The Last Airbender

I'm not normally all that into anime because people who are... are normally hard corp, but anyway... I started watching Avatar through netflix. Sadly they only have the first book available online though.

I started watching the show & figured the flying bison was not in the movie... but since I've been rewatching the trailers like a crazyperson I noticed him in the background while people were fighting.

Noticed him in the background of the superbowl trailer... back left corner.

Demonn said:

I'm not normally all that into anime because people who are... are normally hard corp, but anyway... I started watching Avatar through netflix. Sadly they only have the first book available online though.

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Avatar isn't anime. Anime is Japanese. Avatar is an American production. Japanese stories tend to be either really strange or really boring. I've tried watching a variety of different anime, but they all seem like the characters just stand around gasping all the time. Avatar was created by two American dudes through the Nickelodeon studios. They liked some specific pieces of anime, like Princess Mononoke, so that led to them having elements like the spirit world in the show. And a lot of the physical animation was produced in Korea, where most anime is produced. But the character designs, production artwork, storyboarding, and key frame animation was done here in the US. The story, the scripts, and the acting all originated here too.

Demonn said:

I started watching the show & figured the flying bison was not in the movie... but since I've been rewatching the trailers like a crazyperson I noticed him in the background while people were fighting.

Noticed him in the background of the superbowl trailer... back left corner.

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Yup, I noticed that too a few days ago. For those looking in the Super Bowl spot to try to see Appa, note the red arrow in the image I've attached.

Another small thing I noticed recently from watching the various trailers a ton that I hadn't realized before, in the first trailer from back last year -- the one that's mostly just Aang in the center of a giant circle of candles, when Aang blasts air out of the temple and the camera pans back over the edge of the cliff and eventually toward the Fire Navy fleet, there are four solders at the top of the cliff that get blown over the edge by Aang's air blast. (As indicated by the yellow arrows in the second image I've attached. They're easier to see in motion, but the arrows will give you the area to look at, if you choose to rewatch the trailer). I don't know why it took me so long to be able to see them and the giant ropes that more soldiers are climbing up the cliff face with, but it made that clip more exciting once I finally did see them.

Phew...Avatar: The Last Air Bender wouldn't be right without Appa

vacantlook said:

Avatar isn't anime. Anime is Japanese. Avatar is an American production. Japanese stories tend to be either really strange or really boring. I've tried watching a variety of different anime, but they all seem like the characters just stand around gasping all the time. Avatar was created by two American dudes through the Nickelodeon studios. They liked some specific pieces of anime, like Princess Mononoke, so that led to them having elements like the spirit world in the show. And a lot of the physical animation was produced in Korea, where most anime is produced. But the character designs, production artwork, storyboarding, and key frame animation was done here in the US. The story, the scripts, and the acting all originated here too.

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It's listed as Anime action or something like that on Netflix... that mixed with all the japanese/chinese symbols & stuff make me leap to... Anime

vacantlook said:

Yup, I noticed that too a few days ago. For those looking in the Super Bowl spot to try to see Appa, note the red arrow in the image I've attached.

Another small thing I noticed recently from watching the various trailers a ton that I hadn't realized before, in the first trailer from back last year -- the one that's mostly just Aang in the center of a giant circle of candles, when Aang blasts air out of the temple and the camera pans back over the edge of the cliff and eventually toward the Fire Navy fleet, there are four solders at the top of the cliff that get blown over the edge by Aang's air blast. (As indicated by the yellow arrows in the second image I've attached. They're easier to see in motion, but the arrows will give you the area to look at, if you choose to rewatch the trailer). I don't know why it took me so long to be able to see them and the giant ropes that more soldiers are climbing up the cliff face with, but it made that clip more exciting once I finally did see them.

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Yeah... I was in the theatre the first time I saw that clip & I didn't notice it. Then when the new trailer came out I rewatched it as well & saw the guys fall. I'm assuming that takes place at an Air Temple since they're climbing & what not.

I think they sent enough ships.

To quote Marcus in B5, "That's a bloody awful lot of ships."

