M. Night Shouldnevermakeamovieagain

For my wife and I , the most eagerly anticipated movie of the summer was "The Last Airbender." A martial arts fantasy movie based on a cartoon series on Nickelodeon originally called "Avatar: the last Airbender". Some friends of ours introduced us to it after they noticed that it was really well done when they watched it with their kids. After a few episodes we were hooked and downloaded all three seasons from Itunes. Every aspect of this cartoon is brilliant, there is humor, beautiful art, nearly seemless computer animation and effects, the overall storyline is good, and the individual episodes are great. When I found out that they were making a live action movie out of the show, and it was being directed by one of my favorite directors, M. Night Shamalyn, I was excited.

Together with my wife and some friends, I went opening night at 12:01. The theater was packed with Teenagers. Many were dressed up as characters from the seasons. I realized watching them that the cartoon was kind of like their Star Wars. Unfortunatly, the movie was even worse than Phantom Menace.

My bad movie radar kicked in when the cheesy written synopsis rolled up the screen after a half hearted attempt at recreating the cartoon's opening sequence went by. It peaked again when an overdubbed narration by one of the main characters began, and when she mispronounced another characters name, the crowd turned ugly. It got worse from there.

Bad dialogue and odd plot changes followed. Bad casting became apparent, and more mispronounced names shattered the hopes of all of the kids in the theater with me, to the point where one disheartened teen shouted out "The Avatar with the blue people was better!"

What happened to this Artist who came out of the gate so brilliantly with "The Sixth Sense" and "Unbreakable"? Granted his latest movies have not been financial successes but I enjoyed the intensity of "The Village" and the characters of "Lady in The Water". This movie was just all bad. Start to finish. Effects, dialogue, fighting, humor, acting, all bad. It was bad enough that I developed an appreciation for Jerry Bruckheimer. Sure his films are ridiculous, but at least the effects and the action are always good.

This movie was a franchise killer akin to "Batman and Robin" the choices he made in it were so bad, that the only way to redeem the franchise is to shelf it for a few years, find some young hungry talented movie maker and reintroduce the series, saying "Yeah that movie never happened."

M. Night, you are off the list. I will never see one of your movies in the theater again if I can help it, and I encourage others to do the same.