After being out of the spotlight for a long time The Horseman make their comeback, ready to bring one more bad guy in. Although it doesn’t really go as planned once they get interfered.
I looooved the first Now You See Me. I was blown away by how much I enjoyed it. I love all the magic tricks and I just want to see more and more. The way they made such a spectacle of the shows really gave me goosebumps, I enjoyed it so so much! So I was very happy once they announced this one, although it was a bit of a disappointment compared to the first one. I mean, the shows were still really cool and the way they made all the plans work, it was once again fascinating to get to know about. It just wasn’t like the first movie. As I said before I adore the magic tricks, but in this film it just got to a point were I thought “nah brah, this is just not possible. There is no way you can do that” (referring to mainly the rain part). That was a bit disappointing. I really enjoyed their last trick on the bad guys though.
All the actors did a very good job. We got Lizzy Caplan as Lula, a new character, and she. is. funny. I didn’t like her from the start but once I got to know her I really enjoyed her character. Also want to take my time to praise Woody Harrelson, I love that man, he’s a genius. His double role was so funny!
This movie was, personally for me, not the first one, I was a bit disappointed. Nonetheless, I am excited for a new one (if there is coming one, but I hope there is).
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The rain part was explained in the movie and it makes sense for me @serenadb
This is the weirdest burger commercial ever.
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@mamasaucy She really sells how good it is with every bite
This is the weirdest burger commercial ever.
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Yet it worked. I came away wanting a smash burger
Tries to sell something big, but in the end it's nothing...
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@hitsbam Susan's face harden once more into a mask of sadness. She finally understands the book as an elaborate act of revenge, and that dedicating it to her wasn't a compliment. She knows now that he'll never forgive her, and the book is a pointed message about just how thoroughly she devastated him.
Tries to sell something big, but in the end it's nothing...
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@hitsbam a movie is always something, even the most shittiest, some are just not sensible enough to see it.
Review by Jordy
VIP8Denis Villeneuve is the man!
There’s only one word that came into my mind after watching it: finally.Finally, a blockbuster that isn’t afraid to be primarily driven by drama and tension, and doesn’t undercut its own tone by throwing in a joke every 30 seconds.
Finally, a blockbuster that puts actual effort in its cinematography, and doesn’t have a bland or calculated colour palette.
Finally, a blockbuster with a story that has actual substance and themes, and doesn’t rely on intertextual references or nostalgia to create a fake sheen of depth.
Finally, a blockbuster that doesn’t pander to China by having big, loud and overblown action sequences, but relies on practical and grounded spectacle instead (it has big sand worms, you really don’t need to throw anything at the screen besides that).
Finally, a blockbuster that actually feels big, because it isn’t primarily shot in close ups, or on a sound stage.
And of course: finally, a blockbuster that isn’t a fucking prequel, sequel, or connected to an already established IP somehow.(Yeah, I know Tenet did those things as well, but I couldn’t get into that because the characters were so flat and uninteresting).
This just checks all the boxes. An engaging story with subtext, very well set up characters, great acting (like James Gunn, Villeneuve's great at accentuating the strengths of limited actors like Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa), spectecular visuals and art design (desaturated but not in an ugly washed out way), pacing (slow but it never drags), directing, one of Hans Zimmer’s best scores: it’s all here.
I only have one real criticism: there’s too much exposition, especially in the first half.
It can occasionally hold your hand by referencing things that have already been established previously, and some scenes of characters explaining stuff to each other could’ve been conveyed more visually.
Other than that, it’s easily one of the best films of the year.
I’ve seen some people critiquing it for being incomplete, which is true, but this isn’t just a set up for a future film.
It feels like a whole meal, there are pay offs in this, and the characters progress (even if, yes, their arcs are still incomplete).8.5/10
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@jordyep Fair point. I tried to get through Lynch's movie a few times, but I have never been able to finish it. And it is true there have not been main stream Dune related projects in a long time.
