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10 Years Later, a Look Back on How Badly M. Night Shyamalan Botched "The Last Airbender"


https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/avatar-the-last-airbender-2010-shyamalan-remake-netflix/

There are myriad aspects of Shyamalan’s interpretation that flat out don’t work, including some aspects of the film over which he had no real control. The post-filming conversion of The Last Airbender to 3D was one of these, and was heavily criticized at the time, being one of the most high-profile cases (along with Clash of the Titans) of more or less complete films being converted to 3D to cash in on the massive success of James Cameron’s Avatar—ironically, the reason why the word “avatar” is no longer present in the title of Shyamalan’s adaptation. The visual fidelity of the movie seemed to suffer as a result, with many scenes that look murky, dark and underlit.

But Shyamalan as director also made the choice to condense the entirety of Avatar’s first season, some 8 hours of animated material, into a surprisingly rushed film that was presumably meant to be an epic, clocking in at only 94 minutes if you subtract the lengthy end credits. The result likewise damages its pacing badly, as The Last Airbender relies both on constant narration and exposition dumps from Katara to keep the audience up to speed, and a composite character called the “Dragon Spirit” that effectively replaces every one of Aang’s teachers—most notably Avatar Roku, Fang, Koh, Jeong Jeong and Guru Pathik. The result is streamlined but chaotic, with little to no time for non-plot character interaction.


https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/ho3qie/10_years_later_a_look_back_on_how_badly_m_night/

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He is not a very good director. Sixth Sense was good. Nothing else he has done was worth watching. He is obsessed with casting himself in roles where he does not fit. He got lucky once, but has done nothing else.

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it's been 10 years since this movie came out. i'm so happy they never made the sequels.

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