The Last Airbender: Shyamalan Without The Twist

M. Night Shyamalan goes anime, but with a twist.  Wait what? The Last Airbender wasn’t shot in Philadelphia or greater Pennsylvania and has nothing to do with dead people, shadowy aliens or bee’s? Well now I’m totally confused.

The Shyamalan, best known for crazy twist endings and being from Philadelphia, takes on his first big budget-action-special effects movie with this first installment of the popular Nickelodeon cartoon series; and he doesn’t disappoint. And this is a movie with a $130M production budget, and another hundred plus million in marketing, which is about eight times the size of all of his previous films.

Not to mention that this is the first film Shyamalan is making that has a built in fan base that will have nerd-spectations. That is the expectations of a nerd, which is not something you want to mess considering the sheer absurd length’s fanboys will go to from their parent’s basement.

Not to mention that this is the first film in a trilogy, meaning it will set the commercial expectations for the sequels and who wants to be the director that destroyed a popular franchise before it got off the ground? In short, Shyamalan had a lot of pressure and he delivered.

The thing to remember though is that this is a kids movie. But not in the vein of Toy Story, Pixar transcends the idea of a “kids movie” to be so much more. The Last Airbender does not, and  despite The Shamalan’s record, this film remains truest to it’s fans and because of that just doesn’t have the cross-generational appeal. But that doesn’t detract from it’s quality as a kids movie.

It’s your basic mythological/fantasy story with a returning savior being forced to deal with an evil power attempting to take over the world, just this time that savior is a 13 year old kid. But no he can’t see dead people. He does have some pretty gnarly head tattoo’s and some kung fu skills though. Noah Ringer plays the avatar, Aang , who has the ability to control the four forces of nature (earth, wind, fire and water). Ringer, also 13, caries the burden of being the main character remarkably well, especially given that he not only has to carry the emotional weight on the story, but also he has to do some pretty involved karate kid action sequences.

The supporting cast though, leave something to be desired. Jackson Rathbone (Twilight) and Nicola Peltz  play a brother-sister duo who travel with Aang as he attempts to master the elements he doesn’t possess.  But neither Rathbone or Peltz get to a level beyond the WB’s hit show Smallville. Then again Rathbone is smack in the middle of the mega-blockbuster hit Twilight and let’s just say, having seen the first installment, the vampires weren’t the only ones sucking in that movie.

The bad guys are a little better, Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) plays the villainous Prince Zuko with a fairly even mediocrity, never really delivering above the level of his questionable dialogue. The same is true for the Daily Show’s Aasif Mandvi who does a pretty decent job as the central bad guy, Commander Zhao. Hes come a long way since playing Mr. Aziz, the disgruntled Pizza shop owner who fires Peter Parker in Spider Man 2.

On the whole though, it’s pretty good for a kid’s movie. The real question is whether or not it can generate enough income to become a legitimate summer franchise. The next two installments of the trilogy have already gotten the green light, but they are not being shot back to back to back, Lord of the Rings style. Instead, Shyamalan is working on them one at a time, which some fanboys worried could imperial the later installments, but after seeing the finished product I don’t think they have anything to worry about.

Written and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Starring Noah Ringer (Ang), Dev Patel (Prince Zuko), Nicola Peltz (Katara), Jackson Rathbone (Sokka), Shaun Toub (Uncle Irosh), Aasif Mandvi (Commander Zhao) and Cliff Curtis (Fire Lord Ozai). A Paramount Pictures production with a runtime of 103 minutes.

Trivia: The original title of the film was Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is the title of the TV show on which the film is based. But with James Cameron’s mega-hit Avatar opening, the production team opted to change the title of the movie to avoid confusion.

Trailer Thursday: Red

The A-Team, The Expendables and now Red…there is a new genre of movies emerging this summer, the buddy-comedy/team-action film. But this one’s got Helen “The Queen” Mirren with an uzi.

Back in November, aka the safe season for the melanin deficient, I wrote a post extolling the awesomeness of the graphic novel “Red” and how it was set for a film adaptation. See Bruce Willis Kicking Ass post. Now we’ve got our first look at the final product in a trailer that was released earlier this week.

But to review Red is about a retired CIA operative (Willis) fighting his way through a horde of agency assassins. It’s a gritty and graphic short run comic that has a 300 violent flavor, with a classic action hero story line.  Director Robert Schwentke (The Time Travelers Wife) and his writers seem to have taken it in a more comic direction, and after watching the trailer I don’t think anyone will be complaining, but with a cast that includes: Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, and Richard Dreyfuss, how could you?

