[Sokka] You guys are not gonna believe this! [Suki] We were just in town and we found this poster [Katara] What? How is that possible? {Dramatic music rising} [Katara] 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 {Water sloshing} Katara! My jokes are way funnier than this! Those who are in charge of others have a responsibility It's time that we show the fire nation that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs {Groan} I'd rather get punched in the face than watch The Last Airbender I can say that because I actually DID get punched in the face on the same day that I first saw this movie {POW] And even in the immediate aftermath of getting jumped, I said to myself this isn't even the worst thing that's happened to me today because watching someone mutilate something you love is worse than most physical pain you can feel. I distinctly remember getting worried about this film during the opening crawl I mean prosperity and peace filled our days is just a repeat of the first line, "All was right in the world." Isn't it? And hang on a second, why are the water tribe and earth kingdoms listed as nations when the Air Nomads get their own separate designation? This is the most nitpicky I'm going to get in this review But I mean did anybody proofread this?! We believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs God damn it, M. Night So this film is an adaptation of a TV show which I regard as one of the best things ever Everything was right there: great story, great characters, and they still screwed it up! So how did this happen? Most people say it's M Night Shyamalan's fault Even M. Night Shyamalan I wasn't up to the task [Just Write] You could put THAT on a plaque But is he the only person to blame? And why is it so bad anyway? I know why and I'm going to tell you---in detail So if you're like me and you feel like you've been punched in the face every single time you're reminded of this movie's existence, consider this review a weird sort of therapy I know I certainly am {Whimsical intro music} The dialogue in this film is-- SO BORING There is never a moment when the characters feel like real people because every line is wasted on generic explanatory dialogue You know I conducted a raid on the Great Library Which most said didn't even exist Get on with it The movie spends so much time making sure you don't get confused by the mythology that it never actually engages you emotionally And Katara is absolutely the worst offender [Katara] Father's off fighting in the war Shut up! Just shut up, you idiot! Aang airbended a sphere around them and ice formed-- Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up! [Katara] We moved from town to town in the Earth-- Shut up!! Shut. Up. Shut up!! We arrived at the Northern-- Shut up, Will you? Shut up! My brother and the princess became friends right away--- Hey lady, SHADDUP Stop interrupting the movie to explain things in voiceover That's my job They explained the elements, the avatar, the spirit world, the war, Zuko's backstory, Katara's Dead Mom, their absent father...all of it with one character just saying it straight to the camera or in voiceover It gets to the point where this movie stops being a movie It's its own Wikipedia page. So how do you do exposition properly or in other words, how do you make boring stuff not boring? It's one of the biggest challenges there is when it comes to writing a screenplay, but here are a few solutions Number one, visually In mad max fury road the culture of the Citadel is implied mostly through visuals or through direct actions At no point is there a teenage girl explaining things in a voiceover If Shyamalan and Paramount had made Mad Max it would have sounded like this Morton Joe ruled over the citadel with an iron fist. His loyal servants, who called themselves War Police, did as he commanded They believed that they would live again in the afterlife which is called Valhalla We traveled for many miles on the War Rig. Nuts and Capable became friends right away Katara tells us about the death of her mother almost immediately in this film So what's another way to get that information out there visually? Well here's the opening scene from the Karate Kid remake {"Do You Remember" Jay Sean ft. Sean Paul} Yeah, that's right. And ten seconds ago, you were like, "He's referencing the Karate Kid remake?" You forgot about this scene, didn't you? Number two, through debate and drama Just wanted to see what kind of "tests" you were doing here every night Exposition is just a fancy word for backstory and backstory doesn't have to be dry and boring, it can BE the story You can make uncovering a crucial piece of a character's history the goal of a scene like it is here in Inception In this scene, Cobb and Ariadne delve deeper and deeper into Cobb's memories, and we learn all about his life with Maul It's the only way I can still dream But what makes it good is that the person giving the exposition does not want to say anything This has nothing to do with you This has everything to do with me You've asked me to share dreams with you Not these These are my dreams Cobb is desperate to keep his secrets a secret, but Ariadne keeps pushing It's only through a great deal of debate and drama that we get any answers In The Last Airbender, everyone is just way too eager to tell you their entire life story In Inception, what could have been rudimentary dialogue is instead a scene chockfull of revelatory, emotional moments In my dreams, we're still together [Cobb] These are moments I regret, they're memories that I have to change I realize I'm gonna regret this moment, that I... ...I need to see their faces one last time You said we would be together! You said we'd grow old together! {quietly} I'll come back for you I promise [Just Write] The backstory is the story Number three, in an action scene In the first Terminator movie, Reese fills us in with literally everything there is to know about the entire franchise during a chase scene We find out who Reese is, we find out who the Terminator is, and what he's trying to do We learn about the the whole time-traveling business I'm Reese, I'm assigned to protect you. You've been targeted for termination And not