting to know what is the matrix then you can use as plain and boring language as you like almost and it'll still be interesting because we want answers but shyamalan never does this this is especially frustrating because we later get a scene where aang mysteriously appears in the spirit world he doesn't know where he is and neither do we and it demands an answer there's never any desire for the information that he gives us narratively no need for the characters to talk about most of this exposition it's purely there to justify the story to us the viewers to tell us don't worry i swear the world makes sense just just please please trust me in fact the exposition is so repetitive so badly written so badly placed that i came up with a working theory hear me out i promise i'm not crazy which is an awesome way to convince someone of something that is not crazy i think they added this exposition to clarify things that the audience wasn't understanding because the acting is just as bad as the scripting in this film the scroll we had was proving to be helpful ong was practicing but for some reason he was having trouble with water bending we moved from town to town in the earth kingdom we tried to stay out of sight but soka became concerned we were being followed my brother and the princess became friends right away i'm not crazy i swear i am not conspiratorial i know people are following me but i would not be shocked if these lines were added in because ain't getting frustrated with those water bending or soccer being concerned with them being followed or him and you a being in a relationship was not effectively communicated in the acting and maybe they had to edit the film down to the point that the plot just fell apart in which case shyamalan was like hey qatar is already narrating a whole bunch of stuff let's just add this in anyway but it's not a replacement okay you can't just replace entire plot beats and scenes with characters narrating what would have happened it it doesn't work but shyamalan oh oh he goes even further he commits the cardinal sin of exposition as you know the fire lord has banished his son the prince and renounced his mother as you know lord vader says the stormtrooper you are a fallen jedi who turned to the dark side to save his girlfriend e yes i know as you know isn't just a red flag that you're just saying this for the audience but it's a newbie screenwriter mistake it's not one that someone with six films under his belt should be making and you know what's even funnier this isn't even the only time that he uses this phrase with this character as you know i conducted a raid on the great library which most said didn't even exist ozai even says get on with it because shyamalan knows that this isn't good exposition this isn't just like a mistake this is incompetent if exposition is about knowing what information to deliver and when then i am not even kidding when i say that shyamalan manages to ham-fist in some exposition with uh's dying breaths i believe that my life force will leave my body and return to the moon spirit and then what my soul will no longer exist in this form how how is this still exposition that shyamalan thinks he needs to get out to us why can't he just let us figure this out from context you know watching her soul leave her body and go into the fish i there are a million ways that all of this information could have been made more interesting through character conflict or mystery or the environment or hey here's a novel idea simply let us figure it out for ourselves but shyamalan never does any of that i'm good i'm good i'm not an alcoholic i am coping with this with this perfectly it is difficult to understate just how bad the exposition is in this film in phrasing and delivery sure but mostly in the sheer amount of it i mean it'd be crazy and a lot of work for me to go through the entire screenplay and cut out all of the bits of totally unnecessary exposition and calculate an exact percentage of the film that could be cut with no consequences whatsoever so of course i did it here we go i've talked a lot about necessary exposition but what the hell does that really mean it's the stuff that you need to communicate in order for your story to work and generally there are two types the first is problem solving exposition crucial information that will play a major role in the development or resolution of your conflict this is stuff like that the one ring can only be destroyed where it was made mount doom we need to know this because it explains why this kills sauron and characters do the things that they do the second type is character justification now this isn't always necessary but there's usually some form of it in most books oftentimes it's backstory that is essential to understanding why you're telling the story of this character blade runner 2049 gives us flashbacks to a kid because who this kid is and whether these memories are real is driving k through his story sometimes there is information outside the time frame of your story that you need to get across like this and to be honest that's it you might include more because it makes your story more immersive or you want to show off a particular part of your world and hey that's fine most good books do this to some degree and it really works to their benefit but it's not strictly necessary in that barest minimum term so when i talk about the sheer amount of unnecessary exposition i'm excluding stuff like that uh was saved by the moon spirit when she was a child or that zuko was burned by his father after he refused to fight those are problem solving and character justification exposition pieces all of that i am not counting because as bad as it might be written or delivered it is still necessary for a cohesive plot we're setting all of that stuff aside but with 5137 words of spoken dialogue and shyamalan screenplay of those 564 could be cut with no consequence whatsoever they don't affect what shyamalan sets up and pays off they wouldn't affect the audience's understanding of the characters or the story you could cut 10 of this film just from unneeded exposition and not even blink an eye 10 what the hell i swear everything i cut was either totally unnecessary already communicated or was about to be communicated soon after and this includes scenes like you know i conducted a raid on the great library which most said didn't even exist which even after this long is still so funny because it comes with all the classic hits in my raid of the great library earlier this year this is a scroll from the great library general xiao's new 2020 album do you remember that i rated the great library is out now for pre-order and this is amazing because zhao only has 37 lines in the entire film and shyamalan writes this in three times meaning that nearly 10 of the main antagonist lines are dedicated to informing the audience about an unimportant event in an unimportant location that we never see that only appears in one episode of the original show that isn't even in the book that this film is based on 10 do you have nothing else that you could possibly have zhao talking about is is this it is it just the great library for him this isn't harry and his mother's eyes which actually have a purpose to their repetition and i need to point out that this isn't just counting the bad exposition because all of the exposition in this film is bad this is just the stuff that could be cut with no consequences whatsoever aung flew us to his home he told us how he left there in a storm on appa and got forced into the ocean where they almost drowned aung air bended a sphere around them and ice formed and he couldn't remember anything after that we know that he throws himself in a sphere after getting upset and running away we don't need to know that he air been to sphere around him that turned to ice that is a weirdly specific piece of information and the rest of this needs to be implied through action show us that this is his home this is putting aside the fact that katara says his name before she asks his name like shyamalan just forgot to get that information out so katara were like hey yeah let's let's go after nameless child number three later on i'm not even kidding when i say that aang exposits his relationship with monkeyatso in the most boring way possible he's the teacher responsible for me he's kind of like my father this should be acted out we should see this and how the characters relate to one another even if it's totally without words but shyamalan is just sitting there in the director's chair going what are you saying the viewer wants to infer all of this from the acting not on my watch and the problem is shyamalan's seeming determination to strip his dialogue of subtext and put everything explicitly into the script so that we can't infer anything for ourselves can really undercut what are meant to be the emotional beats of the story the fire nation knew the avatar would be born into the air nomads so they exterminated all the air nomads it would be so much more effective for katara to trail off when she sees the field of skeletons suddenly confronted with the sheer mechanized horror of the enemy genocide instead of saying that they were exterminated which this tells us all visually her line of exposition is kinda pointlessly distracting in this scene let us feel the emotion first by looking at the hundreds of bodies and seeing aang's anguish and then give us that context if we need it this is a really important writing technique in fiction people care more about things because they impact characters than because they're bad things in and of themselves it's why we tell stories about the holocaust from individual perspectives like the book thief but the film only really introduces gyatso once we've already seen the bodies way too late it's pretty much at the same moment it's a structural thing it's about the order in which you give the viewer information the no man genocide while objectively awful is meant to be given narrative weight through aang's trauma but this doesn't hit nearly as hard because we don't know why any of this matters to and yet on a truly personal level we don't know monk gyatso we barely know aang it's a small detail but it's a trait of weaker writing to introduce the exposition before giving us a reason to care gyatso is just not given the screen time needed to make this moment meaningful but shyamalan oh bless his soul he he doesn't forget his greatest strength which is terrible exposition in the final scene of the film he gives us a wonderful farewell a wonderful send-off with ozai ah so since comet is returning in three years it will give all five benders the ability of the highest fire benders the ability to use their own qi to create fire that is the day we will win this war and prove the fire nation's dominance but this line about fire benders using their own chi to create fire is just oh perfect absolute cringe it's like thanos going and getting the glove during the end credits scene putting it on and going fine i'll do it myself with this glove that i specifically invented to hold the six infinity stones time space brain gravity energy electromagnetism look i don't know i don't know marvel don't at me i don't get it i i don't get i don't get any any of this film i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine i'm fine moving on book two bring me all your elderly ever heard the phrase no man is an island introducing characters is hard because you're not just trying to define who they are alone as a person but you're trying to define their place within your cast of characters their relationships and dynamics with others and in films you've got to do this really quickly katara and soccer are introduced in the opening scene when she's water bending until she accidentally drops it on soccer and you as a fan of the show might rightly recall this is how the show itself opens but when we take a closer look this whole scene is missing the subtextual character information that it really needs to make these characters work in the original version of the scene katara and soccer are out fishing katara gives a huff and a grimace and she manages to waterbend a fish out of the water while sokka is turned the other way hoping to get one of his own with his spear she asks them to look at what she's done but he refuses thinking ah it'll be nothing then he pops her bubble and the fish flies back into the water and they both lose their fish which he then blames on her trying to waterbend this scene tells us that a katara is nervous and unsure of her abilities b soccer is sexist and condescending not believing that katara could ever do these manly things like he could c soccer doesn't value her skills and d this causes tension in their relationship and welcome to tonight's show i want you to take a guess at how much of this subtext was communicated during the film a all of it b none of it c tim you seem like you're really not okay please take a break you're guessing b none of it congratulations you win nothing in the film soccer never treats her dismissively we can't even see katara's face in focus to show how she feels soccer never shows any kind of sexism at best he approaches her like he's gonna hit her or something and then just tells her not to do it around him it can barely be called relational conflict we know nothing about who these people are alone nor anything about how they relate to one another but it only gets worse from here up till they meet aang my main sage over at just right pointed correctly that this scene is full of inconsistent characterization for both katara and soccer they see the light under the ice which soccer cracks with his boomerang and hey soccer's never seen a film with ice in it before so maybe i can excuse him but shock horror when the whole ice sheet begins to crack beneath them this tells the audience that soccer is reckless but subtextually a moment like this tells us his place within the web of characters he's the one who gets the group into trouble who pushes people to take risks but then soccer insists on caution when this fear emerges don't go near it this is probably some fire nation trick back away really slow and by then having katara rush to crack the sphere shyamalan indicates that soccer is the cautious one and qatar is the reckless one and they go back and forth on this to the point that we don't get any real idea of who these characters are alone how they think why they think what they think but more importantly we have no idea what their role in the web of characters is