Avatar: The Meh Airbender

You all know how much I love the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon - I blogged to squee about it months ago. So you can imagine how excited I was when it got tapped to be made into a live action film. On Sunday I took my cute little Indian parents (who are fans mostly because I forced them to watch the cartoon series) out to a movie theater to see it on opening weekend.

I then proceeded to sit there for two hours going, "WTF?"

Don't get me wrong - the movie was OK. The martial arts were amazing, and the CGI was top shelf. They cast some of my fave desi actors - Dev Patel as Zukko and Aasif Mandvi as Commander Zhao. And there were a few shout-outs to hardcore fans ("My cabbages!").

Unfortunately, that's where the awesome ends. The dialogue was often clunky and the overall plot was extremely choppy. Maggie Cats made the comment that it seemed like half an hour of the movie was missing, in little snips that would have made things make sense. I only understood what was going on because I'm a fan of the show. At the same time, it didn't seem like it was targeted towards fans - there were a lot of needless changes (like the pronunciation of names) that really threw me off.

Our friend Tito, also a huge fan, had this to say: "Did you like Avatar? Then do yourself a favor - don't go see this movie!" I wouldn't go that far... but it probably wouldn't hurt to catch a matinee, or wait for it to come out on Netflix. Let's keep our fingers crossed for a better, more faithful sequel!

Seriously, how can you mess up this much awesome?
(fan art by ming85)