WHEN VITRIOL ATTACKS…
The Avatar...seriously
What’s the victim? Mainly objective film criticism it seems. And it appears to be contagious too.
I say this only to observe that there must be a list that circulates the “legitimate” entertainment media letting everyone know which films are to be the sacrificial lambs of the season. Which films can be hammered without a second thought to the entire field relatively speaking.
I guess we need good guys and bad guys in everything…including villains to blame for the less than staggering Summer Movie Season…and oh boy do we feel the need to pile on. Take the case of The Last Airbender and its seemingly unprecedented stream of negative reviews. They aren’t just negative…they’re apocalyptically so.
“…it’s the worst use of 3-D in the modern era…” – Mick LaSalle (sfgate.com)
Come on; have you even seen Clash of the Titans (2010)? To be fair, I saw it in 2-D because…well, I’m cheap and I’d heard things like this said of the movie in 3-D. And to the point of the 3-D craze…I knew it was coming and I do reject it thoroughly except in rare instances that might make it an enhancement of a movie. However, that statement is just over the top-ism.
“The Last Airbender” is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. – Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun Times)
Roger Ebert is an angry man lately, but somebody should tell him that M. Night Shyamalan does not, at least to my knowledge, belong to the Tea Party Movement. He too complained about the 3-D…maybe I spared myself some agony by skipping it after all.
“…Dev Patel of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire sleepwalks through the part of Ozai’s prodigal son, Prince Zuko…” - Sean O’Connell (filmcritic.com)
This one calls into question whether the zeal to slam these movies that have been designated Enemies of the Media State causes actual loss of more than one of the senses. Unless the 3-D version (which I need to point out all the critics above saw) is a different iteration of the movie, to say Dev Patel Sleepwalks is pretty silly. It either assumes that Dev Patel is ordinarily as High Energy as the Energizer Bunny or that you just simply wanted to include a slam of the fairly likable star of Slumdog Millionaire for acting in something other than Slumdog Millionaire.
The truth is that The Last Airbender, in my humble opinion, isn’t a great movie. However, objectively I just don’t see how it qualifies as an all-time bad film. Believe me, I’ve thought M. Night Shyamalan capable of that after his previous two films but for this movie, it’s just not a fair assessment.
And the racism controversy…well, that’s a whole other post…that I might entertain at a later date.
So, I’m not here to endorse The Last Airbender, I’ll reserve that for The Karate Kid…but you may want to ignore what you’ve read about the film and see for yourself if you have an interest.