in the show katara is the hopeful heart the one who never lets the colder strategic soccer forget the needs of others while soccer ensures the katara doesn't get herself killed by being too trusting this is called a character foil a dynamic where characters contrast so that they highlight each other's traits but there's no sense of that here at all and the problem here isn't that it's not faithful to the original source material i mean you can make good changes but these changes don't even seem to serve a purpose within their own story but hey i'm a reasonable man beast the crepit goblin thing who knows really at this point and i'm gonna try and not be too harsh on the film for missing out on vital subtextual scenes because the film simply doesn't have the same amount of run time to play with but in the show they use the moment where ang sphere breaks out of the ice to foreshadow katara's immense water bending power and her hot hiddenness which all builds into the character dynamic that they're exploring with her in soccer and to perfectly segues into the next plot beat aang it's a brilliantly paced opening because the tense relationship and conflict that built between soccer and katara reaches its highest point and causes the next plot beat in the film though there is a distinct break between introducing katara and soccer and introducing aang they're just standing there like lifeless npcs waiting for the main character to come along when they spot the light in the bright colored hair or in aang's case lack of here eng's appearance isn't caused by soccer struggles hunting or katara's water bending and the result is that for an opening of a film like this i hated how slowly paced it was and i like blade runner 2049 but that's because despite the slow pacing blade runner is incredibly tense shyamalan segway is stilted and awkward with nothing driving us towards this plot beat it's just a thing that happens after a thing that happened it's the equivalent of a late night talk show host using the and speaking of to move on to their next talking point and this isn't even the most egregious introduction aang's introduction is devoid of any life humor or meaning that it originally had and i don't want to put this on the kid the actor noah ringer it's not his fault that the script is so terrible and they cast him knowing full well that he hadn't taken a single acting class in his life yeah shyamalan's got a thing for this bizarrely ominous music what's your name which we will return to the shots here are slow the line delivery is slow and lifeless and even arpa shows no comedic character whatsoever in fact this is the start of arpa one of the cutest most beloved giant fluffy oaf characters of all time being turned into a grim piece of furniture in the background of the one might mistake for a cursed omen signifying you're about to die on a roller coaster accident though shyamalan does try and i emphasize try to play for a moment of humor by having upper eat soccer trying to eat me shyamalan spoke numerous times about how he wanted his film to be quote darker than the original source material hence the ominous music the emphasis on realistic shots aang never expressing a modicum of joy iro always being serious and soccer and katara constantly looking like they're watching their entire family die in a sore film the film doesn't feel childish or uplifting at first glance it establishes a darker more grim tone i mean just listen to how ominous the music is in this scene when aang is struggling to waterbend aung was practicing but for some reason he was having trouble with water bending [Music] aang watched with envy as katara waterbent jealousy rising inside him till he was left with one option murder these jokes in the show were written for a differently toned story which shyamalan didn't seem to get and the result is that there's a real tonal dissonance here between what shy milan writes and what he shows on screen part of the problem is that shyamalan supposedly wanted to ground soccer whatever that means a character is largely responsible for a lot of the humor in the story and so this tone and humor issue keeps on coming back in later scenes he was bending tiny stones at us from behind a tree it really hurt and later on when anger's taken by zuko shyamalan misses another chance at real characterization particularly with soccer i'm pretty sure that im night shyamalan saw a couple of two by fours and was like yes there's the stars of my movie because both of them totally emotionless decide that they need to go rescue aang or at this point in the story random stranger that they don't know anything about in the show this moment is used for a little bit of growth in soccer when he prepares a boat to go finding without katara knowing after initially being very skeptical of him even forcing him out of the village and in the film yeah soccer is skeptical of ang's arrival as a fire nation trick but shyamalan doesn't do anything with this at all there's no sense of conflict between them over aang that leads to building their relationship when soccer comes around and soccer doesn't take the initiative to leave katara does he takes that moan from soccer and gives it to katara he sets up soccer's skepticism and pessimism but it's treated as a reference rather than an arc and this is indicative of a really big flaw in shyamalan's work here a completely cardboard and totally vacuous soccer that will come back to bite him in the end shyamalan often uses images lines and moments straight from the original show that set up dynamics and arcs but he doesn't follow through on any of them the result is katara and soccer's character dynamic is a one note mild acknowledgment that they both exist in the same universe at the same time reluctantly banang is really introduced in the water tribe village which is uh fine except for the fact that they don't really introduce aang they just introduce us to a blank piece of cardboard how'd you get all the way out here i ran away from home we got in a storm we were forced under the water of the ocean oh i see coming out of this moment we have no real idea of who he is how he thinks whether he's more of a bottom or a top he's pleasant but he's not warm he withholds the full truth but he's not acting guarded really there's nothing to infer about either aang or katara alone or about how they relate to one another in the character where their place and how they contrast in the story i mean you have to tell people things in more than words shyamalan you have heard the age-old adage show don't tell and this is one of the crippling failures of the film they are telling us his backstory but not showing it when you ask who is aang your answer can be different but it cannot be no one in the original show aang's first moment is full of character when he skips over all the pleasantries to ask katara to go penguin sleeping with him this tells us he's childish he's extroverted he lacks inhibitions and it's trusting from the start but this scene he's talking like he's meeting his new co-worker at a job he hates that he has no interest in getting to know any further than absolutely necessary kevin dev patel zuko is probably the least egregious of the main cast introductions but uh yeah uh bring me all your elderly there is at least some life and energy to dev patel's movements the shot where he tears hangs hood off sees the tattoos and takes a moment to collect himself that's a good moment of complexity with some subtext where we can tell he's taking a moment to process what is clearly a revelation for him see the real issue here is everything else what do we learn about him here really i am prince zuko son of fire lord ozai and heir to the throne okay so great we got the first line of his wikipedia page out of the way but then and gets dragged out before him and i want you to think about what this exchange tells us about aang and zuko subtextually i'm taking it to my ship if you don't come i'll burn down this village i'll go with you don't hurt anyone by zuko proactively threatening to burn down the village it positions him as less compassionate or even sadistic ang only then asking zuko to not hurt anyone makes the request carry a lot less weight ang being willing to stay inside the igloo when he can clearly hear people in danger outside either tells us that he doesn't care that much or he is afraid neither of which the rest of the story bears out to be true the story beat here is that ang goes with zuko and fundamentally it turns on zuko being threatening not ang being compassionate in the original show aang voluntarily throws himself into the fray to protect these strangers he barely knows he spars with zuko but after seeing the danger that zuko poses ang offers to come with him only if zuko leaves everyone alone zuko then agrees this exchange puts a lot more emphasis on aang's self-sacrificial nature both as a strength and as a weakness and it makes him an active character because he is the one making the decisions that drive the story the story beat here turns on aang's compassion not zuko being threatening but it also frames zuko as more compassionate because he is allowed to make a choice to not hurt people even if it's in such a small way as this early on in his arc foreshadowing his eventual change it's about where the driving force is in the scene and it comes from quite a distinctly different place in the film compared to the show a place that doesn't build their characters nearly as well again i can't really fault the film for not including these scenes that build into these ideas when it just doesn't have the run time to do so but this is a change that literally would have taken the same amount of time and the same amount of money and apparently a little more writing skill imagine if it was simply a little bit different if it went like this i'm taking you to my ship i'm not going with you unless you promise to leave this village alone and never return zuko nods this is not only truer to the original source material but it helps realize a dynamic that shyamalan was actually trying to put into the film as well as giving aang a strong character moment that he hasn't had yet in the story and this only gets worse when we get to general zuko and i are in some sense character foils again where zugo is reckless and fueled by anger iro is calm and contemplative zuga respects him but struggles to learn his lessons and controlling zanga is a big part of his arc they define each other and their place in the story as much as they define themselves with zugo positioned as the misguided villain and iro positioned as his mentor but when we meet airo in the film shyamalan doesn't employ any of that relational subtext even when zuko yells for literally no reason even try to escape this is a warship iro doesn't even step in to karma's nephew they could have had a private moment where zuko nearly hot-headedly storms into the cell to gloat about capturing the avatar before iro stops to caution him to keep a level head so that he doesn't escape instead of this pointless scene where aang is an elemental magnet to confirm that he's the avatar this would have taken roughly the same amount of time and effort or at least it would have set up a lot more to be paid off down the road airo could have watched aang and zuko fight reminding zuko that fire bending comes from the breath not the muscles a mistake that allows aang to escape and sets up zuko's arc for the future of needing self-control but uh instead ang just escapes he's just gone because he wants to now bye bye the problem is they continue moving from plot point to plot point without delivering any meaning or depth to those plot points yes shyamalan saw that zuko brought aang aboard his ship he also saw that airo was on that same ship and he saw that aang escaped the ship but he did all of these things without giving any thematic or character reason for these plot beats in the story as i watched this film again and again it just became more and more mind baffling that we get no sense that iro is a father figure to zuko his canary in the coal mine the one that zuko must learn from across pretty much the entire film airo's most vital relationship within the character whip is with zuko yet he doesn't even say a single word to his nephew throughout his entire introduction and it only gets worse from here ira only has 35 lines in this film and i'm not even kidding less than a third of them only 11 are even spoken directly to zuko he gets more lines with zhao freaking zhao we get 40 minutes into this film before iro has anything close to a meaningful conversation with zuko and even then shyamalan uses it to shoehorn an exposition about zuko's backstory but hey i'm just happy that iro finally does an iro thing good for you shybalan good on you for meeting the lowest possible acceptable standard characters do not exist in isolation okay the role they play tells us things about the characters around them katara's role as the motherly figure tells us that seok has been dependent on her growing up whether he knows it or not ira's role as the car mentor tells us that zuko needs to learn patience and self-control but iro's role in the film as man who is nice simply doesn't cut it here what whole is iro filling in the story here the answer is none because zuko isn't really ever shown to need him narratively the closest we get is that he stops him throwing fire at zhao presumably but that's really not that much and i don't think that any scene epitomizes this problem with zuko and ira's characterization like one of zugo's earlier scenes where he's practicing fire bending on the ship it's almost an exact parallel to one of zuko's first scenes in the show just without any real fire painting a recurring motif in this film by the way because a budget benting is just as much martial arts so that's fine but the scene just happens and ends with iro drinking tea totally expressionless barely even watching his nephew the scene should have been a bigger thing but yet again iro says nothing to zoko he shows no meaningful care for him despite just watching him get humiliated by zhao in the previous scene and clearly watching him take out his anger on others in a fight this is clearly a crucible for zuko and he's got nothing to say or feel about it at best he doesn't care and at worst this passive viewing is like he endorses zugo processing his anger and pain with more violence and zuku even went up to zhao in the last scene and said this one day my father will take me back and you will bow before me