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The Last Airbender - Grading & Discussion

Grade the movie...

  • Total voters
    37
Dream said:
It felt too much like a needless change for me. A fire source can be put out so easily by air, water, and dirt.
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Easily? You ever tried fighting a house fire or a forest fire? Sure, if you succeed in snuffing out a flame while it's still small, that's easy enough, but once it gets going, "easy" goes out the window.

And personally I've always felt the show's approach, where Firebenders can manifest fire spontaneously but every other kind of bender needs an external source (at least until Katara figured out sweatbending), seemed contrived and inconsistent. Sure, they managed to justify it somewhat by equating fire with chi energy, but that feels like a mystical handwave to me. The film's approach strikes me as more consistent, even if it does introduce new limitations. There are points for and against both approaches, and I don't feel that either one is intrinsically "wrong."
 
Dream said:
Katara is fearless and is an amazing waterbending in the show, but in the movie the actress looked scared all the time.

The Earthbendering scene made no sense. In the show, the prisoners were imprisoned on a rig made of metal, which they couldn't manipulate. Also the Earthbending was too weak. One rock? In the show, Toph easily throws around boulders twenty times that size.

Everyone bowing to Aang at the very end, especially Katara and Sokka. It felt wrong. Aang is supposed to be their friend, not their god.
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Katara didn't become a great waterbender in the show until she was taught by her waterbending master at the Northern Water Tribe. She had to steal a waterbending scroll in the show because she didn't have the skills to teach Ang.

Toph is a child prodigy. Due to that her bending skills are equally great to those labeled a master. If they made the Earthbenders mighty in the film, Toph wouldn't be amazing in comparison.

Ang is still the Avatar even if he is their friend.
Even in the show Shozen bowed to Ruko as a sign of respect. Ang is the Dali Lama on that world, it's part of their culture.
 
The problem with firebenders needing a fire source is that they're a tiny nation that has conquered the entire world, so their powers should be super charged. Have you seen how tiny their nation is on the map? The Earth Kingdom is like ten times bigger. It's Japan versus USSR.
 
Mr Light said:
The problem with firebenders needing a fire source is that they're a tiny nation that has conquered the entire world, so their powers should be super charged. Have you seen how tiny their nation is on the map? The Earth Kingdom is like ten times bigger. It's Japan versus USSR.
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Didn't Japan kick Russia's ass in a war?
 
Through superior firepower and tactics, yeah. I think it was the 1904-5 war? All I remember is Japan sneak-attacked the Russian Pacific Fleet in a single battle. Then the Russian Western Fleet sailed all the way around the world... only to get promptly sneak-attacked and destroyed by Japan!

Japan has certainly never invaded and occupied the entirety of Mother Russia, though :p
 
Mr Light said:
Japan has certainly never invaded and occupied the entirety of Mother Russia, though :p
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They did a pretty effective job on China in the '30s and '40s, though.

(And to think -- at the time of the Russo-Japanese War, America was so proud of Japan for successfully imitating the West and becoming an industrialized, imperialist power. Heck, what could possibly go wrong?)
 
This made me laugh:

At the cinema showing I attended, the British crowd reacted derisively at key dialogue moments. One wise old lady says solemnly to a young man: "I could tell at once that you were a bender, and that you would realise your destiny." One character tells another wonderingly: "There are some really powerful benders in the Northern Water Zone." Another whispers tensely: "We want to minimise their bender sources." A key figure is taken away by brutal soldiers, one of whom shouts cruelly: "It's a bender."
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:guffaw:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/12/the-last-airbender
 
Haven't seen it and I don't want to, but all I know is the advert for it pisses me off.

"SEE SOME SHIT HAPPEN IN 3D, MORE SHIT IN 3D, EVEN MORE SHIT IN 3D, AND SOME MORE SHIT IN 3D"
 
Aparently British people have never understood that words have different meanings in different context? I mean, you'd think they would know that, it is their damn language.
 
Trekker4747 said:
Aparently British people have never understood that words have different meanings in different context? I mean, you'd think they would know that, it is their damn language.
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Well, that's hardly fair. Americans are no different. Haven't you ever heard anyone snickering at "We'll have a gay old time" in the Flintstones theme song? Or at references to a "private dick" in old-time detective movies?
 
Why, what do they call it in England?

When I was a little boy I always used to go to places with my fanny pack stuffed full of goodies. Never knew how offensive that was until a few weeks ago :eek:
 
Christopher said:
Trekker4747 said:
Aparently British people have never understood that words have different meanings in different context? I mean, you'd think they would know that, it is their damn language.
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Well, that's hardly fair. Americans are no different. Haven't you ever heard anyone snickering at "We'll have a gay old time" in the Flintstones theme song? Or at references to a "private dick" in old-time detective movies?
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Yeah, maybe being an adult I've just never snickered at those things and in the past, before being an adult, I knew words have different meanings and play context a lot into finding things funny. There's an old comic people post a lot of a paper saying the Joker "makes a lot of boners (re: errors)" and I don't find it funny because I play a lot of context into it. (Namely, it didn't mean that back then.)

So, yeah, I don't get it. Context is everything. I mean the "bender" thing, I guess is funny in a "the word also means "gay" way but in the context of the movie it's obviously not what they're talking about and it seems even sillier that they changed the name of the series in England because of it.
 
I'm wondering how British audiences react to Bender in Futurama. (Of course, he was named for a slang term, besides the literal meaning, but it's "bender" in the sense of "a drinking binge.")
 
Must have put an added dimension to Bender being afraid people would think he and Fry are robo-sexual!
 
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