I see what you mean, I think my nitpick about the first act is more about lack of showing character instead of telling. At the end of the movie I not felt like I know who he is and even less who he was, even though he is the main character. And from that 'lack of understanding' i tried to trace back what could have caused that.
Of course that could just be a me-issue, and not the movie. But I think it is not so much his passiveness, and more because I didn't get to see enough of his original character by actions (or choices.) Some of it is shown or told, although perhaps not that clear (or just not to me.) I thought the most defining scene for who he is in the beginning is when he is meeting the old Gesserit leader. He seems rather pubescent in his breakfast conversation with his mom, disliking ceremony, uninterested in his tasks, and unmotivated or even lazy about developing his 'Jedi mind trick' skills. He doesn't look excited to be a king (or anything others want for him), but (or maybe because of earlier said point) he feels attracted to Arrakis. And ofc the dream as extra motivation works fine. So I don't mean he is a blank slate, his character is there, but I think it might have been preferable to have more visual conveying of his character instead of others saying he is rebellious like his father (I expected him to do something rash in that scene because of that for example) or explaining how the shields work, which is also shown in the literal same scene anyway.
ps. Your review is very on point though.
Review by Jordy
VIP8Denis Villeneuve is the man!
There’s only one word that came into my mind after watching it: finally.Finally, a blockbuster that isn’t afraid to be primarily driven by drama and tension, and doesn’t undercut its own tone by throwing in a joke every 30 seconds.
Finally, a blockbuster that puts actual effort in its cinematography, and doesn’t have a bland or calculated colour palette.
Finally, a blockbuster with a story that has actual substance and themes, and doesn’t rely on intertextual references or nostalgia to create a fake sheen of depth.
Finally, a blockbuster that doesn’t pander to China by having big, loud and overblown action sequences, but relies on practical and grounded spectacle instead (it has big sand worms, you really don’t need to throw anything at the screen besides that).
Finally, a blockbuster that actually feels big, because it isn’t primarily shot in close ups, or on a sound stage.
And of course: finally, a blockbuster that isn’t a fucking prequel, sequel, or connected to an already established IP somehow.(Yeah, I know Tenet did those things as well, but I couldn’t get into that because the characters were so flat and uninteresting).
This just checks all the boxes. An engaging story with subtext, very well set up characters, great acting (like James Gunn, Villeneuve's great at accentuating the strengths of limited actors like Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa), spectecular visuals and art design (desaturated but not in an ugly washed out way), pacing (slow but it never drags), directing, one of Hans Zimmer’s best scores: it’s all here.
I only have one real criticism: there’s too much exposition, especially in the first half.
It can occasionally hold your hand by referencing things that have already been established previously, and some scenes of characters explaining stuff to each other could’ve been conveyed more visually.
Other than that, it’s easily one of the best films of the year.
I’ve seen some people critiquing it for being incomplete, which is true, but this isn’t just a set up for a future film.
It feels like a whole meal, there are pay offs in this, and the characters progress (even if, yes, their arcs are still incomplete).8.5/10
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@lainfan I know, but the David Lynch adaptation was so abysmal that it doesn’t really count in my book. And I doubt many people saw that tv adaptation in the 2000’s, so I wouldn’t really call it an ‘established IP’ in a cinematic sense. Maybe that’s hypocritical from my side, but I’d only hold that against the movie if it this was an unnecessary remake that doesn’t bring anything new to the table (besides maybe updating the effects), but that’s clearly not the case here.
And yeah, Paul’s a bit of a passive character in the first act, but that’s often how the heroes journey is written. Look at characters like Frodo, Luke, Harry Potter; they all start as passive (or even reluctant) heroes who are forced to step up to the plate once their mentors get killed.
Review by Jordy
VIP8Denis Villeneuve is the man!
There’s only one word that came into my mind after watching it: finally.Finally, a blockbuster that isn’t afraid to be primarily driven by drama and tension, and doesn’t undercut its own tone by throwing in a joke every 30 seconds.
Finally, a blockbuster that puts actual effort in its cinematography, and doesn’t have a bland or calculated colour palette.