but just imagine for a moment if shyamalan took that sentiment and put it in the scene with iro one day my father would take me back he'll give me my honor your father will let you return but even in exile it's your choices that make you honorable now again but this time remember fire bending comes from the breath not your anger and i just keep coming back to begging please please show me that iro has some meaningful influence in zuko's life that he means something to him at all that he helps them process his anger healthily the scene which this is clearly taken from isn't about zuko fighting some firebenders no it's about demonstrating zugo's need for self-control and his firebending abilities are a proxy for that part of his character arc when he fights angrily he loses when he controls himself he wins to shyamalan though zuko's fire bending and the magic system more broadly is pretty much a proxy for nothing neither for zuko personally or for his dynamic with iro it's narratively meaningless and the rest of the story treats it as a spectacle a way to make the fight scenes pretty once again shyamalan sees a pretty thing he wants to put in his film but he doesn't understand why the pretty thing is there and this isn't even adding expensive scenes or a lot of run time to make all of it work this is just making easy and meaningful tweaks to the scenes he already has changes that should have been obvious because they were already written like this in the show uh zhao and ozai are the two true antagonists of this story and funnily enough one of them is the least bad character introduction in this film while the other is a criminal act of insanity when we meet zhao 20 minutes into the film he mocks zuko for his banishment he condescends to him by comparing him to a child in a costume and he does it in front of all of his men it tells us who zhao is without too much effort he's smug he's kind of that middle management prick that person who is technically above you in the iraqi but thinks and acts like they're way more important than they really are it's humiliating but you have to tolerate it oh and he also has the first as you know seen as you know the fire lord has banished his son the prince and renounced his love of him and will not let him return to the throne unless he finds the avatar the fire lord believes his son is too soft and by doing this he will become strong and become a worthy heir to the throne as you know which again is just so terribly funny because it's so painfully obvious what shyamalan is doing here okay shyamalan here's the thing we don't know how to fit zuko's backstory in yeah and hear me out what if xiao said it like he implied some of it no no no no like like he said all of it ah all of it yeah you've got it like a wikipedia entry and yeah it's not scripted greatly implying zuko's arc is about strength not honor and it's a little too on the nose it would have been good if the soldiers laughed to deepen his humiliation but it at least gives us some real two-way character conflict when zuko threatens him and storms out sure shozuko would have yelled at him and in the episode that inspired this moment he challenged him to an acne kai but still as an introduction this scene at least tells us who xiao is which is well a step up from aang katara ira and soccer so we're betting two for six good going shyamalan and you know what i'm glad he got zhao right and not any of the others zhao the most memorable character in the entire series zhao the long time fan favorite but ozai the psychopathic child abusing dictator waging war on the rest of the world to attain total domination and supremacy the terrifying monolith of raw fire bending power a towering man whom all fear he is the shadow in the fire the one behind it all he is cliff curtis and a cape got on with it where are the luscious locks shy milan where are the luscious locks where are they i'm not even kidding when i say that ozai has five scenes in this film and every single one of them would have been a better introduction for ozai's character than the one they chose like we need to talk about this let me remind you of azula's introduction the famous do the tides command this ship's speech her theme is bold and loud everyone in the scene around her is in a position of subservience before she even steps out her presence commands respects she issues a subtle underhanded threat in a way that shows she is emotionally manipulative smart domineering but arrogant to a weakness there's so much communicated here outside of the script in one of his scenes in the film ozai is sitting on his throne we never see his face the angle is commanding with zhao blurred out and small compared to him and his voice in a scene is actually kind of imposing you think my son is this person the soldiers are calling the blue spirit this would have been a fine introduction for many of the reasons that azulla's was fantastic too or one of his other scenes like in zuko's flashback where zuko remembers his own father burning his face as a child this scene has at least some dynamic shots with him stepping out of the darkness a genuine reveal and an emotive beat with a strong character-defining decision to ozia's first scene our first impression of ozai will be formed around him burning his own child's face making me hate him a little maybe or perhaps the scene where ozai declares that they should kill the moon and the ocean spirits an affront to the powers of the universe demonstrating the true ruthlessness of your villain but shyamalan shoots himself in the foot because he lets ozai's first scene be the one where he's getting an update on this film's greatest hit you know i conducted a raid on the great library which most said didn't even exist there's no memorable villainous theme there are no shots or framing that emphasizes commanding air or the danger that he poses all of the shots are flat and boring and lifeless i mean there is a reason firelords put themselves behind this barrier of flame in the show it makes everyone who comes before them looks small alone in the dark while they look down on them from a position of power but there's just nothing in this scene whatsoever this is the most dangerous man in the world and i don't hate him i don't even feel anything he doesn't make any character defining decisions he doesn't do anything horrid or even interesting like azula does there are no power dynamics in the way it's shot and the fact that you see ozai's face here immediately robs the later scenes where we don't see his face of any of the power they were meant to have there's no reveal i am not a filmmaker okay but it seems simple to me shyamalan could have had the scene where we can't see his face the scene where we reveal his face and then the scene where we see all of him one two three with their framing flowing on from one another and this is made even worse by the fact that we didn't even need this scene this information to be delivered this way it could have been as simple as zhao opening a clearly delicate and ancient scroll possibly from the great library that none said exist in a ship and he says the spirits have had their way with this world for too long it is time for a new age of man we don't see what the scroll says exactly getting the audience to want answers what has he discovered and then the camera pans to a great map behind him of the northern water tribe please shyamalan we don't need to know it's from the great library to return to my points about exposition is it necessary is it natural is it problem solving is it character justification on all fronts no but let's tally up all of shyamalan's hits and misses shall we like most of my attempts at finding happiness it's mostly miserable failures ah hey i think i found a way to solve all my problems book 3 hey if i know you you want to see some bending avatar is full of creative and fast-paced fight scenes and you can't wait to see them on the big screen can you because they're going to be awesome tim could you tell me a little bit more about that what happened with the fight scenes they were just so so terribly paced wow i mean there was there was barely any connection between the element and their physical movements and i still see it i see it all the time i see it before my waking eyes the bending in this film is like shyamalan sat down watched the show and came away with the conclusion that bending was the same as watching a congregation of goth's dance in 2008. you all know it the most infamous fight scene in this film is undoubtedly the one in the earth bending prison where it takes six men six people to bend a single rock and hey if that's not what it is then it's shot in a way that makes you think that which is even worse on a technical level there's barely any life or tension built into how people move and bend the elements and shyamalan must have barely looked at what the different bending forms looked like because the most egregious example is when he got noah ringer to do just some random martial arts routine in order to summon a cloud of fog after zuko rescues him as the blue spirit he ends up in what is quite distinctly known as horse stance the most basic i kid you not earth bending stance and the absolute opposite of everything airbending stands for i mean look at this fire bending move during the prison fight it should have been a third of the length and again there is only a vague connection between the physical movements of the actor and the movement of the element what is this tell me i i need to know he's like two steps from going unlimited power this isn't just frustrating for me because it's clearly not the same way as in the original show where movements are precise and have a clear cause consequence relationship between physical movement and movement of the element it's frustrating because it's boring and dumb to watch on its own on a technical level it makes the bending look fake because it doesn't really match the movements of those actors using it i mean look at this shot later on in the northern water tribe when eng makes a vortex and nobody around him is looking at it this amazing feat of bending that nobody's seen in a hundred years and no one cares it's like when you can tell actors are pointing at something animated that they can't really see on a green screen or whatever and none of this is helped by the fact that the choreography of background benders is kind of like a high school rendition of get your head in the game where all of the actors are clearly not basketball players and one guy in the back drops it and it rolls off stage and you know what at least the small rock guys were in time get them to come back get them to do the bending get them to do all the bending in this film replace all of the actors with just the small rock guys tim 2020 replace everyone with small rock guys some people have asked if the fight scenes were always doomed to fail a lot of people would struggle replicating the fast sharp moves from the animated series and the visual effects would have difficulty following those moves but i don't think the problem is the visual effects the fight scene in doctor strange and a bunch of other films there's a lot of them out there have fast movements and effects needing to work together but it works because the actors movements are precise they're sharp they have a clear intention most bending in shyamalan's film though doesn't have that attention to detail it feels like he vaguely described what they should do and then they just did something and felt they looked cool this is why the martial arts skills are important for actors in these kinds of films because this sort of stuff just looks sloppy and directionless without it that precision and control and clarity of movement is a skill that you have to build up it's not something any random person can just do on a more structural level though shyamalan's fight scenes have a serious pacing problem there are these awkward gaps between each beat have a look at this one the earth bending prison scene there is one the stone wall two the march three the tiny rock four the fire bolt five soccer kicking one guy six ang air bending seven soccer's boomerang eight and airbending 2.0 and then nine the fire benders flee everyone in the background including the main characters just stand there till it's their turn to do something like assassin's creed guards aang stands there for not even kidding one two three four five six seven seconds before doing anything the dude that just fire bent is weirdly in the exact same position once the fires have cleared like he's like ah well my job's done now katara just wanders around the background after she's shoved someone and most of the guards do nothing despite there being a lot of them like movement is only permitted when shyamalan explicitly directs it on one of those beats he should know that we do see the stuff that isn't just central to the shot but pacing isn't just about speed and flow though pacing is about a sense of progression a feeling that the story is moving forward or perhaps grinding to a halt and it's the same with fight scenes they're meant to tell us a story but shyamalan rarely ever gives us the feeling that the characters are either getting closer to or further from their goal instead these are just things that happen and then it's over and the fire nation runs away there's no strong sense of cause and effect that each of these made the fire nation run away that they build up to it they just come after one another sequentially and this isn't helped by shyamalan's desire to shoot everything in one take it makes everything appear slow and lumbering and that's a technical flaw that he should have foreseen directors usually solve this problem by establishing a clear central goal defeating a specific person or escaping at a particular door and then using beats that either bring them closer to this or take them further away from it it gives it a sense of progression and setback but shyamalan gives us nothing of that sort here nor in barely any of his other fight scenes but you know what's even more bizarre about this fight though shyamalan uses a dissolved transition between the fight inside the prison and the fight outside in the village and this is really weird because the only other place that shyamalan uses a dissolved transition in this film is when there's a big gap in time and space like look at this fade leading up to the solenoid temple the way this fight scene is shot makes it feel like some weird montage of aang freeing villagers across the earth