The Last Airbender [2010]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Due to a coming snowstorm and the fact that there was an actual curfew on when we could leave our houses, there was no Bad Movie Night two weeks ago. Last Monday we did manage to gather after plows had come by and decided that it was totally necessary to watch another M. Night Shyamalan ("After Earth" will probably be coming soon). This movie is based off of a well-loved and acclaimed television series so there's already a built in fanbase and its literally structured to make a trilogy of movies possible. So what went wrong? Shyamalan, of course. If he's incapable of breathing life into any of the characters and stories he creates himself, how could he possibly find the heart of something someone else made and present it to an audience that is fundamentally more apt to explain why it's good?

So I guess I should explain the plot even though why does it even matter, it's a Shyamalan movie, don't watch it. The world is divided up by the four elements and there are some people called benders who can control the element to which they are native to. The avatar is the one person who can bend all the elements and connect with the spirit world. Avatar goes missing, fire nation is evil and wants to rule the world so they try to, then a girl and her brother find the avatar frozen in a block of ice and get him out and now he needs to learn bending elements other than his native air so he can bring peace to the land. But he only learns water in this one because trilogy. There's more to it but whatever. Heroes run from villains. Get captured and escape. Repeat until final battle when good guys win even though the story's not over. 

Aside from my explanation of why it sucks in the first paragraph there are the added facts that the dialogue doesn't sound like real human speech, characters constantly ask other characters to explain the plot, totally hilarious shouting while bending, bad child acting (and adult acting really), and a plot that pretty much clunks to conclusion. Luckily, it does not seem like there will be a sequel. 

Best Scene: Because the dialogue was bland but hammy it's hard for me to write any of it and do it justice. There is a scene however where Zuko and his uncle are talking about something and when the conversation ends, the camera zooms out to show that his uncle was getting a foot massage the entire time they were talking. We suspect this was the Shyamalanian twist.