Finally, a blockbuster with a story that has actual substance and themes, and doesn’t rely on intertextual references or nostalgia to create a fake sheen of depth.
Finally, a blockbuster that doesn’t pander to China by having big, loud and overblown action sequences, but relies on practical and grounded spectacle instead (it has big sand worms, you really don’t need to throw anything at the screen besides that).
Finally, a blockbuster that actually feels big, because it isn’t primarily shot in close ups, or on a sound stage.
And of course: finally, a blockbuster that isn’t a fucking prequel, sequel, or connected to an already established IP somehow.(Yeah, I know Tenet did those things as well, but I couldn’t get into that because the characters were so flat and uninteresting).
This just checks all the boxes. An engaging story with subtext, very well set up characters, great acting (like James Gunn, Villeneuve's great at accentuating the strengths of limited actors like Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa), spectecular visuals and art design (desaturated but not in an ugly washed out way), pacing (slow but it never drags), directing, one of Hans Zimmer’s best scores: it’s all here.
I only have one real criticism: there’s too much exposition, especially in the first half.
It can occasionally hold your hand by referencing things that have already been established previously, and some scenes of characters explaining stuff to each other could’ve been conveyed more visually.
Other than that, it’s easily one of the best films of the year.
I’ve seen some people critiquing it for being incomplete, which is true, but this isn’t just a set up for a future film.
It feels like a whole meal, there are pay offs in this, and the characters progress (even if, yes, their arcs are still incomplete).8.5/10
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@jordyep "And of course: finally, a blockbuster that isn’t a fucking prequel, sequel, or connected to an already established IP somehow." Hate to point this out, but Dune is very much an already established IP. As you mention at the end of your review, it is an adaptation of a novel (with a rather large following), and it has several earlier adaptations in several media including a not so small movie in the 80's.
"I only have one real criticism: there’s too much exposition, especially in the first half." + "... conveyed more visually."
Totally agree, my main issue with this movie is the same. Even the impressive big shots do not manage to distract from the pacing issues of all the exposition that had to be discussed. Also, I found the main character somewhat lacked to show some character in the first act. It was mostly others describing/planning for him.
(Edited for some nuance)
Review by hirkiti
VIPEP2I'm a huge fan of SF and AI based plots - I was really looking forward to seeing this but it was a frustrating disappointment. It has terrible horrible shamefully bad writing. Not a single original idea about AI and in fact they don't really deal with AI apart from robots basically being exactly like humans but nicer. No original futuristic sci-fi ideas either with a lot of the futuristic stuff not making any sense. For example the AIs speak to each other in English, no super fast data pours between them. They can't even speak remotely over cellular or whatever... they use walkie talkies lol. They had an old women robot that limped around though the robots do not age?!? I could have forgiven all of this in the 80s or from an adaptation of an Isaac Asinov novel but we're in 2023 and we've all watched the Matrix etc... Also it had very little action and the action sequences it did have were bad and boring with yellow lazer tracers zapping around in the near dark or fog. Visually it was ok and the score was decent but the poor writing completely ruined it for me. Half way through, I couldn't wait for it to end. You can't be a serious Sci-fi fan and think this is any good, it's just not possible... yes that's you good reviewers.
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I feel exactly the same. Poor writing really took its tall on this..
Plenty of half-thought ideas and several nonsenses. The plot at the end has so many holes: Why didn’t humans bombed the bases immediately once they got hacks and bases locations and did wait for the girl board Nomad? Why did the girl dragged simulant body and did not revive the Mother instantly? Why even revive the Mother on Nomad and not later once the war is over?
♂
They tried to warn me. When I told my friends that after finishing the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, I was planning on watching the maligned theatrical film as something of an interstitial curiosity before I started television show’s second season, they cautioned me against it. They told me it was bad, that it was a waste of time, that it added nothing to the viewer’s understanding of the show relative to the movie or vice versa. But I didn’t listen. I thought that The Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan’s 2010 cinematic fumble, would at least be the entertaining sort of awful.