kingdom it's not it's just badly shot using inconsistent filmic language i think it's a little too easy for a lot of critics to take a couple of bad scenes and go look at how terrible these are that makes the film as a whole bad when a lot of films might have a couple of bad ones but are otherwise fine but i want to be clear this isn't a one-off issue or one scene disaster that shyamalan makes and then moves on and improves the midpoint climax of the film takes from the episode the blue spirit where zuko rescues aang for imprisonment with zhao and they fight their way out and a really strange thing about this sequence in the film is that a dozen or more moments are almost shot for shot translations from show to film to a level of detail that's honestly kind of unusual for a film adaption [Music] but again the text isn't just the words or imagery used at any given moment it's the subtext and context that gives those things meaning and though shyamalan might depict some iconic fight scenes from the show he fails to articulate the point behind them the place they have in the narrative because fight scenes like every scene serve a purpose the purpose of this one was to show how compatible aang and zuko truly are by having them fight together and depend on each other as well as foreshadow zuko's eventual change of allegiance they save each other's lives over half a dozen times back and forth the times they fight alone is when they start to lose there is not a single beat in this sequence in the show that doesn't deepen these ideas and shyamalan has this fight scene go on for a total of 2 minutes and 35 seconds but they're fighting totally apart from one another for one minute 45 seconds of that nearly 70 percent less than a third of the fight is actually doing what this fight scene was meant to do narratively and the rest well it's basically meaningless because even when aang is fighting alone he's totally fine he's kicking ass watching this you begin to realize that this is probably just a spectacle that clearly noah ringer practiced a lot and shyamalan thought would look a lot cooler than it truly does so we couldn't bear to leave it on the kind of room floor and they even put a lot of emphasis on the stuff in the behind the scenes footage which again speaks to me how shyamalan might have really liked the scene and wanted to keep it in despite the fact that it's not that great and by the way this isn't even to mention one of the worst shots in the entire film shot from the perspective of aang supposedly flying and necessarily this fight too suffers from the same pacing issues that the prison fight scene did people are very clearly waiting for their cued and directed turn and the gaps between the fight beats are way too slow with only some beats really leading into one another for a sense of cause and effect for example shyamalan sets up that aang is surrounded and trapped by dozens of soldiers this is good aang has a clear goal to escape being surrounded but the way in which shyamalan shoots it extremely close doesn't tell us if the number of enemies is decreasing or that aang is figuring a way out of this fray and then in the next shot he is magically out and safe without us knowing why or how he did it a lot of these things aren't obvious or film-breaking on their own most films will have you know little flaws of narrative and pacing and fights like this but they add up to a feeling that what you're watching is fragmented boring not going anywhere until it suddenly is the lift fight scene from captain america winter soldier isn't the best fight scene ever made but it does neatly demonstrate the flaws of shyamalan's filmmaking here right from the beginning there is a definitive sense of captain america's goal get out of the lift from very early on in the fight you have a clear idea of just how many there are of them left with a special focus on this character because of this fighting this guy becomes kind of a proxy for how well the fight itself is going and beating him becomes the natural segue into getting out which captain america does there's a strong sense of both cause and effect from beat to beat and progression and setback as tension goes up and down till his eventual escape but i want to show you something something i discovered because i found that literally every fight scene in this film is drastically improved when watching it 1.5 or 2 times the speed and not just because they're over quicker [Music] wow and hey it also disguises that zuko is stabbing nothing like i am so sure that dave patel couldn't see in this mask and was just being told wave them around a little this fight scene later on is meant to mimic the fight that they had at the beginning of the show where aang skirts around zuko but it's not funny or practical or believable so it just looks weird remember that tonal dissonance we talked about well it comes back with a vengeance and moments like this the fight scene suffers from all the normal pacing issues but i want to narrow in on why it fails in terms of tension which is a slightly different issue good fight scenes are about building tension and releasing it a flow as things grow more tense and desperate than less tense when the protagonist gains the upper hand a sense that the characters are getting closer or further from their goal before the fight finally reaches its highest point of tension and they only just managed to win once again we return to the beautiful blade runner 2049 which has a fantastic example of a fight in its opening scene in the first beat sapper tries to stab kay raising the tension became manages to stop it lowering the tension then sapper slams kane to the wall k manages to dodge a few strikes but saba again throws him to the ground nearly strangling him to death the highest point of tension before k just manages to get ahead in and pin sapper down there's a continuous back and forth of tension throughout the whole fight but don't get me wrong the problem with this ang vs zuko fight scene doesn't come from it not having a back and forth it does have one the problem comes from when katara saves him structurally this fight despite being the only true fight between our primary hero and our primary antagonist does not build to any high point of tension here eng's goal is escaping but he continually gets the upper hand in the fight meaning that the tension is continually lowering making for a rather unsatisfying fight the music and framing treats katara's intervention like a triumphant moment but it isn't she's not really saving aang he's doing absolutely fine by himself when we last left the scene he had zuko in a headlock and he's easily dealing with his fire blast here if i were to put it in a graph because nothing is more interesting in the fast-paced high-energy instant thrill environment of youtube than a graph it would look like this a character intervening to save another is a well-used trope you've seen it a million times before but it only really works when the fight is at a point where the protagonist cannot win but here it's like someone's saving kay when he's already got stepper pinned down and gasping for breath but tim you might say the triumphant music and framing can be justified because of katara and zuko's intense rivalry oh good point we can say that we we fire lord son [Music] you took him from our village katara has not even seen zuko since the beginning of the film we have literally gone the entire second act without our heroes truly interacting with the primary antagonist how do you even manage this he turns up at the scene and her response is basically oh it's you oh what's your name what's your name zoo zoo zoomy ah something again these are little things they can't ruin a film by themselves but the sheer number of them the cruel repetitive nature of these crimes all together make for just a terrible story the thing is you can get away with the stuff once or twice you can't get away with it every time but don't worry like 2020 this roller coaster of disappointment doesn't stop it's like every fight scene manages to find a new way to fail but don't worry you know aang and zuko might have no real tension between them nor dezuko and katara but at least shyamalan actually put effort into zhao and zuko so when zhao and zuko finally get together to fight we finally have two characters with some real beef and they're gonna duke it out and it's gonna be cool right right no come away from him nephew there are too many soldiers now they will never let you take the avatar [Music] we must leave immediately he wants to fight you so he can capture yuzuko walk away it would have been fine if the film in any way delved into zuko's inability to resist a fight like this putting him in numerous scenes where he could have backed down but he didn't and he learns from it but no the film never earns this choice for zuko in fact one of the only scenes where he does have a choice like this he walks away in the show zuko is definitely not capable of walking away at this point in his arc so here the one fight scene that actually would have been satisfying to see shyamalan just cuts and leaves if you do want to show zuko's growth then the show already provided a moment for exactly this and it didn't mean he had to walk away from the fight after zhao was taken by the ocean spirit zuko reaches out to save him showing that despite their conflict he didn't actually want him to die despite the fact that the man himself had tried to get him killed zuko has empathy even for his enemies and ira's line here is phrased weirdly it implies that zuko is walking away because he doesn't want to get captured and not because he's grown oh and then when it comes to zhao's death shyamalan just swaps it out from him being killed by the ocean spirit for a bunch of random waterbending nobodies i love seeing a major character get killed by uh waterbender number four in the show zhao's death arises from his own flaws there's an irony to him being killed by one of the great spirits after he had killed the moon spirit himself it's a kind of poetic justice that speaks to how you should not underestimate the spirits like he did it's a subtle moment of word building in its own right his end reflects his character like how ned stark's honor gets him killed in game of thrones now iro tells zhao right before he dies you stand alone and that has always been your great mistake but is it has the story in any way tried to emphasize this to then have him defeated by a group of people standing together is reflective of this on the surface but when there's actually nothing to highlight this weakness throughout the story it's just shallow the show goes out of its way to repeatedly demonstrate how zhao's pride and arrogance is his weakness that he believes he can stand up to the spirits god like beings when of course he can't wow but weirdly still shyamalan takes this exact shot of zhao's death from the show this image of zhao being drowned shyamalan knows that we love this moment but i don't think he quite understands why this moment was so satisfying on a narrative level and by this point you've probably picked up on a recurring theme of this film and it's not just that we should let the heat death of the universe happen right now though if it happens at the speed of the firebenders we've probably got plenty of time but i need to show you something a golden moment a guilty pleasure not technically part of the film but still very much from the creative genius of imm night shyamalan it is easily the worst fight scene i have ever seen so bad that even shyamalan cut it from his film how how do you film a fight scene this bad i would explain why it's so bad but they would be giving you exposition that you already know because it's so obvious from the scene at hand and there are scenes where actors were clearly told that there would be water bending but the visual effects budget just just ran out like oh i i cannot get enough of this film book 4 i think are you the avatar wrong i've talked a little bit about how exposition runs rife in shyamalan's screenplay but we need to narrow in on just how bad the script is itself because i don't think i've ever read a less competent script from a multi-million dollar studio no no no you don't understand and do not forget the 10 of the script could just be cut with no consequence whatsoever so to start let's talk about a really bizarre trait of shy milan's writing in this film repeated words okay so what what if we found you teachers teachers to teach you bending which element would you have to learn first there is a very spiritual place the city was built around this place but we must hurry um the fire nation knew the avatar would be born into the air no max so they exterminated all the air nomads a lot of the villages in this part of the earth kingdom are occupied by the fire nation like this village was they pray the weakest towns in villages we should go visit some of these towns on you could fall in love here we could settle down here and you could have a blessed life i mean people don't talk like this at least not people in film film creates the illusion of realism more than it is realistic a lot of the time but this repetition is another one of those really subtle things that makes this dialogue jarring and awkward the word visit carries so much less weight than saying we'll free them so let's think about how easily these lines could be fixed soccer saying okay so what if we found you a teacher which element would you need to learn first or you were saying our people do have a sacred site the city was built around it katara saying the fire nation knew the avatar would be born into the air nomads so they exterminated them soccer saying the fire nation occupies a lot of villages in this part of the earth kingdom they prey on the weakest of them but we could free the mang we could or iro saying you could fall in love here settle down zuko there is honor in a simple life like this i'm not even saying these rewrites are good they're just super obvious tweaks that at least make it better and i'm a disheveled gremlin whose writing is worth dirt but at least i proofread my work before i throw it in the trash right next to my law degree and then oh and then there is my favorite exchange in the entire film this was you when you were born an earthbender two lifetimes ago you came to our village avatar kyoshi loved games i do too i mean i still do i i can't even put into words why i find this so funny it's it's so bizarre it's so out of place it's just this is kiyoshi she liked