The Last Airbender – Blu-ray Review

The Film:

M. Night Shyamalan needed this. He needed a project based on an established source material to help him cleanse whatever went horribly wrong with his last three films. A sense of direction, something that was missed in his Lady in the Water, The Village, and The Happening, and while we applaud original ideas, those films weren’t executed well. Maybe that’s putting it mildly. With a chance to take his sure directorial hand, because if anything, it’s not his directorial eye that’s bad, it’s his writing, and give a summer CG-action film a shot, but with the results, however, no matter how proven the anime source material was, is a failed, cold, and heartless film. And M. Night didn’t need that.

The popular, if not, the most popular Nickelodeon show, lasted three seasons, based on each element Aang, the last airbender, must learn to manipulate to save blah blah blah, should have remained a cartoon. One of the damning things about The Last Airbender is how much it tries to put into a condensed hour and forty-five minutes, an act that offers a blitzing crash course into the series’ mythology and characters, rushing things to feel like a introductory course for long-time fans, and a film that has us non-fans either rushing to Wikipedia to find out what’s what or worse, having us not caring. Most will not care. That’s the issue. This dividing line to appease long-time fans and attract new ones, and it all falls flat on the face of its second issue: dialogue. It’s awful and quite laughable. “Do you have a place for me to meditate?” “Yes, we have a special place.”

To me, even in his less than stellar films, M. Night has always taking his time to build story, characters, and atmosphere. Granted, he has dealt in genres films mostly, but in The Last Airbender, he seems oddly distant from the film and story he’s try to tell, and I would love to not blame him, but he’s also credited as the screenwriter. Where, oh, where has the rising star director of Unbreakable gone? M. Night is in quicksand and if this project was to do anything, it was to stabilize his sinking career. I hate to condemn one man for a failure, but it’s his fourth straight, a film so detached from the director to the audience, so messy, so riddled with convolution, all wrapped up in that horrible 3D conversion like Clash of the Titans, that it feels so unneeded. Fans will be irritated by its need to apply simplification to appease the masses. And the masses will be bored stiff by this lifeless entity filled with an orgy of heavy-handed exposition. As a collective, The Last Airbender is a crushing headache.

The Blu-ray:

Audio/Video: Paramount doesn’t need to bend anything to wow us with this HD presentation. The details and colors are superb. Black are rich and deep. In a non-3D version in HD, this is a great looking print. The 3D Blu-ray is availible, but wasn’t included for review. The DTS track is rich, loud, bass heavy, and constantly aggressive. All things considered, this is a great HD disc.

All extras are in HD.

Avatar Annotations: Here’s your picture-in-picture track, that’s gaining popularity as it seems I’m reviewing these on almost every BD disc. It’s good, with plenty of quickie info.

Discovering The Last Airbender is a large documentary featuring some good and also some too quick and light behind-the-scenes info with Siege of the North (on the major battle sequence); Origins of the Avatar(detailed look at the original anime series); and Katara for a Day (focusing on star Nicola Peltz). Running close to 30 minutes, like I mentioned, some good, some bland.

Deleted Scenes offer little into saving the film; a Gag Reel of ho-hum chuckles; and the DVD and Digital Copy versions of the film are included in this combo pack.

Conclusion: For kids only and maybe curious fans of the series, but all others, pass. Solid BD though.

The Film: Rating:

The Blu-ray: Rating: