Re: Avatar: The Last Airbender Movie
Huh.
I saw the trailers and thought, "This is a bit too busy; there's too much going on and I can't really work out what's happening. A bit like Bay's TRANSFORMERS, it's also seems to be purely about special effects like AVATAR. (Which is kinda funny.) However, unlike those films, this actually looks original. The style and plot seems very paint-by-numbers, but the choices in how it looks seems new to me. Also, M Night Shyamalan is a terrible writer but a good cinematographer. Since the material isn't his, rather, he's filming someone else's (supposedly good, but I've not seen it) story that people love, it might turn out quite well. I'm curious to see it. I think I shall."
That's right. I was gonna see it.
Now I'm not. A movie this universally hated isn't worth my time. AVATAR had more love than this, and I thought it looked bloody awful. It seems that Shyamalan decided to write this damn movie, and he ballsed it up. I have heard that not only is every line exposition, but that there is an unending voice-over throughout the film, which tells you key events that happen off-screen.
I honestly don't think the special effects are bad. I think they're probably brilliant. But I suppose that people were so desperately bored and angry at the movie that the only thing they could do was watch the effects and because they weren't immersed, every single flaw was magnified. To put it another way; it's impossible that THE LAST AIRBENDER's special effects are worse than STAR WARS'. The difference is that in STAR WARS you're so immersed into the world you forget they're special effects, but it would seem you are so distanced by THE LAST AIRBENDER that all you can focus on is that they are indeed special effects and you look for the 'wires' as it were.
Anyway - I'm not bothering. I've not seen the TV show, so I don't care to see a crappy 120-minute recap of it.