games oh i like games too why was this included oh oh i'll tell you why because once again shyamalan saw a kiyoshi statue in the series and thought that like children we would applaud because we get the reference but he doesn't include any of the meaning behind it either that kyoshi's morality was vastly different to ang's or her legacy in the kyoshi warriors who challenge soccer's sexism which he hasn't even had set up in the film once again it's a snapshot with no depth i mean there's nothing else in this scene which is part of why it just makes it so mind bafflingly funny no conflicts no character change no need or want everything in this film is surface level it's recognizable but devoid of purpose and shyamalan's script is full of weird lines like these which while not strictly wrong or incorrect are just not how people speak i knew from the first time we discovered you were a bender that one day i would realize your destiny our spies have discovered someone claiming to be the avatar they describe him as just a boy we should set the trap for this person we have many earth kingdom people under our control i can leave soldiers hidden in certain locations um the fire nation knew the avatar would be born into the air no max so they exterminated all the air nomads phrases like i would realize your destiny are awkward and who would say i can leave soldiers in certain locations i don't know where exterminated is also a very peculiar word to use especially for a child and in such a supposedly emotional moment it'll be far more natural for them to simply say they killed them all characters constantly say things that either others would already know or wouldn't make sense to bring up in this context and saying the fire nation is up to something after being captured by zuko is the equivalent of the worst detective arriving on a crime scene with a sprawled corpse to go i'm starting to think something went down here the end result is that characters don't feel real because they aren't speaking real zhao using terms like boy and this person in sentences immediately following one another just screams to me of a newbie writer desperately trying to find different ways to say the same thing it's a trait of weak writing the unifying brand to how people talk in this film is either wikipedia entry or stilted microsoft sam generally you script things for two reasons one because the character would say them and two because the audience needs to hear it if you're good then every line ticks both of these boxes but you will rarely find that in this film instead awkward phrasing like this means that characters would rarely speak as they do and the main point of their line is often exposition at best you're ticking one of them sometimes neither of them and the few scenes in which characters tick both of those boxes like the one between iron zugo leading up to the assassination attempt shyamalan really fails to use the tense questions that the scene has to offer to drive anything interesting iru asks where zuko has been for four days and zuko is reluctant to say great we have zugo withholding the truth and iro concerned for his nephew's well-being considered them becoming more reckless we have conflict yet where most screenwriters would have i rode the supposed quote-unquote mentor character despite all evidence to the contrary pushed zuko to give him an answer throwing zuko into anger and iro insisting that it's only because he loves him shyamalan simply lets the moment pass on without furthering their relationship at all now the show doesn't push this moment much either but that's because importantly the show is just littered with scenes of iro showing compassion and concern for zuko isolating himself those are the important scenes there but this is just a damn missed opportunity of which maitad shyamalan has given himself very few i just can't get over how iro couldn't even have one just one meaningful scene between ira and zuko but he can't and the closest we get is like halfway through the film uh kill me this is about shyamalan using the film's limited screen time as efficiently as possible which he seemingly refuses to do our spies have discovered someone claiming to be the avatar my name is ong and i'm the avatar our spies have discovered someone claiming to be the avatar our spies are spies are spies the deductive skills of these spies is unmatched i would have never figured it out book uh next one if i were satan employing new creatures to torture hell's many inhabitants i would reject this decrepit gremlin monkey and soulless carnivorous minotaur for being too terrifying to look at upper and momo are the sleep paralysis demons that you fear will grab your ankles in the middle of the night and drag you down to the depths of the earth and shyamalan knows it get behind me oh and shyamalan does his absolute damnedest to keep upper and momo off-screen for as much as possible and especially to stop you from ever seeing upper's face and once you notice that you won't be able to unsee it and they basically only return to remind you that they do indeed exist but so sparingly that you're not actually sure that they do hey just like our sleep paralysis demons so it fits seriously they leave the frame whenever possible opera is basically just a flying piece of furniture in this film and with his eyes facing the front it's really disconcerting like he's a predator a murderer and momo too but why now i know the firebenders didn't kill the air nomads but if not them then who so on the one hand it's terrible that two adorable well-loved and comedic characters were so freaking wasted but on the other i am really glad i did not have to see their faces for long so shyamalan is a horror thriller a plant monster director i don't know i never watched that film whatever he is he was not familiar with the filmmaking language of these fast-paced ensemble cast fantasy films and it shows most obviously in his truly bizarre use of establishing shots so welcome to year 10 film studies because that is all you need to point out why these shots are so terrible i have heard no word of my son for quite some time do you know where he is i've not heard of anything siren i'm sure a word of him will come to us soon the northern water tribe benders are given their strength by their moon and ocean spirits establishing shots are shockingly mean to establish something usually place time atmosphere but what does this tell us about the fire nation well nothing the shot is basically empty our eyes aren't drawn to anything and while sometimes establishing shots do start empty they always build up to reveal something but here what we see at the start is what we see at the end the interesting architecture is washed out and obscured by a thick line of trees and for most of the shot the trees are actually front and center it doesn't establish anything in contrast take a look at these establishing shots of ministereth and itaras not only do both of them actually reveal something but the music accompanying it tells us something about the place itaras has a somber and kind of sad theme reflective of the decay inside the city itself which is theoden's madness the opening of the fire nation tells us nothing the music isn't distinctive it isn't a motive it doesn't highlight ozai's villainy or zhao's imminent threat the shot itself doesn't tell us anything about the grandness of the fire nation the greatness of its civilization and this isn't even the first time that shyamalan gives us a flat boring non-establishing shot for the fire nation specifically yeah in ozai's first scene we get this it's too dark to make anything else at all it's this utterly featureless landscape and it's meant to be the homeland of the most dangerous man in the world and the most powerful nation in the world but it's just nothing it's really boring i mean the original capital is set inside a volcanic crater it's awesome it's a real spectacle come on man come on oh and it doesn't get any better when we get to the iconic throne room because well there's this weird light coming from uh sources i mean i'm not one to nitpick things like this but it's even obvious to me that shyamalan was trying to use the flames to create some kind of ominous ear but there is not a single shadow from the fires shaping the room or in particular our view of ozai and it gets even funnier because apparently this was filmed in a high school gym and now that you know that you can just see the basketball hoop right above xiao's head it's it's got the sound and the framing of it like i got it the avatar wrong but i promise shyamalan showing us the true glory of the fire nation gets even better because ozai's generals came to him and said fire lord our armies have taken new territory in the earth kingdom what shall we call it how about a zooland or new ozai no we shall call it fire nation colony 15. i want us to be the most boring empire in history i mean i'm half convinced that shyamalan just did this film for the meme now the film is full to the brim with these flat directionless energy-less shots with no subtext or meaning or the meaning that he imbues it with is far weaker than whatever it should have been but hey it's better to be boring than whatever the hell the spirit world was meant to be stay away from him [Music] shyamalan must have seen jj 2009 star trek lens there and was like yes that turns me on and it's also really funny when you realize that all the little bits of shrubbery in the air temple are actually so hardy that they don't even move under the whirlwind that ant creates they move just as much when he stops or how about this moment uncle look it's just so obviously not being said by zuko here and now and hey doesn't matter no is it funny yes book 666 the ring is mine the more i watched the last dear bender the more one question began to bug me what does it mean to make a good adaption for a long time i thought this was to do with being loyal to the original source material but this film really challenged my belief on that shyamalan uses dozens of shots lines and imagery that are taken directly from the show sometimes perfectly replicated to a degree that i don't think i've seen anywhere else [Music] before going on the avatar must be captured alive close all the gates immediately and i think it's fair to say that shyamalan clearly cared so much about replicating these moments that sometimes it even looks odd when translated to film it's unreal and awkward the shot where zuko breaks aang's chains is jarring in live action this is actually a level of adaptive attention you wouldn't usually expect from a filmmaker aang's fear is a near exact replica from the series right down to the wavy veins and how the ice formed the spirit oasis from the northern water tribe is near identical too and the avatar statues from the southern air temple the thing is when so much of the script and visuals are lifted from the original source material my expectation would be to love the film but i didn't obviously i hated it so this leaves me with a crisis i'm a new zealander alright which of course means that i love marmite real marmite not that british crap but it also means that i love the lord of the rings the film series and when people ask me why i often say that the films are really loyal to the original book not just because it's the closest thing we have to a new zealand porn industry but its depiction of idoras gondor and the shire are all very closely taken from the books but more than that the screenwriters fran walsh and peter jackson took a lot of the script directly from the page and that's not easy to do because there is a lot of book but if anything the last deer bender stands as testament to the idea that adapting something faithfully isn't just about following the script and looking like the original source material because this film does that to a stupidly impressive degree and that's because it made me think about how there's a much deeper layer to what makes up a work than just what we see and hear it's about how everything that we see in here relates to one another how they work together no one answered the noon bell rang still no one spoke frodo glanced at all the faces but they were not turned to him all the council sat with downcast eyes as if in deep thought a great dread fell on him as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken an overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by bilbo's side and rivendell filled his heart at last with an effort he spoke and wanted to hear his own words as if some other will was using his small voice i will take the ring he said though i do not know the way peter jackson didn't just show me what the council of elrond looked like it's not frodo seeing this last line that makes it a faithful adaption peter jackson managed to capture the somber fearful sorrowful mantle that frodo takes up the sense of a small person entering a world far bigger than he trembling at its shadows but knowing he must and still standing and as i watched the film i realized that this was shyamalan's most critical flaw shyamalan understood that we loved particular moments from the story but he didn't understand why we loved those moments there's a scene in the film after zuko saves aang as the blue spirit where ang is looking over an unconscious who go then he leaves and the shot of aang leaping into the trees and away is extremely similar to how he does it in the show as well as how zuko is lying down while unconscious but in the show aang asks if they could have been friends before the war and it's only after zuko listens and then responds with a bolt of fire that he leaves the film does none of this as in there's no real point to the scene shyamalan understood that we loved this epilogue to that episode where aang saves and watches over an unconscious zuko and then leaves of the trees but he gives none of the context that makes the scene meaningful and what's even worse what's even more bizarre and strange is that aang actually has this line later in the film we can be friends you know but it's so off-handed and underplayed it feels like it was thrown in haphazardly at the last moment and it's phrased more as ang turning his back on zuko than him earnestly reaching out to trust him why not have that moment here the scene is meant to put zuko in a position where his conscience can truly be tested by saving aang from the fire nation and then being saved by him and then listening to aang as he talks the audience is tempted by the idea that zuko might choose friendship the scene