Suffice it to say, I was wrong. The Last Airbender is a complete misfire, that misunderstands its source material and the demands of the cinematic form, but which is competent, and dare I say dull enough at a basic level, to where it never reaches into “so bad it’s good” territory. The film’s problems are the sort that make the audience disengage, not the kind that make them laugh, and that may be its worst offense. If The Last Airbender wasn’t going to be good, it could at least have been entertaining.
Most notably, the film fails as an adaptation. There is the blueprint for an engrossing two-hour movie in the first season of the Avatar: The Last Airbender T.V. show, which this film is based on. But writer/director/producer Shyamalan stumbles and falls in trying to translate this opening chapter of the hero’s journey into compelling cinema.
That problem, oddly enough, does not stem from the array of baffling, seemingly pointless differences between the film and the show. Why Shyamalan felt compelled to change the pronunciations for the characters names in the movie is beyond me (and hearing Sokka pronounced like “Sohka” is particularly jarring for Star Wars fans), but it doesn’t impact the quality of the film. Similarly, substituting rising tides for water monsters or channeling the spirit world through a single figure are defensible choices in bringing the story to the silver screen. And while the white-washing and other race-lifts Shyamalan performs on the characters speak to pernicious problems in Hollywood overall, even these serious and worthy issues are external to the film, and are not hindrances, in a vacuum, to Shyamalan creating an engaging piece of entertainment.
What is a hindrance, oddly, is what Shyamalan leaves in. There’s a certain streamlining necessary in order to take eight hours of television and boil it down one unified film. Shyamalan does omit a number of the show’s “village of the week” stories in favor of focusing on the main narrative, which is to his and film’s benefit. The problem is that he doesn’t finesse or organize the remainder of the story into any sort of logical progression.
Instead, he just races through the plot points in the show’s first seventeen episodes, without any time for important details like the worldbuilding, the character dynamics, or even the stakes of the story to land. By the halfway point of The Last Airbender, Shyamalan essentially commits to retelling the show’s series finale as the entire back half of his film. That leaves the first half feeling incredibly rushed, with plot developments and character relationships happening by fiat and the characters developed. So by the time the bloated third act arrives and the story is reaching its climax, nothing has been established in a satisfying enough fashion to make any of it matter.
This is also “Tell, Don’t Show: The Movie.” Between the opening scroll, the rampant use of voiceover, and the way ninety percent of the characters speak in exposition dumps, the film doesn’t trust its audience to understand anything that’s happening on its own. Worse yet, Shyamalan uses it as a substitute for plot and character development. He simply has characters declare that a romance exists, or that some cool things happened, rather than depicting these things in a way that conveys those points and themes. Most of the film consists of Shyamalan simply offering a grab bag of cool but disconnected scenes from the show, with boatloads of expository dialogue thrown in to try to explain why we should care about them.
That flaw extends to the characters themselves, whom the audience barely gets to know over the course of the film. While cheesy or annoying at times, the television quickly established distinctive personalities for its main characters. In the film, those characters are bland and inert, with various characteristics being declared by one side-character or another, or their motivations established in voiceover, but never really seen in who the characters are or what they do.
That particularly extends to Aang. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with Shyamalan’s departure from the source material with regard to the protagonist. While T.V. Aang is playful and ebullient, Movie Aang is sullen and, if we’re being honest, flat from the getgo. But that idea fits with Shyamalan’s arc for the character, of being detached as a way of not confronting the pain from the genocide of his people, a genocide he could have prevented. In different hands, it could be a powerful story and a poignant characterization.
Unfortunately, Noah Ringer, the young actor who plays Aang, is not quite at Jake Lloyd levels of child acting awfulness, but is still pretty terrible every time he’s asked to carry a moment or deliver a meaningful line. I put that on Shyamalan though. The television show used an actual child to voice Aang, but made the character exuberant and childish, to where Zach Tyler’s unpolishedness lent an authenticity to the role. But Noah Ringer is, understandably, not quite up to the challenge of communicating repressed guilt beneath a stoic exterior at twelve years old. Instead, his Aang simple comes across as affectless or occasionally grim. His awkward line delivery doesn’t help, but the issue lies with an untenable choice from Shyamalan, not an overmatched young actor.
