The Last Airbender

I watched it on the flight to HK. My expectations were low, as I had heard from everyone that it sucked. My expectations were not low enough.

I had assumed people were just hating because it couldn't match the scale and depth of the source material, since there's only 2 hours to cram in a season's worth of stuff. I'm generally okay with film adaptations taking a somewhat different interpretation, given that the story is still cohesive and well-executed.

Well-executed is key. The Last Airbender was not well-executed. It was like watching those video skits we made in highschool, but without the excuse of it being highschool. The dialogue was emotionless and forced, as if they were reading the script for the first time. That alone distracted me from any good points the movie might have had, for the rest of the movie. The action scenes provided some reprieve from the pained dialogue, but not much. As always, the scenes shown in trailers are the most interesting bits; the rest wasn't particularly impressive.

I watched Toy Story 3 immediately afterward, to cleanse my mental palette.

Despite general agreement that the movie was horrible, it looks like production of the second movie is going to get the green light. Apparently the film did well enough internationally to pass the $$ goal set by the studio. My theory is that the film was carried by countries where it was dubbed, thereby negating the crappiest aspect of the movie.