gives zuko the opportunity to grow as a person and let and go it's a small crisis point in his character arc and those moments are really important because they're what make zuko's eventual turn to the good feel earned there's been struggle progress and setbacks strife moments where he could have turned but failed to a ton of the film dialogue is taken directly from the show and shyamalan is replicating a lot of shots from the episodes themselves but he doesn't understand why that dialogue why these shots are there he seemed to think that if he referenced all of these things it would be enough for us to love it because we'd go hey i recognized that thing but it wasn't of course it wasn't and he does this over and over and over again with perhaps the most egregious example being soccer's character or should i say the lack of soccer's character soccer is the fewest lines of the main characters at just 49 a whole third less than katara and every story beat of his in the last airbender is either cut completely like his growth with the kioshi warriors or it's transferred to another character and none of this is helped by him being totally joyless and never being shown to be a gifted strategist or leader nor does the skepticism ever save the group like it does in the episode jet he has nothing he only has two lines in the entire southern air temple sequence which was originally used to build relational tension between him and katara and helped define its place in the group as being more of a realist insisting that they need to tell aang what happened but there's none of that here in fact there's none of anything here at all ever he is barely a character and that's only because he technically has lines i suppose he's never shown to have any meaningful role in the web of characters here to have any need for what he has to say or what he believes yet shyamalan still has the audacity to use soccer as the emotional linchpin for his ending in uh's death my brother and the princess became friends right away shyamalan doesn't even show us this relationship unfolding but his real crime is that he expects us to care about soccer losing her when he has done nothing whatsoever to make us care about soccer in the first place he has no arc he has no wants he has no needs no struggles nothing to root him in an emotional reality and yet shyamalan has the audacity to expect us to care we barely know him let alone you a in fact i kid you not when i say that her name is only mentioned once before the scene where she dies once and she's meant to be the emotional linchpin of the film i mean this is just a total failure of setup and payoff but it's also shyamalan doing that same thing again he saw that the scene meant something to people but he didn't understand why it's not simply because ua dies that's not enough it's because we care about soccer this is the ghost of screenwriting past coming back to horn shyamalan because he wasn't willing to emotionally set up his own ending and though this is the biggest example this isn't even the first time shyamalan has made this problem for himself in this film all the way back at the beginning they visit the southern air temple where aang is meant to learn about the genocide of his people a horrible ordeal so one of the differences between fiction and real life is that in fiction i am a buff sexy dragon slayer with no depressive tendencies and feeling like i'm on the horrific inevitable decline now that i'm about to reach 25 it's all it's all downhill from here oh [Music] sorry where was i oh yeah one of the differences between fiction and reality is that it's a lot more important to tragedies of a massive scale like genocide in fiction it's hard for our small minds to truly grasp the mechanized horror and scale of things like the holocaust so when teaching it to kids we scale it down to the story of say anne frank it's a lot harder to emotionally grasp and this is even more important in fiction because we know on some level that whatever the great tragedy was it didn't happen so shy milan needs to make us care about the ianoma genocide through aang but at this point in the film we don't know aang at all in fact aang has had just 23 lines up to this point in the film and we know next to nothing about what he wants what he loves what he fears what he hates his weaknesses his strengths the closest we get is that he says monkeyatso is kind of like a father figure to him but this was told it wasn't shown and barely 30 seconds before the reveal again this is shyamalan expecting us to care before giving us a reason to care and the problems don't stop here shyamalan saw the katara brought eng back from the avatar state from that grief and that anger but he doesn't seem to understand why that worked narratively in the show she calls out to him saying that she knows what it's like to lose family that her mother was basically murdered in front of her she draws a parallel between aang and herself so that he doesn't feel alone and loneliness is a big struggle for ang here it's a big struggle for him throughout the series aang is the last of his people he's the last airbender so in the film when katara is yelling [Music] it isn't nearly as powerful because she's not saying anything that draws a meaningful connection between him and her oh and let alone the fact that this would have been a way better place to introduce the exposition that her mother was killed and the knowledge of the spirit world given that aang ends up here kind of confused he would be what we call an unknowledgeable perspective character meaning that he would naturally be asking what is this place a character wants information and so to some degree the audience would as well you are in the other world says the dragon the spirit realm and that is all you would need it is not particularly creative sure but it's a hell of a lot better than grand grand the exposition vending machine but hey maybe shyamalan can be forgiven for all of these things that he admitted there's a million reasons things get cut from a film through the script or the editing whatever i'm sure this stuff that i don't even know maybe maybe shyamalan's a genius who was just you know kept back if would have been a great success if not for that pesky shy milan yeah let's go with that except it's not just about the context that he omitted it's about the stuff that he actually directed to happen he made happen there are two scenes in book one where air and jar are speaking before the invasion of the northern water tribe zhao is full of delusions of grandeur and ira cautions him about history and tampering with the spirits when zhao says it'll be nothing like your failure at basing say iro's expression is humble sad and full of memory he says i hope not for your sake zhao is condescending to airo by pointing out his failures but airo doesn't rise to it at all and his reply speaks to his deep feelings of empathy and the loss he faced at basing say his son lieuten which is where that empathy really comes from he knows what it's like to be full of delusions of grandeur that lead to great personal loss and he doesn't want that for anyone the delivery and phrasing in this scene in the show is full of subtext and character okay so that's great now let's look at how shyamalan directed this exchange to go in his film when reminded of his failure at basting say ira rolls his eyes and is clearly aggravated annoyed at the reminder he doesn't say anything or wish out the best for his own sake he doesn't express any modicum of empathy at all in fact zhao also compliments him as a brilliant strategist in the film to which phil myro smiles and looks proud of himself remembering his military history which again misses the point that airo is ashamed of his militarism in his past why does this matter though well ira's empathy extending to even his enemies is a critical trait that zugo gets from him but there is simply no sense of that in shyamalan's iro and again changing characters when adapting is fine it is fine that parkour isn't super sexist and zhao is less psychopathic but no man is an island characters have a place in the web of arcs and themes that weave them all together to create a story and iro has a specific place in zuko's as his canary in the coal mine having already gone through the tragedy loss and anger of his own and grown into a more empathetic self-controlled kind man it is that dynamic between air and zugo that facilitates his growth and makes zuko's change possible and shyamalan does seem to be going for zuko's redemption arc in this film or at least planning to set it up for sequels but even in little scenes like this shyamalan misunderstands how these characters are woven together to make that redemption happen to make it believable to make it meaningful see once again shyamalan only understands the surface level purpose to a scene that zhao and iro stood together at the top of a boat and talked about their past and passing say and the invasion but he doesn't get what this scene is really about it's about ira's empathy and loss stemming from violence zuko's arc in the film is far weaker because of this because he doesn't have that moral counterweight against his darker impulses we just simply don't get to see that pushback that he really needs because for most of this film iro just appears totally apathetic and that's pathetic an adaption can't just steal moments from the original source material patch them together like some frankensteinian summer project and expect it to be good you're relying on that shallow response from the audience going hey i recognize that but being recognizable is a pretty low bar i mean the rise of skywalker is well known by now as a tragedy of palpatine proportions and it is filled with moments that play to audience nostalgia it was a laughable flaw to the film obsessive and constant referentiality reduce it to a haphazard mess of disconnected moments more concerned with familiarity than feeling because the running theme of shyamalan's work here is this constant disconnected referentiality even down to the smallest moments aang uses these spikes in battle it's a reference to katara's deal with paku but it's real adaptive purpose is so that people recognize it and shyamalan hopes that that will be enough but i'm not that stupid and neither are you it renders your story into a largely disconnected mess because these moments that shyamalan plucked from the show don't exist in isolation he doesn't truly build up to his emotional and climactic beats he just recognizes that certain things happen at roughly certain points in the plot structure and hopes that we recognize it too projecting our feelings and that context that it really needs onto it there's a line in the film where zuko talks about how his sister had everything come easy to her while his father resents him it pulls from a great scene in the show finale but zuko in the show is comparing aang to azula as they're both prodigies natural benders while zuko has had to fight for whatever he has shyamalan zuko though lacks the depth of him projecting his insecurities outwardly onto others and anger that build up to a moment like this there's no real reason for the scene other than that hashtag recognition see the last airbender made me realize that being a good adaption isn't just about replicating my favorite moments from the show into a film it's a lot more to do with faithfully drawing complete story threads into a new medium now i know this is going to sound weird but stick with me i promise this is related because in 2007 the lord of the rings the musical was performed in toronto with a record 25 million dollar budget only to be the biggest failure in west end musical history not only did it lose a huge amount of money and not only was it apparently terrible but it was dramatically shut down when one of the main actors got their leg caught in the moving stage machinery only for their horrific caterwauling cries to be heard as their legs snapped and the curtains closed but hey i mean the music isn't actually that terrible the song's narrow and for all ways and the road goes ever on are really heartwarming and moving and catchy but i think that the main reason that it sucked is that the lord of the rings just has too much story to adapt to the stage even with three and a half hours which it had it ended up having random beats from the book make up a disconnected story without fully adapting any of the meaningful threads say frodo's struggle with the ring pippin's maturation aragorn's quest to kinghood there were moments for each of these things but none of them were ever given the full arc they needed but i've always had this weird curiosity that i would love to see a lord of the rings musical that only followed frodo and sam's story that followed that story thread and did it well they're the ones who actually sing those two songs we wouldn't see the entirety of the epic story but it would still be a faithful adaption to me it would realize one story thread incredibly closely and beautifully the point i'm trying to make is that it doesn't matter if everything you put on screen is technically from the original source material if none of the story threads that actually make up the story are done well and shy milan totally fails at this and it's not hard to figure out where this really came from so you've seen the first two episodes of season three are you excited for the rest of the season and the finale of avatar i i can't wait we've been watching the first two over and over and over at our house here can we shyamalan hadn't even finished the series when he was making this film this interview was filmed in 2009 by which time the script had already been well written and they had already far moved into shooting shyamalan hadn't even fully experienced the story threads he was trying to adapt but i don't think that all of this stems from a lack of knowledge i don't think that's the core issue here i decided to look at exactly which story threads shyamalan sets up by the halfway point of this film the blue spirit one zuko has a rivalry with zhao after he humiliated him two aang feels ashamed and blames himself for his people's genocide and three zuko wants to regain his honor by capturing the avatar now we haven't actually seen anything by this point to really suggest that zuko is a good person deep down airo has only said three lines to zuko by halfway through the film making his fatherliness later on feel pretty thrown in and katara and soccer have nothing no arcs whatsoever which is why katara's