You could also be forgiven for thinking this is Prince Zuko’s movie, not Aang’s. Not only is Dev Patel one of, if not the best actors in the film, allowing him to pick up the slack with performance to craft a compelling character where the screenplay falters, but Zuko is one of the few characters in the film whose struggles and past are dramatized, given time to stew to where we relate to Zuko and sympathize with his difficulties. He’s better served than nearly anyone in the film, which makes sense when you consider Patel’s talents relative to Ringer’s, but which shifts the balance of the movie in ways that don’t always work.
It’s worth asking -- what, if anything, is good about this film? Well, the art direction is generally quite good. There’s a high contrast vividness to many of the settings, creating a certain hyper-realism that sells both the naturalistic beauty and the otherworldly qualities of this realm. Those gorgeous environments create visual splendor even when the rest of the film is lacking.
Unfortunately, even that is hampered by the chintzy-looking effects of the film. Everything from the element attacks to Aang’s kite-staff make it seem like the characters are trapped in a videogame cutscene rather than integrated into that world. And there are some issues with green screen effects and composition that similarly hurt immersion. To boot, Shyamalan and his collaborators don’t quite have a beat on translating the elemental magic from animation to live action. Much of that comes down to the choreography and wire-fu. The martial arts forms blended with supernatural abilities has a certain fluidity and grace in pen and ink, and the attempts to replicate it in flesh and blood veer between merely looking silly and coming off like a bad stage production of Peter Pan.
Still, Shyamalan does offer a handful of well-done sequences, which speak to his talent for visuals if not storytelling. There’s a long-take battle early in the film that has herky-jerky pacing, but shows some visual flair. A spinning shot of Aang and Katara practicing tai chi in an arctic setting has a still beauty to it. A confrontation between Aang and Zuko with minimal fire- or air-bending displays a creativity in staging and shows what the movie might have been. And at one point, Shyamalan even goes full 300, with overexposed 2D-platformer-like visuals that use digital zoom to jump in and out of the action.
But it’s weak broth overall when it’s hard to care about anyone in those fights. Some of the talent present is able to overcome the weakness of the script. (In addition to Dev Patel’s showcase, Jackson Rathbone and Seychelle Gabriel almost sell a severely underwritten romance with their performances alone). Nevertheless, it’s all in service of a work that not only fails as an adaptation, but which fails as a movie.
Shyamalan’s film has the tenor of a ten-year-old giving a book report. “And then this happened; and then this happened; and then this happened.” Gone are the close-knit personal relationships, the interesting contrasts between the characters, the well-formed world of the series. Instead, there’s a rush of weightless events and one long, underdeveloped climax. The Last Airbender isn’t for fans of the original series, liable to be angry at the divergence from the source material; it’s not for newcomers who would easily get lost in the rush of major plot points; and it’s not for cinephiles, who are apt to be annoyed at Shyamalan's strained attempts to spackle over that problem with obvious exposition. It is a film for no one, and no one should waste their time or energy watching it ever again.
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@andrewbloom I enjoyed it. I watched it in 3D with the volume on mute, while reading a book.
They tried to warn me. When I told my friends that after finishing the first season of Avatar: The Last Airbender, I was planning on watching the maligned theatrical film as something of an interstitial curiosity before I started television show’s second season, they cautioned me against it. They told me it was bad, that it was a waste of time, that it added nothing to the viewer’s understanding of the show relative to the movie or vice versa. But I didn’t listen. I thought that The Last Airbender, M. Night Shyamalan’s 2010 cinematic fumble, would at least be the entertaining sort of awful.
Suffice it to say, I was wrong. The Last Airbender is a complete misfire, that misunderstands its source material and the demands of the cinematic form, but which is competent, and dare I say dull enough at a basic level, to where it never reaches into “so bad it’s good” territory. The film’s problems are the sort that make the audience disengage, not the kind that make them laugh, and that may be its worst offense. If The Last Airbender wasn’t going to be good, it could at least have been entertaining.
