At least the movie poster wasn't terrible
It’s taken a while, but I’m finally getting around to writing the second in my new series of articles detailing my reaction to some of the worst movies ever made. The first time I focused on a horrid bit of excrement called Devil, written by the infamous M. Night Shyamalan. To determine that movie was terrible is like guessing baby shit tastes bad, it’s just something I should have known to be true without any first hand experience, yet I dove right in and my psyche has yet to recover (roof, basement, roof, basement, FUCK YOU!) With the lessons learned from before, this time I’m diving into a film not only written by Shammy, but also DIRECTED by him. Don’t worry, I’ve already scheduled my therapy session as I am now a 100% confirmed sadist. On with the show!
I’m a fan of Avatar, the Nickelodeon show, not the vapid sensory porn Cameron pretended was a film. The cartoon is a fabulous work of art that combines the best of eastern and western styles and tells a story of world-ending calamity intricately woven together with a coming of age tale that few other cartoons have dared attempt. With such a rich and detailed background to work from, it was impossible to imagine any director could take this tale from the small to the big screen and not have it be a smashing success. It would seriously take a Lucasian (fuck you, Jar Jar) effort to screw this up. With that in mind, Nickelodeon tempted fate by hiring the Midnight Shammy! Somewhere, Beelzebub cackled.
So here we are, late in the evening after I have put my children to bed – because there’s no way I would subject them to this – I sit here on my bed, trembling in fear as the title of the film lay mocking me from the television… The Last Airbender is waiting to be played, and much like the last meal of a death row victim, my dinner is swelling up in my throat. I am headed for disaster, and with a trembling hand, I… Press… Play.
Everything good in this picture is slaughtered in the movie
Everything starts off well enough. They are making a nice gesture to fans of the series by including scenes of people bending (using their magical abilities to manipulate the elements) that look incredibly similar to the beginning of the cartoons. It is a bit jarring at first to see these people doing the same movements that I remember seeing animated, but the fact that these are real people performing these moves helps my mind accept that I am watching a live action version of the cartoon. Then the opening scrawl happens. Hello, frustration… I knew you were coming, but I’m surprised you got here so quick!
Anyone that has listened to me talk about movies on any of the podcasts I have been on knows that I hate text at the start of a movie. It is always a bad idea, and I challenge anyone to provide me with an example of where that is not the case. I don’t care how complex the world your movie is set in is, if you have to scrawl out an explanation at the start of your movie then you’re doing it wrong! I watch movies because I want as many senses stimulated as possible, not because I want to read. It doesn’t matter if you have a character read it to me, because I didn’t buy a ticket to an audio-book. This is a minor point, and I won’t belabor it, but the next time you’re watching a movie and an opening scrawl comes up, ask yourself if the information conveyed was really essential to your understanding of the movie or if it is just an example of how stupid Hollywood thinks you are. Okay, let’s move on.
Two of these things are not like the others, two of these things are not the same
The first question I have as the movie begins is who was it that made the decision that Sokka and Katara should be bland ass white kids? It reminds me of the Hollywood films of yesteryear, where white guys in pancake make-up would pretend to be Indians, except here they aren’t even pretending to be a different race. These kids look like they fell off the bus between North Dakota and Crackerville after getting the culture Clockwork Oranged out of them by Canadian nuns. Low sodium water soup isn’t as bland as these two.
Katara and her brother, Sokka, stumble upon a giant sphere of ice that rises up out of the ground with a glowing eyed man sitting inside of it. Katara takes a boomerang and bashes it against the side, causing it to explode. This is pretty much the first thing that happens in this movie. Did you catch what was missing? I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with smaracter smevelopment. Normally in a film it is a good idea to spend at least a couple minutes introducing us to your main characters, allowing us to find some common ground with them, thus creating a bond between the viewer and the story. Placing them immediately in a situation like this doesn’t allow us any time to get to know them, and certainly does nothing to help us understand why in the fuck one of them would decide to bash a floating sphere of ice that just about killed them seconds ago. That seems like a dumbass thing to do, so now my only option here is to assume that this girl is mentally handicapped and is wont to smash anything that seems foreign to her. “Oh hey mom, did you get a new set of dishes?” SMASH! “Hey little boy, is that a new toy you’ve got there?” SMASH! “Look at my new baby.” SMASH!
