On a Bender

One Down three to go: The Elements go Haywire
By Morgan P Salvo

Director M. Night Shyamalan became a Hollywood success with his haunting films of the supernatural before stumbling badly with critical disappointments (Village/Happening). The Last Airbender veers far from his 1999 blockbuster The Sixth Sense. Expect no creepy aura or twist ending. This fantasy-adventure-family-friendly flick is based on the successful Nickelodeon’s animated TV series and begins the saga of Aang and his struggle to survive the elements: Air, Water, Earth, and Fire and of course bend them.
Airbender veers far from the 1999 blockbuster "The Sixth Sense” Expect no creepy aura or twist ending. The fantasy adventure is family friendly and all kid’s stuff. It seems sellout makes M Night happy. The filmmaker said this project interested him because it lent itself to "long-form storytelling”. Airbender is the first film Shyamalan has made that wasn't his own idea
The plot rages when the Fire Nation launches a brutal war. Caught between combat and courage, Aang (Noah Ringer) discovers he is the lone yet inexperienced Avatar(Not the big blue blockbuster James Cameron or those cute cartoon-characters on your computer but the manifestation-of-a deity kind)with the power to manipulate all four elements. Aang teams up with Katara (Nicola Peltz) a Waterbender, and her brother, Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) who carries a bone, and a behemoth that flies and looks like a big sheep crossed with one of the “Goonies” to restore balance to their war-torn world.
Airbender is really dark and hard to see. Most of the stuff looks cool but nothing spectacular. The evil ship, gigantic monitor lizards, hoards of showering ice and water, plumes of fire and gushing winds all collide in deafening thuds but mainly stays pretty bland and cute. The three lead kids all talk like they are suburban white kids playing in their backyard. With overblown phantasmal mysticism, spirituality mixing with martial arts and the fantasy genre it gets tiresome. Every single character at one time gets all “Kung-fu-ey” and then some form of elements shoots out of their hands
The 3–D came close to headache inducing and is not necessary or cool: it only hinders and distracts. After a ½ hr when nothing shot out at me from the screen I knew the 3-D was a bust.
Although the good parts were limited a couple of funny things stood out .when the little bender gets all hopped up on the elements his arrow tattoo on his head lights up into a neon Mohawk. There are a confusing total of three different villains in Bender; a super evil king (Cliff Curtis), a menacingly evil commander (The Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi) and the conflicted prince (Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel) whose path of evil comes and goes.
Airbender opens against tough competition with Twilight’s Eclipse, yet Shyamalan seems optimistic, " I'm hoping after they see 'Eclipse,' they'll come see our movie." I say good luck with that. Airbender is convoluted silly kid’s stuff. This will be the first and last Airbender for me

The Last Airbender
Starring: Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Jessica Jade Andres, Dev Patel
Aasif Mandvi, Cliff Curtis
Directed/written by M. Night Shyamalan
½ star