Air Bendover

So the consensus appears to be that M. Night Shyamalan has completely and utterly screwed over the story of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" in his live-action The Last Airbender movie.

There's talk (hope?) that this is the death-knell of Shyamalan's career.

I don't care about Shyamalan either way. I enjoyed The Sixth Sense, but I've been otherwise unimpressed with his cinematic offerings.

I am a fan of anime and animation as a whole. I am also a fan of "Avatar: The Last Airbender", despite the fact that it's a kid's show and my driver's license insists I haven't been a kid for a few decades.

Stoopid driver's license. What does it know? It also insists I have a beard and weigh... oh let's not go there.

Where was I? Oh yeah.

"Avatar: The Last Airbender" (the animated version) was a clever show with an original mythology derived from (or inspired by) various Asian cultures. It incorporated a sort of magic and mixed it in with meticulously-researched real-life martial arts. The animated characters were drawn to match the movements of real-life martial arts practitioners of specific styles.

It was a kid's show, so it had lots of goofy humor and unrealistic situations. There wasn't any "real" violence. While the backstory had war and loss, there was rarely actual death portrayed on-screen and never anything that might resemble gore.

That's not to say it was some bit of goofy tripe. It had a surprisingly-sophisticated story for a kid's show. The protagonists evolved throughout the series and had to struggle with fairly adult ethical situations. And it wasn't devoid of loss. At least two significant characters were killed. One was debatably killed on-screen.

When it was going for the higher-levels of storytelling, "Avatar: The Last Airbender" was brilliant and epic.

Shyamalan's The Last Airbender was troubled from the start with the accusations of "racebending" (casting mainly white actors in the starring roles of an Asian-themed story). I wonder why that was the first outcry instead of Shyamalan's first taking over the property to create a live-action movie.

Seriously, didn't anyone watch his other movies? This was right up there with getting Ang Lee to do "The Hulk" or George Lucas writing and directing his prequels.

The Last Airbender sounds like utter crap (a 5% favorable rating in Rotten Tomatoes is pretty damn awful). That's a shame 'cause the story had an amazing amount of potential. There's very little that is original or fresh in Hollywood these days. It's sad that Shyamalan had to piss on this one bit of possible awesome and smother it with his ego.

For my part, I think I'll be watching me some cartoons tonight.