Meet Dung, the shit bender
Within seconds we have the Airbender fully thawed and hanging out in a tent with Katara. Next, the Fire Nation is attacking, yet again thrusting us into a story development that has allowed us zero time to get to know the people we’re supposed to care about. I’m about to get even more annoyed by that, but first I want to point out something that just plain pisses me off. Remember before when I was complaining about how Sokka and Katara are as bland as regurgitated Saltines? Well, as we sit here in this tent I have gone from annoyed to infuriated. Why? Because as the Fire Nation attacks, Sokka storms into the tent with a slew of children behind him. He demands that they all stay inside until he tells them to leave in what we are left to assume is an attempt to keep them safe. These children that he has herded into the tent all appear to be Inuit (Eskimos)! What the fucking shit?! Why are the two main characters copy-paper white and the rest of the people in their village are as culturally different from white as you can possibly get?! The only way these two kids could stand out more in this village is if they were Steve Martin and born a poor black child!!!!!! This was done on purpose? Someone filmed this in all seriousness? No one on set took a step back and said, “Damn, do ya think this is gonna come off racist?”
The Fire Nation arrives in a threatening manner – if you think that soldiers waddling up and down a snowy path is threatening. Then Sokka looks like he is going to try to stop them, but his sister stops him by saying his name, “Soak-Uh” What the shit? Did she just call him Soak-Uh? His name’s Sokka, pronounced Sock-Ah. What’s with this Soak-Uh bullshit? In the process of making the movie, did anyone think to WATCH THE GOD DAMN TELEVISION SHOW?! For crying out loud, it’s not like there isn’t a highly acclaimed TV SHOW to research to make sure you aren’t going to piss off the fans by MISS-PRONOUNCING THE CHARACTER’S NAMES!!!!! I knew this was going to piss me off, but now I’m worried that I won’t sleep for days.
Kill The Old People!
Next, as if the miss-pronunciation of a character’s name wasn’t bad enough, they vacillate from Katara stopping her brother from doing something to fight the Fire Nation to Sokka stopping his sister from doing something to fight them. In the span of ONE MINUTE these characters both stop one another from attacking the Fire Nation. These crackers flip-flop through emotions faster then Charlie Sheen cycles through prostitutes! Anyhow, the Fire Nation demands to bring out the elderly, which leads to great hilarity as there is only one white elderly person, which is of course the grand parent of our milquetoast protagonists. Everyone else in the village is Inuit. You might be wondering why they are asking to see the elderly people in the village, and you’d be right to wonder such a thing as they seem to be trying to feed us a plot point here, but never you mind, as they never explain it. The Fire Nation just hates old people. In a world bereft of Depends Adult Diapers, the elderly are the enemy.
Prince Zuko, played by Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire, takes Aang with him after seeing that the kid’s got a tattooed arrow on his head. Then we meet Zuko’s uncle, who was one of my favorite characters from the cartoon. In the series, Zuko’s uncle is a portly, kind old man that exudes wisdom in a way that is beyond endearing. In this movie he’s a tall, thin white guy (A FUCKING WHITE GUY) with long braided hair.
Next we are subjected to a scene of exposition in a tent as Grandma Milquetoast explains to her pasty grandbabies all about the history of the Avatar. There is nothing particularly wrong with a scene like this, except that it completely negates any need for that dumb ass scrawl at the beginning of the movie. That minor point aside, I have to reflect upon a bit of wisdom that she passes on, “It is in the heart that all wars are won.” As a child, I’m sure this sort of mock-wisdom is benign, but as an adult it feels egregiously stupid.
Next we are whisked away to the Southern Air Temple, where Aang grew up. We are force fed a voice-over that explains how Aang ended up frozen in the water, and it all goes by so quickly that I would challenge anyone ten minutes after the scene ends to relate to me what they said. I can’t fault Midnight Shammy too much for this, as he is being forced to shoehorn an entire cartoon series into one movie, but I do wish he could have at least TRIED not to make it feel so sloppy. Then Aang finally tells Sokka and Katara what his name is: Ung. WHAT?! Did they change the MAIN CHARACTERS NAME?! I had to go look this one up, and it turns out this is a hotly debated issue on the internet. In the movies, they changed the pronunciation of the character’s names to better fit with the true cultural way of saying them. Thus, Sokka is changed to Soak-Uh, and Aang (Ayng) is change to Ung. Some people actually applaud Midnight Shammy for doing this, to which I bellow in laughter. Hey defenders, you want to know a way Shammy could have really honored the cultural heritage of these characters? HIRE NON-WHITE ACTORS TO PLAY THEM!!!! Changing the pronunciation of the names isn’t enough to make up for your willful disregard for the color of their skin or the place of their birth. Oh man… this movie is turning painful. At least Devil made me laugh, this movie just makes me hate human kind.
