How M. Night Shyamalan Ruined My Summer

Every year for the better part of my adulthood, I made a tradition out catching the earliest showing of the biggest new blockbuster in the theater on the 4th of July. With everyone so busy chasing meat, charcoal, beverages, bags of ice, and appendage dislodging instruments of Chinese gun powder doom wrapped in cardboard. I rarely ever had to wait in a line. I just waltz right up to the window, drop my dough and pray that I didn’t waste my money and just donate more money to rich people for Botox injections so they can look good on their next stint of Celebrity Rehab. After my loan application goes through. I grab my snacks, and off to my seat I go. This accomplishes two things. First, I get to see what ever movie I want without the crowds, and second I don’t have to spend as much time with the family. The first movies usually start after 11 am, and by the time the previews, the commercials, and the movie is over it is usually 3 o’clock. Then I go home and gather my belongings, and it is usually after 4 when I show up. By that time, my family is sufficiently liquored up to a tolerable state , and the food is coming off the grill.

Last year, was the first 4th in 15 years that I missed. The writer’s strike left the summer movie cupboard pretty bare. I had already seen Star Trek, and had no desire see the giant HASBRO commercial. I loaded up my family for a 600 mile day trip through the Redwood forest, and back up the Oregon coastline instead. Couldn’t get a much better day than that I must add. This summer was supposed to be different. My family is a big fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender and we were excited to learn that there was going to be a live action movie. Even if it was going to be directed by M. Night Shyamalan, we had our plans set for the morning of the 4th….so we thought.

For the uninitiated, Avatar: The last Airbender, was an Anime art styled, western cartoon, that drew heavy inspiration from ancient Asian culture. It aired on Nickelodeon from Feb. 2005 until July 2008. Most people when they see the art style, they pass right on by. I did, until I started dating someone with a kid. Then I was hooked, and I learned a few interesting facts about the show. The show’s premise centered around the 4 elements(air, fire, earth, and water) and the characters, ability to manipulate them. The ones with the ability for elemental manipulation, are called Benders. The show is about Aang, a kid who is discovered frozen in ice by a brother and sister. Aang turns out to be the Avatar, and the last airbender. The Avatar is the most powerful bender, it is his job to keep balance between the nations, and is the only bender who can learn to bend all of the elements. The Avatar spent the series preparing to fight the Fire Lord and running from the Fire Lord’s son Prince Zuko, a whiny brat, with daddy issues. The best part of the show is, when Aang went into the Avatar state. This is like the Incredible Hulk, Godzilla, and the blue guy from Watchmen with the weiner all rolled into one and there would be hell to pay. All 4 nations had their own unique martial art, based off of a real style, and the writing in the show is based of real Chinese words,(ancient and traditional.) The show has loads of charm, characters that you could care about, and it also had an over whelming message of peace and with this rat race we call life, who couldn’t use a little peace and harmony?

I started seeing trailers for The Last Airbender. They dropped Avatar from the title, because of the James Cameron film Avatar, and I am sure lawyers and money speak volumes. The trailers showed some decent CGI effects and I thought the bending looked very good, but I started to get the feeling of dread in the pits of my stomach. The fears that good ‘ol M Night had taken this and Michael Bay’ed it all up, but I remained an optimist. I just new he couldn’t screw this up. While his movies lately have mostly been big misses, his characters albeit all a little quirky, usually display a great range of emotional depth. With the movie’s special effects looking top notch, the television show’s range of emotions, the different characters, and he himself saying his family are big fans of the show, maybe he was the right director for this movie. My optimistic side was getting the better of me, but then I realized that there wasn’t enough in the glass to erase the bad taste that was lingering.

Which brings me into another mini rant inside of this giant rant. Isn’t it funny, as technology gets more efficient and cheaper to develop for, movies get more gimmicky with it and churn out a ton of crap, but the gaming industry gets more indie developers developing AAA looking titles like Hydrophobia and Blacklight: Tango Down that can be downloaded for a fraction of the retail prices? The movie business continues to put out horrible movies, all because they have a good programmer. Dialog and emotions are secondary as long as someone has a computer. Unfortunately, this cheapened technology doesn’t always translate into quality. Look at the stuff on SyFy. Seriously, what was that movie Giant Octopus vs. Vegetarian Shark vs. Abraham Lincoln? No wonder people who are into science fiction get picked on and mocked, because we are constantly being handed crap like that. CGI isn’t just for direct to video releases.