Just finished with Avatar: book one... netflix gave me some problems halfway through the solstice ep, which really pi$$ed me off, but the next one had a pretty good recap in the begining.

I can at least watch the trailers now & figure out who is who now.

I'm concerned about some of the details - Aang's new tattoo, Zuko's eye not being messed up, Kitara missing her "hair loopies." I'm not getting too worked up over most of that, though in the case of Zuko, it is troubling. His scars on the outside match his scars on the inside, and him wearing his abused past on his face is a huge part of who he is.

Zuko's eye is messed up... watch the trailer again & pause it when he's putting his helmet on. Left side of his face is scarred & the skin below his left eye is dark red. You can't really tell when he's wearing that hood though.

Kitara has braids though... they're just on the side instead of the front. Still don't see much of her in the trailers though so maybe she gets her hair done sometime during the movie.

& Aangs tat looks awesome... I look 4ward to seeing it glow.

Oh, they posted a new trailer!

Starting to have more faith in this movie, noticed during it looks like the Blue Spirit is making an appearance.

http://www.thelastairbendermovie.com/#home

This comes out Friday... the wait is almost over.

The first review I read was unfavourable.

This thing is getting absolutely savaged in the press.

It's being savaged by the fans of the tv show too. I haven't seen it yet, but I've read spoilers of the things M Night Shyamalan's changed, and it's got me pissed off because they were changed for absolutely no reason at all, including changing the way characters names are pronounced. The fan reactions I've read are that the movie is nothing but exposition, that everything is told, not shown. For example, the big love between Sokka and Yue, we're never shown how they come to like each other, we are literally just told in a voice-over narration that "and they became close friends." Cut to months later, oh look they "love" each other. Again, from the reactions of the fans of the show, Shyamalan's dialogue is wooden, at best, and he wrote absolutely no character development.

So, I'm dissapointed. I'll still go see it, but it'll probably mostly to laugh at how much Shyamalan's fucked up yet another movie.

At least I learned yesterday that the co-creators of the show are working on something new -- Avatar The Legend of Korra -- though whether it'll be a full-on series or just a miniseries or what hasn't yet been revealed.

Oh, and another thing I read about the film: the 3D is apparently terrible. One dude posted that halfway through the film, his girlfriend leaned over to him and asked, "Is there any 3D in this 3D movie." That makes me want to see it in 2D, but unfortunately my local theater is only showing it in 3D.

Assuming that everyone is right and this movie sucks balls, I'd like to explain why. Please bear with me, for this is really complicated.

Shyamalan is a fucking horrible shitty filmmaker. He made one cool flick with a nice twist and Bruce Willis a long time ago, and then made a bunch of crap, and for some reason he gets to keep making them.

If I was a fan of this and I heard he was making the movie, I'd be pissed, without knowing anything else about it. So, yes, even if hypothetically we finally got a B5 flick and he was the director, I would not go see it.

As for the 3D, well I for one hate the whole 3D thing but even if some people like it, this is just the latest in a string of films made normal that they then shoe-horned some bad 3D to capitalize on the trend and the fact that they can charge more for the tickets, like the Clash of the Titans.

The negative reviews I saw all treated the source the material with respect or love. I haven't seen the cartoon but everyone talks it up so much I may check it out. But assuming the source is indeed great, this movie has everything bad about mass-market summer movies:

- Taking a story from something else to capitalize on a built-in fan base without having to come up with an original idea.
- Butchering said source material
- M Night Shyamalan
- 3D

and you, know, it sucks.

Don't pay to go see it just to laugh at it- if bunches of people go, it'll be interpreted as a sign that the movie is good and they'll make a sequel.

When I learned however long back it was revealled now that Shyamalan was going to be the writer/producer/director of the film(s), I was worried. But then the trailers looked relatively ok, and I just tried to have faith that things would come out ok in the end. But I have very little hope that I'll actually like the thing now that I've read how exposition heavy it is and how there's little-to-no character development. The characters having actual moral dilemmas and growing over the course of the show is one of the things that made me really love the show. But from what I've been reading, there'll be none of that in the film.