Dung discovers that his people are all dead (sorry, but every time they pronounce the name Aang in this I just hear cowshit.) This sends him into a fury of blue light rage and he disappears into some other plane of existence where a big blue dragon creature growls at him. Maybe this looked cool in the theaters, but on TV it looks like he dunked his head into a toilet full of that blue water that comes from those tablets they sell that clean up your poopy scrapings. As I type that sentence I have the crushing weight of realization that imagining the musty inner workings of my toilet is more entertaining to me right now then this film.
I'm the bad guy? Really?
Bwahahahahahaha! I’ve been had! Oh they got me good this time. I’ve always been a big fan of The Daily Show, but I never thought they could pull off a stunt as great as this. I thought I was watching one of the greatest television cartoons ever made being hacked into a shrill film adaptation, but it turns out I’m watching a wildly inventive Daily Show skit! And now they’re going to reveal the joke as Aasif Mandvi appears on screen. He’s one of my favorite correspondents from The Daily Show, and here he is, staring directly into the camera in a scene that is clearly meant for me to laugh at. Ohhhh Aasif, good job, buddy. You got me this time.
Wait. This is for real? They hired Aasif Mandvi to play the main villain in this? A FUCKING COMEDIAN?! Midnight Shammy has set out to tear my brain in half with his film. This is pure evil. This is worse then putting Mike Myers in Inglorious Bastards. I hate this.
Dung and his two snowflake companions travel the world, defeating the Fire Nation in a montage of worthless fighting clips that look more apt for the cutting room floor of a Cirque Du Soleil blooper reel then a movie. All of this is accentuated with another lifeless voiceover given by Katara who might just be more bored with this movie then I am. Somewhere in here they try to give us some backstory to Prince Zuko, but at this point I have seen so many scenes of him displaying epic, violent teen angst that I have already decided he is psychotic. No amount of sad daddy-abuse is going to help me relate to this character. It’s a shame, as the character of Zuko in the cartoon was always one of my favorites.
Dung gets captured during a sojourn to the Air Temple where he is betrayed by some guy that…. oh hell, I don’t who he is. He’s just some random character plopped into the story here at a ridiculously convenient moment and there are a hundred Fire Nation warriors hiding behind statues that I guess were there for like, days, just standing there, hoping that the Avatar would show up and get tricked into walking into this specific room by that old man that the script regurgitated into the scene.
Dev Patel as the violently angsty Zuko
Prince Zuko saves Dung, and then Dung saves him. The teenage angst these two display is thick enough to power twenty Emo bands. Dung rejoins Katara and Sokka, but the movie doesn’t bother spending any time with any of the moments that a movie would normally rejoice in, you know – those moments where the characters interact with each other. Yeah, fuck that shit. In this movie they take care of all that stuff with voice-overs. After Dung escapes, we are subjected to a voice-over from Aasif Mandvi that then leads directly into ANOTHER voice-over from Katara. Seriously. That shit really happened. They had one voice-over, that was then followed up directly by another one. Remember when I was complaining about how I didn’t sit down to listen to an audio book? Well, now I wish I had.
Dung and his Arian compatriots go to the Mario Kart Ice World, and Soak-Uh meets a princess who he falls in love with in a turn of emotion that flows about as well as a ten pound turd through a scuba tube. Shoehorning a love story into a movie is nothing new, but doing it with a character that I’ve been watching for over an hour yet have been given no time at all to get to know just feels bizarrely vapid. Especially considering the fact that Katara and Dung are the two characters who should clearly start developing feelings for each other. But that whole sub plot has been cut, because that would require character development, and we don’t have time for that nonsense.
CUE THE FIRE NATION ATTACK!