Established franchises can screw things up as well. Look what Steven Spielberg did to Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skulls, it was a whole CGI green screen mess, and the story paid dearly for it. Our beloved Star Wars was no better. It started with the anniversary special editions, with upgraded special effects, an added Jabba the Hut scene, and a ton of CGI insertions to correlate with novels that were released, that changed up the films history a bit. Then it came most horrifically to Episodes 1-3, with the addition of Jar Jar Binks. A half man, half fish, half giraffe, half rabbit, and all around failed attempt at comedic relief voiced over by Mario. He did serve a great purpose though, he was so awful you just covered your eyes to keep the tears of ruined Star Wars thoughts from running down your face. It helped you from watching the horrible acting by two very good actors(Liam Neeson and Ewan Mcgregor), some kid you probably went to community college with, and Samual M.F.’n Jackson. Too bad you still had to hear the dialog. Even the grandaddy of CGI Jurassic Park, lost focus and became even more about the dinosaurs, and Jurassic Park III can now be seen multiple times weekly on TNT.

One film didn’t go that route and the CGI was out of necessity not because it looks cool and that movie succeeded to a point, that I have yet to see a film in the theater since that compared to the experience. That film was The Dark Knight. A film full of raw emotion, Heath Ledger’s brilliant but deadly performance as the Joker, and real things exploding. Brilliant just F’n brilliant. So why doesn’t Hollywood fix this? They instead try to make better by adding new a new gimmick, 3D. Most of the movies that offer 3D aren’t even really 3D movies. The effects are kind of patched in like the updates we download to upgrade our video game titles. So they add 3 or 4 pics, and make you pay like $3.50 more but we fall for it, because you can’t be the the only one around the water cooler who didn’t see it in 3D. It is the American way, consumption, and if you don’t consume we will shame you. Sorry for that brief intermission now back to regularly scheduled article.

With the 4th being this Sunday, I tried hard all week to avoid any news and reviews of the film, but I failed. First I read that the movie had a whopping $285 million dollar budget, but as I glanced down I saw that nearly half of that was marketing dollars. The panic started setting in. How could something with this big of built in fan base need so much marketing dollars? Then a few days later, while I was cruising through N4G.com in the video game section I seen a headline about The Last Airbender being a horrible movie or something to that affect. Then today as I was looking up the movie times my curiosity got the best of me and I zoomed over to metacritic.com just to glance at the scores not the reviews. What I saw had my mouth on the floor. With over 30 critical reviews it had a score of 20 which is akin to a 2 out of 10, and the people reviews were no better. With over 119 consumer review scores, The Last Airbender had a score of 3 out of 10. Which probably is worse that the critical score of 2, because of site trolls and fanboys voting the film a 10. I was curious what its top critical review score was and it was a 63, ouch. You can’t even round that up to a C minus. So, I got to be the 4th of July grinch in my household, all because of M Night, thanks a F’n lot. I had to tell my family the great news, that he screwed up the movie and I refused to pay to see it, let alone in 3d. I felt it was better to let them down easy then be about 50 dollars lighter in the wallet and staggering in the parking lot screaming “SHYAMALAN”, with both fist thrusted into the air like Captain Kirk, in the Wrath of Kahn. So, I am not wasting my money and we here at the farm don’t want to you to waste yours. Maybe PIXAR can save the day? So when the kid goes back to school in September, and has to do the obligatory what he did over the summer report. He can write, “Well I will tell you what I didn’t do, and that was see The Last Airbender, thanks for ruining my summer M Night Shyamalan.”

We here at the Farm, hope everyone has a fun safe 4th of July, and please be careful with the fire works, because it’s hard to click a mouse when you are missing fingers.

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