standing up to zuko falls pretty short at the end shyamalan has to stand up at the end of the film and go my name is katara and i'm the only waterbender left in the southern water trial as if this has been at all referenced or a struggle or anything throughout the film for her shyamalan even told us this was about quote grounding soccer to make him more real these story threads just don't get through though and the story threads he does include are poorly done and chosen i mean xiao's rivalry with zuko that's the story threads that you're going to develop the most yeah that's the one he developed the most despite being so faithful to the show in some strange way this is not a good adaption and there's a really interesting angle to look at exactly why there's an interview where shyamalan talks about the bad reception to this film and in that he draws a sharp distinction between audience reception of his films and critic reception uh i don't know what's going on with me in the critics the united states i got to tell you it's not my fight to fight i'm defenseless it's the audience if they choose to fight for me they fight for me and and they have uh through my career um i'm honored to have that relationship with them and i'll keep fighting for that relationship i get the feeling that shyamalan was trying to make this film for fans of the show that he wanted to replicate all of these scenes as closely as he could for them because it was important to a lot of people including me i think it might explain why he hid so many of those moments frames and lines that only show fans would even recognize and the tone was matured supposedly with the actors a little aged up but would also be the age the audience was in 2010. he thought critics might hate it but he expected fans to like it and that's why maybe shyamalan's film is more a failure of method than it was in tension and that's kind of a sad story because i think shyamalan's approach was rooted in a genuine attempt to faithfully adapt the source material he just went about a faithful adaption in entirely the wrong way and it's an easy mistake to make it's easy to think if there's more of the source material in what i make it must be more loyal to it right well no it's more complicated than that and all of this i feel is made sadder by the insults and malevolence and hatred levied towards shyamalan which i guess in making this video i have become complicit in he was trying something that he was clearly not yet ready for and it showed in his mistakes but it is the sheer magnitude of his mistakes that stand out because this is an interview in which he describes this film as quote the most culturally diverse movie i have ever seen it's ironic because it's the most culturally diverse movie i think i've ever seen so soccer and katara are from a culture based on the inuit yes in a world where everyone was designed to be asian or at least asian adjacent yes so you are gonna cast someone who is a jesse mccartney yeah i'm not even kidding when i say that shyamalan's original plan was to cast this guy as the almost explicitly inuit character soccer but don't worry shyamalan recognized his mistake and he got mccartney to stand down so the proper person could fill that role jackson rathbone are you the avatar wrong obviously katara is played by nicola peltz and aimed by noah ringer and they rightly received criticism for these casting choices paramount actually put out a statement in response saying the movie has 23 credited speaking roles more than half of which feature asian and pan-asian actors of korean japanese and indian descent the filmmaker's interpretation reflects the myriad qualities that have made the series a global phenomenon we believe fans of the original and new audiences alike will respond positively once they see it and that sounds great doesn't it more than half the characters presumably the screen time too and at least cast more in the spirit of the show so we should just assume that that's totally true right i mean i'm a millennial it'd be way too much work to go through the entire script count up how many lines each character has and figure out exactly what percentage of lines are actually spoken by pan-asian actors so of course i did it and yeah yeah it's as you expected only 42 of the lines are said by people who at least mildly fit the racial profiles of their characters and this is including cliff curtis a new zealand maori playing firelord ozai and sean taub an iranian-american playing iro and the percentage unfortunately slips to 39 when you only count main speaking roles katara sulka aang zhao zuko and iro and again despite what paramount says just because they're speaking roles does not give them equal value in the story katara soccer and eng are clearly given more weight by shy milan and they were cast as white americans take that into account and we're looking at an even sadder story and so on one level it's weird that for all shyamalan paid attention to the details of the show those specific frames and shots and lines he seemed to entirely miss that this was very much an asian world drawing from asian cultures their architecture mythology and social dynamics now when questioned about this himself he said anime is based on ambiguous facial features it's meant to be interpretive it's meant to be inclusive of all races and you can see yourself in all these characters but uh has this guy actually watched anime i mean they're not exactly subtle when they're referring to europe [Laughter] [Music] uh avatar is not some nebulous cartoon where the people are inspired by who knows what but what does all this have to do with making a good adaption the last airbender came out as a relatively unique show amongst mainstream fantasy television or even rarely books and films at the time as an asian inspired fantasy story and world especially for children at the time avatar was airing we had legend of the seeker harry potter the narnia series merlin the lord of the rings films all rooted in western culture and that's fine but even though the characters were still casting magic fireballs at one another avatar's totally different foundations set it apart the creators very explicitly envisioned its people as asian and the people who watched it and loved it like me definitely did too though it's never a one-to-one comparison the water tribes are very clearly inspired by the inuit the earth kingdom by the chinese the fire nation by the japanese and the air nomads by the tibetan monks this unique aspect this unique foundation made it especially interesting especially immersive and if faithful adaptions are about capturing the heart of the series then yeah proper casting from their real world counterparts is important to realizing that i wanted to see the world that i had imagined as a kid brought to life faithfully yeah but a world includes its characters and believe it or not soccer is not jesse mccartney but also a story isn't just special because it tells a good story as if stories exist in the ether and pop out of nothing stories exist in a socio-cultural context that make them more meaningful to people at certain times stories about hope resonate with us more during times of despair not because they're necessarily better written but because they fill a hole inside us that has been dug out by pain and loss for avatar this was the first time a lot of asian kids were seeing characters who looked like them and had a culture like theirs on screen and in a fantasy world too that's precious and it'll be part of what makes it special for a significant group of people for me this isn't just about accuracy to the original show it's about understanding what made it originally special shyamalan didn't quite seem to get that and if you're trying to make a faithful adaption for the people who love it but you don't look at the real world context in which that art piece became meaningful to them then you're going to miss just what the heart of the story is for many people and that's what happened here book yeah i mean who knows at this point my name is um and i'm the avatar like everywhere except my home island of new zealand aang's character arc is a dumpster fire i mean to start the one scene in which he even remotely acts like aang with his mischievousness and that look shymaland cuts from the film probably because a crew member in denim shorts walks on set but still in fact anzac is so poorly done that right at the end of the film the dragon has to summarize it as easily as possible so that we don't miss the point of the ending you are not dealing with the loss of your people and your responsibility for their deaths you are stopping yourself from grieving you are angry you must let this go as the avatar you are not meant to hurt others again i'm not a conspiracy theorist but this had to be added in in post-production because people weren't getting what aang's character arc was i mean it's too obvious it's too on the nose too direct and succinct even for this film i figured it out but he knows he's watching me ah it's too late though shy milan it's too late i've already got the truth out there now ang has throughout the film failed to waterbend because he blames himself for running away from his duties resulting in his people's genocide or at least that is meant to be the story it's a standard fantasy story trope that shyamalan is clearly employing here the hero needs to learn a lesson a lesson that is tied to a magical power which they only learn at the end allowing them to win the day with that power and change as a person at the same time but is this the lesson that aang needs to learn well kind of there is no crisis moment where aang refuses to confront his feelings around the genocide leading to their failure the only time that he is ever affected by this loss outside of the southern air temple is when he water bends by himself a couple of times both moments which have no tension and thus no consequence for him not growing now the main character's struggle is usually tied in some way to the darkest hour plot point the moment where all seems lost sometimes because they can't overcome a weakness but gang doesn't really seem to have one within the context of his arc a beat will say he needs to waterband to stop zhao but he can't because he refuses to deal with his grief the film treats the death of the moon spirit as its darkest hour but this has nothing to do with anxiety whatsoever nor does his ark have anything to do with bringing the moon back and sure he looks uh sad i say tentatively when he waterbeans the ocean later on and i mean the scene isn't terrible honestly it looks pretty good but the struggle just wasn't communicated across the story at all but there is something else communicated aang ran away because he was being emotional he was afraid nervous not ready to take up the massive responsibility of being the avatar and him growing and taking up their responsibility is actually the thing that they reference in the prison scene with the blue spirit weirdly for him to face up to his responsibilities he needs to control his emotions not feel them fear is the mind killer sorry i've been reading dune the end result is that aang seemingly has two arcs totally contradicting one another neither of them being fully explored and neither of them giving him a complete arc and i mean he did let himself feel things at the southern air temple rages are feeling and if this story is meant to be about healthily processing that lost then what does this mean narratively he's never even given an opportunity to refuse to process it shyamalan has an incoherent and contradictory arc foreign either way you take it he is telling us plenty of things but he's not showing us any of them and personally i think the lack of scenes that drive aang to make any meaningful decisions relevant to either of these arcs whatsoever is partly why this film feels so damn stilted with slower pacing than a french art film nothing is ever driving him from one scene or crisis to the next but this is best exemplified in a scene that never fails to make me laugh i'll needs to ask you something i have to talk to the dragon spirit he can help me defeat the fire nation is there a spiritual place where i can meditate there is a very spiritual place the city was built around this place but we must hurry what is happening here well aang just decides to go talk to the dragon spirit gotta chill with his spirit pal his spirit bird but he does it for apparently no real reason oh he says it can help them defeat the fire nation sure but what made him think that what made him resort to this what made him need to go right now it doesn't come out of any crisis point of him not confronting his feelings or not being ready to face up to the responsibilities of being the avatar or discovering that he can't defeat zhao or realizing that they cannot defeat the fire nation in fact earlier in the film parkour says the city was designed to withstand any assault if we keep them to the courtyard in the marketplace till night falls where we have the advantage we will succeed well that's good that's great solid plans stan you know what you don't even need me so i'm just gonna crack open a cold one with the boys because as you know you can handle this on your own yeah have a good one have a good one forgive me but this situation does not seem particularly dire and none of you a ang paku or soccer at any point express that the situation requires more than what they currently have this is not a hopeless situation narratively because no characters feel hopeless making this need to see the spirits feel kind of manufactured in the show though the very opposite is true and goes out to fight the fire nation by himself he manages to take down a single ship and then he realizes that the entire navy is still out there there is this giant moment of realization a grim moment of hopelessness i must have taken out a dozen fire navy ships but there's just too many of them i can't fight them all but you have to you're the avatar i'm just one kid this situation drives aang to find a solution contacting the spirits it's radical it's risky who knows but hey that's all we got and the stupid thing is this problem could have been solved in the film pretty damn easily remember that line with paku just change it to the full moon will make us stronger but we cannot keep them out forever we don't have the men we have maybe a day before they breach the wall two before the city falls even less we need a plan a miracle bam tension is higher because there's a time limit