The Last Airbender (2010)
Average Rating: 2.9/10
Reviews Counted: 175
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 164
The Last Airbender squanders its popular source material with incomprehensible plotting, horrible acting, and detached joyless direction.
Average Rating: 2.9/10
Critic Reviews: 37
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 35
The Last Airbender squanders its popular source material with incomprehensible plotting, horrible acting, and detached joyless direction.
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Average Rating: 2.7/5
User Ratings: 316,052
Movie Info
Suspense auteur M. Night Shyamalan takes a break from crafting original screenplays to tell this tale of a 12-year-old boy (Noah Ringer) who provides the last hope for restoring harmony to a land consumed by chaos. In a world balanced on the four nations of Water, Earth, Fire, and Air, people known as the Waterbenders, Earthbenders, Firebenders, and Airbenders have mastered their native elements. Though the masters can each manipulate their native elements, the only one with the power to
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Cast
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Noah Ringer
Aang -
Nicola Peltz
Katara -
Dev Patel
Zuko -
Jackson Rathbone
Sokka -
Shaun Toub
Uncle Iroh -
Aasif Mandvi
Commander Zhao -
Cliff Curtis
Fire Lord Ozai -
Seychelle Gabriel
Princess Yue -
Katharine Houghton
Katara's Grandma -
Francis Guinan
Master Pakku -
Damon Gupton
Monk Gyatso -
Summer Bishil
Azula -
Randall Duk Kim
Old Man in Temple -
John D'Alonzo
Zhao's Assistant -
Keong Sim
Earthbending Father -
Isaac Jin Solstein
Earthbending Boy -
Edmund Ikeda
Old Man of Kyoshi Town -
John Noble
The Dragon Spirit -
Morgan Spector
Lead Fire Nation Soldie... -
Karim Sioud
Fire Nation Prison Gua... -
Manu Narayan
Fire Nation Head Prison... -
Kevin W. Yamada
Earth Kingdom Prisoner -
Ted Oyama
Kyoshi Villager -
Ritesh Rajan
Fire Nation Soldier -
George DeNoto
Teahouse Child -
Manuel Kanian
Nervous Prison Guard -
Christopher Brewster
Kicking Firebender -
Ryan Shams
Lead Archer -
Jeffrey Zubernis
Water Tribe Soldier -
Brian Johnson
Water Tribe Soldier -
J.W. Cortes
Fire Lord Attendant -
Jessica Jade Andres
Suki
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All Critics (175) | Top Critics (37) | Fresh (11) | Rotten (164) | DVD (5)
One is bored and stupefied by what seems like an eternity of vacuous spectacle, cod-Buddhist tosh and clunking dialogue.
[T]he film works so hard to explain its plot developments that it scarcely has any time left over to dramatize them. Exposition has not merely vanquished mimesis, it has burned its homes to the ground and sown salt in its fields.
Stilted dialogue, wooden acting, glacial pacing, cheesy special effects, tacky-looking sets, ugly costumes, poorly staged and edited action sequences, all shown in murky, cut-rate 3-D.
A dull, boring, poorly acted, limply written and thoroughly unappealing fantasy, featuring bland characters locked in a struggle of no interest.
M. Night Shyamalan's big-screen live-action version of the popular Nickelodeon animated TV series constitutes a form of Chinese water torture in which tin-ear line-readings take the place of drips.
Please, Hollywood, if there's to be another Airbender movie, hand the job to some efficient hack, and not to a once mesmerizing artist who's lost his way.
[Shyamalan] works so much better with stories that are slower in development, where the atmosphere and tone drive the film, and where you're never quite sure what's going on (though not in the sense where you're completely confused, like this film).
This is a kid's movie that doesn't seem to realize that it's a kid's movie.
Bad acting, overstuffed exposition and running time far too brief for the amount of plot shoved into it reduce The Last Airbender into parody of a big summer film as Shyamalan manages to hit every single fantasy film pothole.
The Last Airbender is swollen with portentous mumbo jumbo and realized in the most simplistic and mundane ways imaginable.
The Last Airbender is a horrific mish-mash of genres that follows a depressingly large number of dead ends in adapting its source material.
Kiddie-strength action scenes drag the film down, but the kiss of death is Shyamalan's gratuitous use of earth tones and the general dull, drab look of the film. ... drastically reduces the intensity of the 3-D effects
An amateurish mess.
Is it a masterpiece? Oh god no, but... I'm intrigued to see where the next film goes...
The constant references to 'benders' can't help but elicit sniggers from British audiences ... the plotting is stodgy, the dialogue stinks and the acting is wooden.
As far as children's entertainment goes (and it is children's entertainment), it could be a lot worse.
The film is an unmitigated disaster, a putrid patchwork of the original series stitched together by wretched performances, bad creative decisions and a story that's all exposition, no depth.
Mere words can barely describe the sheer inanity on display.
It's a nice movie to look at, as long as you ignore the characters, plot, and action.
It seems as if a good film could be made out of The Last Airbender's tale. But this is not that film.
The characters are completely uninvolving, the narrative incomprehensible for the most part, and the performances seem to reflect the bewilderment of the plot.
Why do the water tribe have so much difficulty defeating their fire opponents when the battle takes place on the ocean?
Unspeakably bad dialogue delivered by excruciatingly bad actors in a plot so illogical and stupid it kills unicorns.
Shyamalan tells the story like a syndicated news journalist, reporting events with detached direction and lifeless, plot-driven screenwriting.
The worst part is undoubtedly the script, which clunks and groans all the way under the weight of it's own exposition - tragically and unforgivably, it fails to tell a good story.
The mythology of the series doesn't translate well to the demands of concise big screen storytelling.
Audience Reviews for The Last Airbender
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Movies Like The Last Airbender
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- Uncle Iroh: Be careful what you wish for, Admiral. History is not always kind to its subjects.
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- Azula: Trust is for fools! Fear is the only reliable way.
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- The Dragon Spirit: Aang, use the ocean. Show them the power of Water.
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- Fire Lord Ozai: You think, my son, is the soldier, these people are calling, The Blue Spirit?
- Fire Nation Soldier: Yes.
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- Princess Yue: It gave me life. Maybe I can give it back.
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- Uncle Iroh: [to Zhao] You stand alone. That has always been your greatest weakness.
Discussion Forum
Topic | Last Post | Replies |
---|---|---|
To any who defend this film | 5 days ago | 15 |
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Foreign Titles
- Die Legende von Aang (DE)
- The Last Airbender 3D (UK)