Knight and Day: Cruise Lets His Crazy Hang Out

Everybody thinks Tom Cruise is crazy. In Knight and Day he plays into that perception playing spy Roy Miller, who is more Lesly Nealson in Naked Gun then Sean Connery in James Bond. Basically, he’s a gun wielding super spy with a bizarre sense of humor, whose predictably trying to save the world. With Cameron Diaz just being kind of…there.

It’s one of those movies that you really can’t think very hard about or you’ll get an ice cream headache while eating popcorn.  June Havens (Diaz) the romantic-comedy-ditsy-blond runs around with the mysterious and potentially dangerous spy Roy (Cruise), who may or may not actually be the villain in this action farce. Complicating matters is Federal agent Fitzgerald (Peter Sarsgaard) who isn’t important enough to have a first name.

It’s fun and funny, and generally a fairly standard summer comedy-action that will make money off the laugh-way-to-much demographic. You know the one, it’s that small group of people who either sit in the very back or very front of a movie and have at least one member who laughs loudly at all of the moderately amusing scenes.  Cruise asks Diaz about her sisters wedding during a gun fight, bursts of laughter echo from one section of the crowd.

It’s a star powered movie which basically means you’ll like it or not depended upon your like/dislike of Cruise and Diaz. Diaz can be good, I site Any Given Sunday and Gangs of New York, but she isn’t here. Cruise is actually kind of good, but then again he’s playing to his strengths. It’s like Cruise’ agent woke up one day and thought to himself, craziness is a terrible thing to waste.

All in all probably better to catch it on TBS.

USA holds England to Draw: World Cup Opens with a Bang?

Despite not winning, or losing for that matter, the US soccer squad’s opening match against the English was a success. Or at least that’s what the ginger giant Alexi Lalas emphatically proclaimed in ABC’s post match analytical breakdown. “We tied! We tied! What a great day for US soccer and a great way to start off the most popular sporting tournament in the world.”

What?

I don’t know about anybody else but I watched the 90+ minutes of riveting elite soccer action with all the emotional intensity of a conservative Republican father at his son’s cheerleading competition.  But that’s fairly typical right? I mean I’m an American; soccer is a sport on par with indoor lacrosse and Formula 1 racing — basically right below the NHL for the average US sports fan.

But why?, I asked myself. This is the most popular and exciting sport in the world. I get amped up about girls gymnastics during the Olympics not because I care about the uneven parallel bars, but because it’s the Olympics. It’s a singular sporting event with no emotional context; there is a natural intensity to the clash of nationalism, culture and good old fashion jingoism which makes for some quality pole vaulting. How is the World Cup not the same.

But for some reason the 1-1 tie this afternoon involving soccer’s seminal nation, England, and the colonial upstart Americans, just didn’t have it. I mean it’s not the pace. We here in America relish the excruciatingly slow pace of baseball, for 162 games no less, hanging on every pitch. We can handle the rhythmically numbing sequence of halfback to fullback back to halfback to left wing.

It was during one of these multiple passes with seemingly no offensive gain that I realized why soccer doesn’t have it. Because despite all the FIFA I had played on XBox, I had absolutely no concept of the strategy. And what was worse I honestly didn’t care.  I’m sure I’ll find myself watching a good portion of the World Cup, and will certainly be moved by the later round intensity of the match, but at the end of the day Americans just don’t get and don’t care about the strategy. It just doesn’t fit neatly into our mindset. We need the setup, the bottom of the ninth, two on two out, down by one run situation. We need to savor the moment.

This of course is why hockey remains the 4th of the 4 major sports, which in this blogger’s opinion is a correctable travesty.  But that is for another post.  To end, I will simply say that I will never claim to understand soccer, American sports fans’ second cousin once removed, but that won’t stop my pursuit of a genuine caring for the world’s most popular sport.

Soccer: America’s second cousin once removed.

Trailer Tuesday: Mortal Kombat Rebirth

Thought you couldn’t do anything more with Mortal Kombat? You were right.

But that didn’t stop a group of wayward film makers, including:  Michael Jai White (Spawn/The Dark Knight) and Gerri Ryan (7 of 9, Star Trek: Voyager) from trying to stir up some nerd-hype for this down and out video game to big screen franchise.

Actually, this 7 minute, well produced, action-packed teaser trailer doesn’t, you know…tease anything particular. There isn’t a new game or movie coming out, this is basically a  ‘hey wouldn’t this be cool’ kind of thing. And to be honest, it might be.  I mean taking the Mortal Kombat mythology to the streets in a gritty action film or video game could definitely find a market.