only that but director James Cameron takes a second to do some world-building as well, explaining why the Terminator bleeds Underneath it's a hyper alloy combat chest, but outside. It's living human tissue Look, Reese, I don't know what you want-- Pay attention! This is some hard Sci-Fi stuff that arguably does not need to be explained, but when you sandwich it inside of a chase scene We're paying attention to the action of the scene first Because it's entertaining and absorbing the information second for several minutes pretty much the only one who's talking is reese But inside that we've got Arnold commandeering a police car You've got them driving on a sidewalk you got them escaping a second police car Sarah biting Reese's hand So maybe after anne gets out of the ice sphere you could have a chase scene where [zuko] tries to capture him and while all Of that is happening Katara or Sokka can explain who the fire nation is and why they're at war or whatever you need to instead every time Exposition needs to be given one character just stands up and gives it all in one giant ugly Paragraph action scenes only have action in them dialogue scenes only have exposition in them It's dreadful number four from Authority sometimes There's just too much stuff [to] explain and the movie just needs to sit the audience down and lecture us But who is giving the lecture Matters just as much as what? They're saying when Katara does it it dulls her relationship with a because what she's saying has nothing [to] do with them in particular She could be saying this to anyone right now. We haven't been able for big cities like bossing say they're making plans I'm sure a solution is to give the exposition in a setting it is natural [to] so maybe your characters are at a boring Government type meeting the audience doesn't expect this to be super exciting But we understand that something Important is going to be explained and we'll listen in you know so long as the scene is short and not the whole movie this Could be like a military briefing or a training scene or a boardroom meeting where someone of authority? Delivers the information to be clear this isn't the best solution And it can definitely be overused like if you had news broadcasts do all of the exposition in a film But it is one strategy to use when you've got no better Alternative the Harry Potter franchise is actually really good at this by making great Use of its classroom scenes every time you enter a classroom You know you're going to learn something important to the plot But that there'll probably be some high Jinks or some character moments to spice things up number [five] just cast Christopher Lloyd No, really get Doc Brown in your movie And then even if you make every single one of his lines just him explaining everything [we'll] still love it you turn the time circuits on That's why his watch is exactly one minute behind mine run some industrial-strength electrical cable from the top of the clock tower down Spending it over the street between these two Lampposts the street [off] tells you where you're going this one tells you where you are this one tells you where you were this is What makes time travel possible? [thereby] sending 1.21 jigowatts into the flux capacitor you can put your destination time on this Keypad Meanwhile speed up the time vehicle with this big pole [envelope] [I'm] really glad he explained the hook in all seriousness what I mean by this is that if you have a really charismatic or eccentric Character then we'll enjoy it even if they are reading from a Wikipedia page, so give that character all the explaining stuff You can't fit anywhere else, but there aren't any charismatic characters in this movie? You're right my orcish friend But if you've never seen the TV show then let me introduce you [to] the one and only King Bumi [there] are options in fighting called Jing and the most powerful earthbender. You'll ever see Neutral [g] key to Earth [day] all [old] people know [each] other don't you know that you must master the four elements and confront? The fire it is a travesty that King Bumi wasn't in this film if he was in the story You could just have him give the audience a crazy Kooky lesson on the spirit world the avatar or whatever else you need and then get on with the fun of the film But if you ever remake this movie paramount don't cast Christopher lloyd as king Bumi you've already got enough problems with Whitewashing Hey, I wonder who's making that new ghost in the Shell' movie whisper the Towheads those racist suckers Stories are almost always about change We meet a character who is set in their ways something crazy happens to them and then they grow into a different person [I'm] describing like 99% of good movies right now There's nightcrawler And then there's everything else but in order for that change to mean something at the end the character needs to be Consistent before that moment of transformation of course the TV show does this perfectly with every character [Katara] is an overly motherly young girl struggling with the death of her own mother who becomes a powerful woman Sokka is a Routinely ridiculed class clown who finds himself in his father's shadow But grows up to be a serious military commander capable of growing facial hair [for] reals the movie Squanders all of this in their first Scene so Katara and Sokka are walking around when taka thinks he see something under the ice and starts banging on it What does this tell us about Sokka well since he's smashing the very ice they're standing on we start to think okay this guy is reckless Unafraid maybe a little bit stupid then something weird happens a big or bloats out above the surface and they have a decision to make [to] hit the sphere or not now since Sokka was just wailing away at the ice We'd assumed that he'd be the one to impulsively crack open the sphere. [no] now suddenly He's being all cautious while Katara who previously tried to get Sokka to stop decides to be reckless So are they both reckless or are they both cautious? What's the character dynamic usually when you have pairs of characters in a film they have opposing? Characteristics so that there will always be some sort of conflict