Salon.com > The Last Airbender

Odd nostalgia: The strange films based on kids’ culture

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 16:30:00 +0000

I always find it weird when people complain about movies cashing in on our childhood nostalgia. Were Saturday morning cartoons so sacred that a crappy summer movie will forever taint our image of "Alvin and the Chipmunks"? Garfield and Marmaduke may have made terrible CGI stars, but it's not like I was so smitten with their comics anyway. (We get it, cat, you like lasagna.)

When "Transformers" arrived in theaters in 2007, there was an audible sigh of relief that the movie, while geared to Michael Bay's explosion-fetishist fans, still adhered to its "source material." Meaning what, exactly: That there were cars that turned into robots? That there was an actual narrative arc revolving around characters created by a Japanese toy company? Or something else?

Sometimes these nostalgia films become franchises and sometimes you end up with "The Last Airbender." Here is our tribute to the good, the bad and the just plain weird ("Boris and Natasha," anyone?") of kids' culture adapted for the big screen.

“Despicable Me”: Steve Carell’s adorable supervillain

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:30:00 +0000

Presumably the under-12 target audience for "Despicable Me" -- which is likely to come away thoroughly delighted -- will not know or care that its lovably villainous hero, a long-nosed, Russian-accented ogre named Gru, is voiced by a famous comedian who just walked away from TV's most adored sitcom. But even if Steve Carell's turn in "Despicable Me" and his departure from "The Office" are linked only by coincidence, this irresistible animated surprise kicks off his career as a movie star in auspicious fashion.

An enjoyable blend of sweetness and silliness, with loads of giggles and just enough dark-edged humor to keep the adult companions interested (the Bank of Evil, where Gru seeks financing for his schemes, carries a small-print legend above its grandiose portals: "Formerly Lehman Brothers"), "Despicable Me" ranks as the second-best digital-animated family film of the summer. But when the gold medal belongs to "Toy Story 3," there's no shame in that. And unlike every other 3-D film I've seen since "Avatar," this one actually uses the technology with grace, daring and a sense of wonder. After the disgraceful gray smear of "The Last Airbender," that's wonderful to see. (Unlike that film, and "Alice in Wonderland," and 2010's other "up-converted" films, this one was actually made in 3-D, and the difference is obvious.)

How bad 3-D is ruining movies

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 22:01:00 +0000

Before M. Night Shyamalan’s "The Last Airbender" was unveiled to preview audiences on Tuesday night, the controversy surrounding the movie was mainly focused on its one-dimensional casting. But once critics and audiences got their hands on the film, the debate shifted to a different issue of depth: the movie’s postproduction conversion to digital 3-D.

The reaction to "Airbender," which was shot in 2-D and retrofitted to take advantage of the booming 3-D market, was instant and vehement. Criticisms of the movie as dark, blurry and borderline unwatchable led off many major reviews. Roger Ebert, who has waged a one-man jihad against the process, wrote in a withering half-star pan that the movie "looks like it was filmed with a dirty sheet over the lens." Movie bloggers who savaged the after-the-fact 3-D applied to "Clash of the Titans" in March repeated their attacks with renewed force.

“The Last Airbender”: Shyamalan’s fantasy schlockfest

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:31:00 +0000

Ever since his explosive emergence with "The Sixth Sense" in 1999, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has built a highly successful career out of sentimental, supernatural movies with increasingly idiotic third-act "reveals," as they say in the screenwriting trade. They're all dead and living in heaven, or possibly Pennsylvania! Aliens hate hot dogs, apple pie and baseball! The whole story is happening at a Renaissance Faire! It was all a dream! Bruce Willis is ... an overpaid Republican with a goony smile!

Shyamalan’s weak defense of “Airbender” racism

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 21:37:00 +0000

Poor M. Night Shyamalan. Apparently he's been caught off guard by the protests over white actors playing many of the lead roles in his movie "The Last Airbender." It's ironic, he told UGO movie blog writer Jordan Hoffman:

[I]t is the most culturally diverse tent-pole movie ever made. And I’m proud of it. It’s part of what drew me to the material, to see the faces of our whole world in this new world. And only time will assuage everyone and give them peace. Maybe [the protestors] didn’t see the faces that they wanted to see but, overall, it is more than they could have expected. We’re in the tent and it looks like the U.N. in there.

Last week, Shyamalan sat down for a breakfast interview with several film bloggers, journalists, and what Hoffman calls "three stoked webmasters from Airbender fan sites" in a love fest for the movie and its auteur. The live-action film, based on a Nickelodeon cartoon series, opens July 2.

Asian characters whitewashed by Shyamalan

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:30:00 +0000

The Super Bowl commercial for M. Night Shyamalan's movie "The Last Airbender" passed with hardly a ripple. The ad-agency guys live-blogging for the Wall Street Journal didn't even mention it; the editors at FoxSports.com of MSN mostly commented on Shyamalan's past flops.

Maybe it's because the "Airbender" spot ran at the beginning, before everyone had settled in with their Cheetos and Doritos.