From what I've read, the only 3D bit that's even slightly decent is the opening title sequence. Beyond that it's almost as if there's no 3D actually there.

Some fans who went to see it last night at midnight premiers said their theaters booed at the end of the film and that groups of fans stood outside the theater in the parking lot ranting with each other about how bad it was.

But as much as the film might be terrible, I love the show. It's still a cartoon with some rather cartoonish humor, but it's kinda like Buffy in that while there's humor, there's also drama. And the fact that each episode is ~23 minutes (ie 30 minutes minus advertisement breaks), the show moves at a fairly fast pace. I recently got my best friend's sister to watch it, and she ended up watching the entire third season over like 2 or 3 days.

vacantlook said:

Sindatur said:

Anyone have any concerns about M. Night Shayamalan helming it?

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While I still have some apprehension, I'm a lot less worried now than I was when I first learned he was at the helm. The co-creators/co-executive producers of the show Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko gave their approval of the script Shyamalan wrote for the film, and both of them are credited as executive producers of the film, so I'm hoping that that's a good sign.

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VL, so was this inaccurate information you rec'd at the beginning of the thread? How could they bless the script if it was so bad? I'm really bummed now, I was looking forward to this movie

When I heard of them giving an ok to the script, it was a long time ago before anyone had been cast, let alone before anything had been filmed and editted. I haven't heard anything from them since way back then. Shyamalan could have seriously changed the script since then. In fact, I would more than count on it. After all, I just learned last night upon watching a behind-the-scenes thing about the film on Nickelodeon that Shyamalan chopped out a huge section of the film after he had already filmed it. There was a big section on Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors who helped the gang escape capture. Suki, a relatively major secondary character had been cast, they had filmed tons of Kyoshi Warrior stuff, there were production photos of Suki, there was an official computer desktop wallpaper of her on the movie's website, and then recently, that wallpaper was taken off the site, and last night I found out why: Shyamalan decided to cut out everything about Suki and the Kyoshi Warriors. From what I've read of a few fans' reactions, there's apparently still a line of dialogue in the film that, knowing that the Kyoshi Warriors were originally supposed to be there, you can tell that this line of dialogue is actually in reference to them. But without them there, the line is just kind of left hanging there meaningless now. So my guess is that Bryke gave their thumbs up way back before Shyamalan had been able to mangle everything up through continually messing around with everything.

Other fun mangling: character's name pronounciations. Aang, which in the show, the source material, is pronounced like hay is in the movie pronounced like wrong. Sokka, which in the show is pronounced like sock is in the movie pronounced like soak. And Iroh, which in the show is pronounced like eye is in the movie pronounced like eek!. Shyamalan says he did this to make it more authentically asian. But that makes him a giant hypocrite considering that the actors playing Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Yue are white people and the Fire Nation are all Indian, i.e. not asian and and Inuit like they would be if he was actually concerned with ethnic authenticity.

You've saved me some money and a lot of anger: I was going to treat myself and a friend to this movie. It was to be my big "lets make a day out of movie and shopping up north" treat.
The trailers made it look like it might be quite good. What I'd heard about the original story made it sound doubly promising.

Thank you very much. I'd rather just do something else. I don't suppose there is any summer movie worth seeing?

So, I went to see this yesterday with my best friend and her sister, both of whom have seen and enjoyed the entire series. We three knew going in that it wasn't going to be great based on all the professional and fan reviews we had read, but that still didn't help.

It had a lot of potential. The environments looked great. The 3D was practically nonexistant. The bending CGI sometimes looked good, sometimes looked dated, and sometimes looked totally uncoordinated with the characters' physical movements like it should've been. I think the actors could have handled their parts if they had had a director who could actually direct actors, but it really felt like they were left to pull it off all on their own, which combined with really, really, really, really bad dialogue (did I mention the dialogue was really bad?), it made them look like bad actors. And it felt really badly edited. If the dialogue had been written better and the transitions between scenes were scripted better, it could have been a great movie.

Oh, and being fans of the show, the changes in the pronounciation of names made us cringe.

I'd say avoid the movie and check out the show instead, of which I believe all three seasons are up for streaming over the internet from Netflix.