Most notably, the film fails as an adaptation. There is the blueprint for an engrossing two-hour movie in the first season of the Avatar: The Last Airbender T.V. show, which this film is based on. But writer/director/producer Shyamalan stumbles and falls in trying to translate this opening chapter of the hero’s journey into compelling cinema.
That problem, oddly enough, does not stem from the array of baffling, seemingly pointless differences between the film and the show. Why Shyamalan felt compelled to change the pronunciations for the characters names in the movie is beyond me (and hearing Sokka pronounced like “Sohka” is particularly jarring for Star Wars fans), but it doesn’t impact the quality of the film. Similarly, substituting rising tides for water monsters or channeling the spirit world through a single figure are defensible choices in bringing the story to the silver screen. And while the white-washing and other race-lifts Shyamalan performs on the characters speak to pernicious problems in Hollywood overall, even these serious and worthy issues are external to the film, and are not hindrances, in a vacuum, to Shyamalan creating an engaging piece of entertainment.
What is a hindrance, oddly, is what Shyamalan leaves in. There’s a certain streamlining necessary in order to take eight hours of television and boil it down one unified film. Shyamalan does omit a number of the show’s “village of the week” stories in favor of focusing on the main narrative, which is to his and film’s benefit. The problem is that he doesn’t finesse or organize the remainder of the story into any sort of logical progression.
Instead, he just races through the plot points in the show’s first seventeen episodes, without any time for important details like the worldbuilding, the character dynamics, or even the stakes of the story to land. By the halfway point of The Last Airbender, Shyamalan essentially commits to retelling the show’s series finale as the entire back half of his film. That leaves the first half feeling incredibly rushed, with plot developments and character relationships happening by fiat and the characters developed. So by the time the bloated third act arrives and the story is reaching its climax, nothing has been established in a satisfying enough fashion to make any of it matter.
This is also “Tell, Don’t Show: The Movie.” Between the opening scroll, the rampant use of voiceover, and the way ninety percent of the characters speak in exposition dumps, the film doesn’t trust its audience to understand anything that’s happening on its own. Worse yet, Shyamalan uses it as a substitute for plot and character development. He simply has characters declare that a romance exists, or that some cool things happened, rather than depicting these things in a way that conveys those points and themes. Most of the film consists of Shyamalan simply offering a grab bag of cool but disconnected scenes from the show, with boatloads of expository dialogue thrown in to try to explain why we should care about them.
That flaw extends to the characters themselves, whom the audience barely gets to know over the course of the film. While cheesy or annoying at times, the television quickly established distinctive personalities for its main characters. In the film, those characters are bland and inert, with various characteristics being declared by one side-character or another, or their motivations established in voiceover, but never really seen in who the characters are or what they do.
That particularly extends to Aang. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with Shyamalan’s departure from the source material with regard to the protagonist. While T.V. Aang is playful and ebullient, Movie Aang is sullen and, if we’re being honest, flat from the getgo. But that idea fits with Shyamalan’s arc for the character, of being detached as a way of not confronting the pain from the genocide of his people, a genocide he could have prevented. In different hands, it could be a powerful story and a poignant characterization.
Unfortunately, Noah Ringer, the young actor who plays Aang, is not quite at Jake Lloyd levels of child acting awfulness, but is still pretty terrible every time he’s asked to carry a moment or deliver a meaningful line. I put that on Shyamalan though. The television show used an actual child to voice Aang, but made the character exuberant and childish, to where Zach Tyler’s unpolishedness lent an authenticity to the role. But Noah Ringer is, understandably, not quite up to the challenge of communicating repressed guilt beneath a stoic exterior at twelve years old. Instead, his Aang simple comes across as affectless or occasionally grim. His awkward line delivery doesn’t help, but the issue lies with an untenable choice from Shyamalan, not an overmatched young actor.