and the situation seems dire even hopeless driving aang to speak with the spirits and this is me letting slide that he changed our water bending works oh i didn't forget that nor did i forget this five ending nonsense and this is just looking at what shy milan intended because when we actually look at the scenes that are meant to develop aang's arc he has like one okay scene that is shot way too dark but it was at least more subtle showing us how he was feeling without taking an exposition dump on our faces ew that's uh and it does have consequences when he goes off to the northern air temple but the scene where aang reveals himself in the prison is so unbearably weak if the avatar had returned would that mean anything to you the avatar is dead if he was here he would protect us my name is on and i'm the avatar i ran away but i'm back now it's time for you to stop doing this please clap this is at least on the page mean to be a revelatory moment a big decision for aang but there's no real tension or personal crisis that drives the story beat to happen say a clear understanding narratively that him hiding his identity is causing harm to others forcing him to choose and evolve as a character here he sees people struggling but his answer is you gotta rise up okay please do it for me no well would it help if i was the avatar fine here i am it does not have the meaning that shyamalan intended it to carry and this isn't even to point out that shyamalan sacrificed katara's arc in this moment to give it to aang in the show she's the one who calls them to rise up with relentless hope but no he's giving that to aang as well and it sucks oh but he has the audacity to try and return this moment to katara in the middle of the fight scene by having her yell in the background don't be afraid i recognize that shyamalan really needed to channel screen time into building up aang's character but if he wanted this to be about aang struggling and then revealing himself to the world in a dramatic moment heaven be afraid to show his airbending for fear of people expecting too much of him that he cannot deliver only for him to watch someone being punished for something that was not their fault at which point it gets too much for him and he air bends to save them revealing himself and his tattoos not great but better which is basically the slogan for this entire video book so youtube makes it clear that it loves videos which are topical have a broad audience and are full of exciting even inflammatory language to really play into people's emotions so i'm going to talk about scene structure and in particular active and reactive scenes the most exciting clickable topic ever but before you leave your dislike unsubscribe and comment about how you're only here to talk about your childhood crush on katara you know how sometimes you might see a film or hear a piece of music and you really don't like it but you can't quite pin down why often because we don't have the theory or understanding to quite articulate it like i don't know much about directing or cinematography so when i saw this shot i knew it was bad but i couldn't put it into words so i asked my film-oriented peeps who do know how lighting and shooting works and they said and i quote it's just a mess it has no opinion you're not looking at anything just a bunch of things with no clear order of importance and no drama to the composition it's the beige pantsuit of shots they talked about how there's no real distinction between the foreground and background that everything is in equal focus and the light doesn't really lead our eyes anywhere interesting there are also these strange angular central shapes with no real purpose and i reckon that a lot of you know that the scenes in this film don't really work but you might not be able to be totally particular about why but understanding active and reactive scenes really helped me and you can try active and reactive scenes for just 9.99 a month at my link down the description but i'm so sorry i've been conditioned scenes can be either active or reactive sometimes both but generally one or the other an active scene explores a goal a conflict and then a resolution or disaster while reactive scenes explore a character experiencing emotion facing a dilemma and then making a decision typically reactive scenes follow active scenes as characters reflect on their successes and their failures and the conflict and disaster but these are more guidelines than actual rules the point of this scene structure is more about helping us understand why certain story beats might be working and some others might not be in the fellowship of the ring gandalf uh spoilers dies it's a dramatic active scene where they have a goal to get out of warrior alive a conflict a bellrock comes and a disaster they get out but gandalf dies in the process it's an incredible scene but it really matters that jackson took the time to show us a reactive scene following it they get out of moria and we see the emotion the fellowship is torn the hobbits are crying frodo is broken then we get a dilemma aragorn says they need to press on but boromir demands that they give the hobbits just a minute to grieve then they make a decision they press on to lothlorien the reactive scene matters here because it's what makes the disaster painful and meaningful gandalf's death wouldn't have hit us nearly as hard without it it lets us stew in the feels disasters are made more impactful if we take the time to let the characters feel and reflect conflict is made more meaningful when we show how it forces characters to change course and reconsider their priorities and the thing is shyamalan's film almost entirely lacks reactive scenes where characters feel face a dilemma and make a decision and i mean it'd be way too much work to go through the entire screenplay mark out all of the active and reactive and non-scenes and put it all into a graph so that i can show you how this damn film is strung together right so of course i did it the film strings from active scene to active scene never giving the characters time to reflect or the audience time to really get to know who they are now not every active scene needs a reactive scene but zuko barely gets one when aang escapes from him at the start all he says is for a moment i had my honor back it's emotion yeah but barely any at that i mean we don't even get a reactive scene when aang discovers the air nomad genocide in the show we get to see ang realizing he is truly alone that giyatso is dead full of rage and anger unable to know where to go next before deciding to be optimistic telling appa and momo they need to stick together because they're all that's left of this place emotion dilemma decision but in the film shyamalan has ang kazoo after the spirit world instead of becoming consumed by his rage and grief and even in the spirit world he doesn't show any real sign of emotion at all then it just cuts straight to zuko once he comes out of that supposed feeling beat no dilemma no decision we don't see him refuse to deal with his grief which i remind you is meant to be pretty freaking important to his character arc because reactive scenes are where character growth happens it's where characters facing a personal crisis have to make a decision a decision that will often reflect a failure or success in their arc they're also really important to pacing reactive scenes are typically slower allowing your audience a little bit of time to breathe remember that scene in the show after zuko saves aang as the blue spirit and aang asks do you think we could have been friends zuko has to decide whether to attack this kid who saved his life and he does that is a reactive scene and it's important to developing who ang and zuko are their arcs and their dynamics and shyamalan pretty much just took it all away reactive scenes are important especially after major plot points like this he never allowed zuko to be put in that position that tempted us with the tantalizing thought of growth there's also none when aang fails to water bin during training it's mean to build up to this grand ending but there's no scene where he reflects on why he can't waterbend he has to decide whether to process his emotions around the genocide and ultimately refuse to there's no reactive scenes that allow that this is where reactive scenes come in in fact to help you understand the disparity here there are about 39-ish scenes in this film 23 of which are active scenes and only eight of which are reactive scenes eight are micro scenes which don't really fit into either category and that's not even to say that they are good reactive scenes by the way they're just ones that technically tick the box the distinct lack of reactive scenes really cripples any sense of character let alone character progression which i've already explained the film seriously lacks in the story just strings along from active scene to active scene without giving any of those conflicts or disasters any meaning or depth the end result is a poorly paced stilted monotonous mess with cardboard cutouts for characters for contrast i want to give you a good example so i went through the fellowship of the ring and outlined its scenes in the same way it has roughly 31 active scenes and 27 reactive scenes as well as 13 non-scenes no it's not equal but it doesn't need to be the point is that a lot more time is afforded for reflection and growth which shyamalan's film just totally lacks but i'm a reasonable man i can be objective i can set aside my personal biases i would never let the fact that i went to go see this film when i turned 15 on my birthday with my best friend as my main birthday present and this was what i got because oh everything i've said is absolutely objectively true which is why me being objective i'm now going to talk about book it's the good things the fire nation ship designs are hear me out actually kind of cool they embrace that slightly unreal fantastical feel to the world while still being loyal to the original design also the set design for the air temples wasn't terrible so shout out to alp ultima dawn brown matt codd warren mensah devin cutler fang lee david yee lawrence ahabs noel king and george lee concept artists and set designers for the last airbender i salute you you guys did a good job i don't forget the little guy you get a real sense of what the air nomads were like from these designs and aang's tattoos are actually a good translation for what they would look like in real life a book uh the end question mark this film has been the punching bag of a thousand youtubers over the years of which i guess i am now one as well the last airbender is kind of a lesson in humility shyamalan took on more than i think he knew and he should have known and more to do than i think he could do in one interview with the creators of the original show mike and brian he talks about his directorial approach and he mentioned one particular director hayao miyazaki actually i'm a big fan of miyazaki movies which i know you guys are really influenced by in our family we really we really love those movies in fact he's like one of my favorite film directors he's amazing hayao miyazaki is the mind behind studio ghibli films like spirited away and princess mononoke but the thing that distinguishes miyazaki most as a director is how involved he is at every level of the process concept art animation scripting and directing shyamalan ii is something of an auteur his films are soaked in his style at every level similar in the sense that he wrote directed and produced this film occupying all three of the most important creative roles in the filmmaking process so it would not surprise me if shyamalan was trying to emulate miyazaki on some level like we all do with people we admire but the problem is that doing all of the things yourself only works when you're good at all of the things like hayao miyazaki shyamalan is a capable director at times but not here the saddest thing that i found in all of this is that i think it was partly rooted in a genuine attempt to faithfully adapt a story we love into a new medium he just went about it entirely the wrong way but hopefully we can learn from this with the netflix series crawling over the horizon and the creators disavowing its direction all these questions are going to come up again they might understand that we love the story or its moments but do they understand why we love it stories are a strange commodity they're both intensely personal and they're also communal they're something we share with others there's a last airbender that i have in my heart in my memory that i treasure and there's a last airbender that i share with you that i share on the channel and i share with the world and those weren't lost when this film aired in 2010 if anything it made them a little more scarce a little more precious and a little more mine and hopefully a little more yours too it seems tim you had quite a bit to get off your chest here yeah and coming out of this how would you say you feel i mean it's done i can walk away now i'm free thank you counselor counselor tim i'm not a counselor what what what do you mean then then what are [Laughter] ha ha ha ha ha ha ha you ha ha ha ha [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] 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Channel: Hello Future Me

Views: 905,237

Rating: 4.9399409 out of 5

Keywords: explained, theory, lore, analysis, how to, last airbender, film, critique, review, critic, aang, shyamalan, directed, terrible, sins, katara, zuko, iroh, movie, toph, sokka, suki, fantasy, legend of korra, korra, tla, atla, lok, earthbending, earth bender, airbending, air bender, firebending, firebender, waterbender, waterbending, bending, magic, system

Id: MgV9vymLIdQ

Length: 149min 8sec (8948 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 11 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SCPKing1835]

yo i think your post is bugged there's no video

/s

[u/SirHerbert123]

There is a avatar movie? Never heard of it.

[u/V_Lorreine]

??? How can it be the worst film if it doesn't exist???

[u/DRAGON738]

I see no lies

[u/kharij2002]

Movie ? What are you talking about ?

[u/Lord-Dunehill]

There is no The Last Airbender movie. The Earth King has invited you to r/lakeLaogai

[u/No_Promise_2982]

i dont need a film critique to tell me it's bad

[u/Harambiz]

God awful movie that needs to be remade by the actual creators of ATLA

[u/Angle_Of_Flames]

Tell me something I don’t know, no for real, tell me something I don’t know.