between them no matter What kind of situation you put them in butch cassidy is easygoing [the] sundance kid is vigilant [fuzz] Follows orders? Woody breaks the rules no one messes with jules Winnfield vincent vega literally can't even go to the bathroom without all hell breaking loose I'm Gonna take a piss I'm gonna take a shit everybody cool. It's [a] robbery and That's why Katara and Sokka work So well on the show or why the writers have? temperamental zuko travel around with the Pothead So something weird happens again Katara and Sokka find a boy and the strange mythical beast in the spear and once again they freaky Friday Their personalities. [oh] that reference to old now am I am I old did I get old once again They change up their personalities sokka walks right up to this enormous creature He has never seen before and decides to poke it. Okay, so back to being stupid [Risk-taker] I see [fast-Forward] a bit and the fire nation shows up. Oh, no sokka wants to fight them but Katara cautions him Okay, violent and unstable Cautious thinker fine, but then two seconds later [Katara] is about to go on a rampage until Sokka has to calm her down So don't don't so good don't So wait a second which one is the aggressively unstable murderer again. What would you do if they try taking me away? [that'd] kill them all when did sokka turn into anakin Skywalker [I] killed them off that killed them all I killed them off Oh, wait, never mind. Sokka is comic relief. It's cool. Everyone the sociopath made a funny Ruining characters like these it's like painting a smiley face on the mona Lisa. You cinematic vandal The whole rest of [the] first act is [dum] [dum] [dum] boltor, okay? So Aang are you the avatar? promotes [a] little [local] [gangs] been taken and Here's the perfect moment for the movies first burst of action and This is just something I needed down. Oh, you've got to be joking [we're] gonna listen to this old woman's stories before going to save the guy that just got kidnapped. [so] we're doing it hasn't been [oh] Waterbender in the Southern Water, tribe Since my friend [Hama] was taken away What does this have anything to do with anything once a long time ago? The Spirit World kept balanced over [us]. Hey, Grandma We know we read the opening crawl to one of the first things critics will say of a good movie Is that it is well paced. That's usually hard to quantify But if you want to know what the exact reverse opposite of well-paced is just watch this scene What is the spirit Grandma well? It's not a place made up of things you can touch but it exists nonetheless Then how come aang isn't floating in space when he's in the spirit world I mean his feet are touching the spirit ground right did anybody proofread this and what does grandma know she's never been to the spirit? World right, why are we listening to this old woman's religious beliefs now, just filled with the most amazing forms Dazzling creatures, you know you can't just pile on synonyms of amazing and have us be amazed You know that right his mastery the four elements he will begin to change Hearts and It is in the heart That all wars are won wait what what evidence does she have of this the war has been going on for a hundred Years unless she's older than that she has never Personally witnessed a war ending before and what war ever ended by changing People's hearts I mean the only ward that's even associated with the phrase changing hearts and minds is the one that you know America lost but leaving all of those problems aside the scene still bothers me because it Completely misses the mark of what it should [be] doing I mean shouldn't grandma have shown some sort of resistance to them leaving something that would get us Emotionally involved give the characters a hard choice between their loved one and doing something altruistic this woman's daughter was murdered by the fire nation now her only two grandchildren in the world come up to her and are like hey We're gonna go on a dangerous mission to help some guy we just met by infiltrating a [fire] [nation] ship Single-Handedly and Grandma is just like great pack a lunch I mean is she a robot are you a robot so let's jump to another nonsensical scene the avatar test Where iroh and zuko try to figure out if aang is the avatar by placing the elements in front of him? Is this implying that the avatar is always bending the elements? why doesn't this happen at any other point in the movie? Is this like a special rock or Magic water why only here so then aang escapes without any Resistance and Katara and Sokka are tired of being the only white people in town So they'll hop onto appa and then Katara starts spouting off some stuff. We already know aang flew us to his home We know you decided that before you left. Let's hurry this up He told us how he left there in a storm on appa we already saw him tell you that and got forced into the ocean where they almost drowned he said that too aang air bended a sphere around them and ice formed and he couldn't remember anything after that We know we were there when you cracked it open did anyone f***ing Proofread this sh*t, and I guess aang isn't the only one who can't remember anything You just gave a whole paragraph of information that the movie has already shown us are you gonna tell us about the spirit world again or how many elements there are but amazingly that rounds out the first act of The movie and what do we know so far? Well, we're allegedly on an adventure to do something We don't really know yet despite all of the horrible Expositional dialogue and that our characters include aang, a kid we know nothing about, Sokka, a fearful yet, paradoxically Hot-tempered, wannabe Murderer and Katara, a teenage girl with alzheimer's who won't shut up. This is okay? If you tell me your name you told us what his name was literally 30 seconds ago Thanks for watching everyone click here for part two where I take a closer look at the directorial Decisions made on the film and of course don't forget to like and subscribe and most importantly Let me know what you thought about the movie and this review in the comments below see you in part two
What an absolute tradegy of a film. Abysmal.
Great analysis!