You could also be forgiven for thinking this is Prince Zuko’s movie, not Aang’s. Not only is Dev Patel one of, if not the best actors in the film, allowing him to pick up the slack with performance to craft a compelling character where the screenplay falters, but Zuko is one of the few characters in the film whose struggles and past are dramatized, given time to stew to where we relate to Zuko and sympathize with his difficulties. He’s better served than nearly anyone in the film, which makes sense when you consider Patel’s talents relative to Ringer’s, but which shifts the balance of the movie in ways that don’t always work.
It’s worth asking -- what, if anything, is good about this film? Well, the art direction is generally quite good. There’s a high contrast vividness to many of the settings, creating a certain hyper-realism that sells both the naturalistic beauty and the otherworldly qualities of this realm. Those gorgeous environments create visual splendor even when the rest of the film is lacking.
Unfortunately, even that is hampered by the chintzy-looking effects of the film. Everything from the element attacks to Aang’s kite-staff make it seem like the characters are trapped in a videogame cutscene rather than integrated into that world. And there are some issues with green screen effects and composition that similarly hurt immersion. To boot, Shyamalan and his collaborators don’t quite have a beat on translating the elemental magic from animation to live action. Much of that comes down to the choreography and wire-fu. The martial arts forms blended with supernatural abilities has a certain fluidity and grace in pen and ink, and the attempts to replicate it in flesh and blood veer between merely looking silly and coming off like a bad stage production of Peter Pan.
Still, Shyamalan does offer a handful of well-done sequences, which speak to his talent for visuals if not storytelling. There’s a long-take battle early in the film that has herky-jerky pacing, but shows some visual flair. A spinning shot of Aang and Katara practicing tai chi in an arctic setting has a still beauty to it. A confrontation between Aang and Zuko with minimal fire- or air-bending displays a creativity in staging and shows what the movie might have been. And at one point, Shyamalan even goes full 300, with overexposed 2D-platformer-like visuals that use digital zoom to jump in and out of the action.
But it’s weak broth overall when it’s hard to care about anyone in those fights. Some of the talent present is able to overcome the weakness of the script. (In addition to Dev Patel’s showcase, Jackson Rathbone and Seychelle Gabriel almost sell a severely underwritten romance with their performances alone). Nevertheless, it’s all in service of a work that not only fails as an adaptation, but which fails as a movie.
Shyamalan’s film has the tenor of a ten-year-old giving a book report. “And then this happened; and then this happened; and then this happened.” Gone are the close-knit personal relationships, the interesting contrasts between the characters, the well-formed world of the series. Instead, there’s a rush of weightless events and one long, underdeveloped climax. The Last Airbender isn’t for fans of the original series, liable to be angry at the divergence from the source material; it’s not for newcomers who would easily get lost in the rush of major plot points; and it’s not for cinephiles, who are apt to be annoyed at Shyamalan's strained attempts to spackle over that problem with obvious exposition. It is a film for no one, and no one should waste their time or energy watching it ever again.
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@lentend I am impressed at your ability to read a book while wearing 3D glasses!
The movie's message is very hypocritical because it claims to promote feminism but actually promotes female supremacy (women ruling over men, not the equality message that feminists tend to preach). The barbies getting their world back from the Kens is seen as fair and equal even though it is literally a matriarchy where the men are just there to entertain the women and don't even have their own houses. They switch from patriarchy to matriarchy but never mention it.
I am a very liberal person and I am completely for equality, but not female supremacy. And besides, if it was just a few references it would have been fine even then, but the problem is it is the film's main plot. The whole point of the movie is to lecture to men why they shouldn't be the ones in charge and make them appear as buffoons, as morons who can't do anything right, that's what I despise about this movie. The women are never portrayed as idiots except when they are in a brainwashed state, yet the movie claims to promote equality. That's the problem with radical feminists like the film's director (Greta Gerwig).