Prince Zuko swims under the glaciers so he can sneak into the Ice World (yeah – I know. He’s swimming under glaciers, but believe it or not, that’s not the stupidest thing that happens here.) Then he busts up through the ice using his hot fingers. The thing that strikes me here is that the Ice Nation build their humongous structures on top of ice that is one inch thick. Don’t tell me this is okay because they can water bend, because no one is standing there bending water so that these structures can sit on this ice every second of the day. This is just annoyingly dumb.
The Ice people all gather on the wall to face the Fire Nation in a scene that is literally shot-for-shot stolen from The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers. The big change here is that instead of starting an epic battle, in this movie the Ice People start whooping like an Arsenio Hall show just started. Then the decidedly un-epic battle starts. While this is happening, Zuko steals Dung. I couldn’t even tell you why Dung was unconscious here, and I’m not going to rewind the movie to figure it out because my wife came to bed, and this stupid movie is now starting to hurt both of our brains. Rewinding it and forcing her to watch any portion of this over again would be tantamount to spousal abuse, and I’m too pretty to go to jail.
Dung meets the murky blue dragon again in his mind, and then he does some stuff that is supposed to be exciting I guess. Then Dung and Zuko are fighting in a room full of pottery that they can smash up. That passes for exciting, doesn’t it? Smashing clay pots is good fun. Then Katara freezes Zuko and saves Dung, which would be fine except they just showed us a scene with Zuko swimming through ice water and then burning his way through the ice! Not more then five minutes ago the movie made a point of showing us that he could burn his way through ice, yet now he can’t do that anymore. Did his power meter get depleted or something?
Oh, hey there. Got any virgins?
Aasif Mandvi is hanging out in a special cave where he captures some sort of important spirit that takes the form of a fish that likes to jump into linen sacks when you open them. They make a point of explaining how the spirits purposefully make it easy to catch them in order to prove a point. What the hell point are they proving? That fish are delicious? Because if a fish jumps in my sack when I open it, I’m turning it into fish sticks and smothering it in tartar sauce. Sorry special spirit fish, Daddy likes tasty fish sticks! Anyhow, Aasif kills the fish, and then people don’t like it, including the white haired princess that Soak-Uh is dating, who is important for some reason. And I guess she has to kill herself to bring the fish back to life. Wait a fucking minute… This chick has to kill herself so that a suicidal fish can come back to life? Screw that! The God Damned guppy has a penchant for murdering itself every time a hungry dude opens a bag in it’s vicinity! If you have to sacrifice virgins to bring it back to life, this seems like a one way ticket to cultural genocide. So, she kills herself, and the spirit fish magically comes back, which I think I’m supposed to feel emotional about, but just makes me wonder what sort of message the movie is trying to convey. I guess the war is won in the heart – of a suicidal perch with a craving for virgin blood.
Zuko and his uncle fight Aasif Mandvi, and some stuff happens. Then some other stuff happens and Dung does some water bending, and then some stuff happens… snore… snore… what? Where am I? Oh yeah, I’m watching a movie. Dung is hanging out with some other Avatars, and he gets a little angsty, then he water bends the whole ocean and his head starts glowing. He creates a tidal wave that threatens to destroy the whole city. I imagine the suicidal bass is in that tidal wave somewhere, waiting to slam up against a rock so that another virgin has to die.
Dung’s Moses trick ends in what might be the single biggest let down in movie history. The tidal wave goes away and everyone stops fighting. It doesn’t crash into the legion of Fire Nation ships, it doesn’t smash into the city, it literally just fades away. Then everyone bows down to him and that’s it. Dung stands there, and looks at everyone bowing to him and the battle is over. Dung does some sort of bizarre move, then faces the camera with his hand outstretched as if he just let go of a bowling ball. Finally, we have a scene that is supposed to set up the sequel, with Zuko’s father asking his daughter to take over the search for Dung, and finally the credits roll. Sorry little girl, you’re never going to get the chance to fight the virgin killing suicide fish, because no one is going to be willing to make a sequel to this pile of shit.
I'm in ur brainz, fukin wit ur shit
Midnight Shammy is one of the worst directors in history. This isn’t hyperbole. We need to stop him. It’s fine for him to write his own drivel and then ruin that with a movie, but when he starts bastardizing the things that we love, that’s when we need to stop him. Seeing Avatar be turned into this worthless film is painful, disheartening, and borders on criminal. We need to take a stand, or Midnight Shammy’s suicidal fish are going to kill all our virgins!