Over at TAPPED, I touched on the racial controversy surrounding The Last Airbender, which opens today. (Cliff’s Notes version: the series on which its based is set in an Asian world; in the movie, the main good guys are white and the bad guys are brown.) The blog Racebending, which has done a fantastic job covering the whole mess and advocating for better representation of people of color in Hollywood films, has called for a boycott of the movie. But that probably won’t even be necessary, thanks to an orgy of hilariously vicious reviews.
Here’s the A.V. Club:
Where to start with this one? How about this: If any movie ever warranted a class-action lawsuit against the filmmakers, it’s The Last Airbender. Not because it’s a terrible movie—though it is—but because its release as a 3-D film becomes false advertising a few seconds after a comin’-atcha gush of water appears behind the Paramount logo. From there, it becomes painfully obvious—even more painfully obvious than in Alice In Wonderland—that a few 3-D elements have been added to satisfy the current 3-D craze, and the higher ticket prices they allow. Worse still, the process makes the already-dark imagery darker, and turns the action blurry. Viewers who see it in this form will pay more for an even shittier experience than the one they would have had in 2-D.
And that would have been plenty shitty already.
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
The movie has been criticized for racially inappropriate casting, but that’s the least of its problems. The acting is laughable, the effects are phony, the editing is addled and the dialogue is disastrous.
And here’s Roger Ebert, who is always fun to read when he’s ethering folks:
“The Last Airbender” is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.
As of last night, the movie had an abysmal five percent freshness on Rotten Tomatoes. If there’s any justice in the world, this will drive the final nail in the coffin of M. Night Shyamalan‘s career.
But this is a shame, because the source material, the Nickelodeon series on which the show is based, is one of the best animated series the U.S. has ever produced. I’d go so far at to put it up there with Justice League or any of the later DCAU stuff. (The entire three-season series is available for streaming on Netflix.)