I guess next time, before I pay for movie tickets, I am going to actually read the critic reviews and make sure that the filmmaker is not a radical moron before I make my decision. This time, I just foolishly picked the movie based on the eye candy I saw in the trailer. And yes, the eye candy was there throughout the entire movie, but that's the only good thing about the movie, everything else was horrible. Ryan Gosling is a great actor but in this, he is portrayed as a weak spineless man, and the few times where he is portrayed as strong, it is only in a stereotypical way to make fun of him. If the movie really preached equality, it wouldn't be so focused on making the men appear as idiots or promoting a female dominated society, it is because of that kind of stuff that plenty of people (including some women) are against feminism.
I completely understand wanting to tear down the patriarchal aspects of society or calling them out, but by replacing them with ideas of female supremacy, it makes the movie's message lose its credibility, because feminism tends to be about equality, not trading patriarchy for matriarchy, which doesn't even work in the real world. All matriarchal societies are either failures or they are stuck in a very undeveloped state and never make any progress. Also, there is a reason why some jobs are more male dominated than others, very few women want to work in construction, because it is dirty, it is a lot of heavy lifting, and it can lead to broken nails and even serious injuries.
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@roveroppy A few feminists have fought to try to fix the system but because those problems only bother men and not women, most don't fight to fix it unless they can somehow benefit from it. Men's rights activists (MRA) are the ones who did the most good for the rights of fathers, but they are still heavily portrayed as misogynists or incels, which makes no sense, since they are just the male version of a feminist. Many feminists hate MRAs because fighting for men's rights leads to women losing some of their unfair privileges.
Most men are completely unaware of the fact that in first world countries, if they have kids with a woman, and end up breaking up with her, the best case scenario is they have the kids on the weekends, but that is only if they broke up on good terms, if she hates him, then she could make up lies about him so he gets no custody but still has to pay her a huge chunk of his salary in child support, that's the kind of stuff most feminists don't bother talking about. As for the institution of marriage, it costs thousands of dollars for the man to buy the engagement ring, then he has to pay tens of thousands on a wedding, and then lose half his stuff in a divorce and keep paying her for many years just to leave, on top of the money he has to give her so she can raise the kids with her new boyfriend. If men knew about that and the fact that more than half of marriages end in divorce, they would not get married and they would not have kids. In this day and age, you have more rights as a father if you pay for a surrogate mother and raise your children as a single father, then you can get a girlfriend and she will play the role of mother without any of the parental rights, because biologically, it's not her kids, that's how you fight the system and win as a man in this day and age. And since surrogate mothers can be upwards of 150 000$ in the west, the best thing to do is to go to a third world country where you will pay a few thousand dollars then fly back home with the baby. So far, at the age of 25, I'm not interested in having kids, but if I ever changed my mind later on, that is how I would do it, I wouldn't impregnate a western woman hoping everything works out unless she has a much higher income than me. By the way, that is the only way to win a divorce as a man, if she comes from a multi millionaire family and you come for a poor or middle class family, you are the one who will get the alimony and the most financial rewards but only if you do not sign a prenuptial agreement, if you do, then you are in a position of weakness because she can cuck you with no consequences.
Another great option is to move to a country like Thailand or the Philippines, where the women are traditional and will treat you with more respect than any western woman ever would, but the downside here is that if you want to leave, you have no parental rights over the children, since you're a foreigner.
By the way, people often wonder why so many fathers kidnap their own children, and the reason is because they cannot deal with the fact that they have to pay more than half their salary to their ex wife on top of losing half their money and resources only to watch their kids grow up with an often toxic stepfather who can abuse them. The biological father is put into a helpless position where he has no power so to fight the system, he breaks the law and tries to escape with his kid, which never works out because he always gets caught.
Something felt off about the pacing and the fights looked like they were from a video game.
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@allyssonsouzam I enjoyed it but I think he means when the ring was suddenly surrounded by prison bars and etc. It took you out of the fight and it got silly.
Ugh, another movie idolizing male entertainers whilst glossing over the misogyny and abuse of women.
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@shonikwaaa I mean... it's a documentary based on his history. That's what happened, you can't expect them to get rid of misogyny and the abuse of women if that's the reality that was in those precise moments.
