At the Movies: The Last Airbender

The Last Airbender movie is an appalling adaptation of the animated TV series.

There was no character development, and the audience was shown what happened without any explanation why and sometimes even how. Just this is what happens next, nothing behind what the characters might have been thinking or feeling, which in the TV series is the main factor behind their decisions.

But besides the complete lack of character development, there was also so much more missing from the movie.

I understand that the creators only had a couple of hours to squeeze the entire book into. But that's just another reason why the movie shouldn't have been made ... or they should've split the book into two movies like Warner Bros have done with the last Harry Potter book. Maybe then there would've actually been some character development as well as other important things that were in the TV series but not in the movie, like the Kyoshi Warriors.

If they do decide to make the second book of The Last Airbender, it's going to be almost impossible for them to introduce the Kyoshi Warriors, which is going to ruin the future Last Airbender movies.

They also really should've included Aang's trip to the Crescent Island to visit Avatar Roku's temple ... oh, wait, that whole trip falls under character development. Never mind that then.

But the characters in The Last Airbender were mere shadows of their TV series counterparts. Zuko just comes across as extremely bipolar. Sokka is just weird and not at all funny (they didn't seem to realize he's the comic relief). And Katara is even more useless than Cat Woman in the sixties Batman movies (Cat Woman at least managed to pose a genuine threat to Batman at times). In the TV series Katara is a powerful Waterbender and almost kills her North Pole Water master when she tries to prove that she's worthy of learning Waterbending from him (yet another important thing the movie completey skipped).

Only Aang seems to keep his character from the TV series, although in the movie he's not as happy go lucky as he is in the TV series. They didn't quite catch his irrepressible trickster (yip yip!) nature. But still, Noah Ringer did an amazing job as Aang.

In total, The Last Airbender was completely lacking as a movie. It's a complete waste of two hours, and hopefully it won't have its two sequels.

Writing

Ok, suffering from serious writer’s block at the moment. It’s so uncool. I just want to get on and continue with my story I’m currently writing. I know where I want to take it. I’m not entirely sure.
But that’s not really the point.
I don’t believe in planning stories like that. It’s very restrictive, and stunts character development, which I already know what I want to do, and how.
The problem is that while I have all these plans on how the characters will develop, and the vague outline of the story, I don’t really know how to get there.
The nuts and bolts of the story are what’s giving me the issues so to speak.
At the moment, my two main characters are stuck at the airport buying coffee, and I want to at least get them to the hotel before starting on a short story or two to enter into a couple of competitions.
But at the rate I’m going with this story, I’m not sure I’m going to get them to the hotel anytime soon.
Actually it’s just occurred to me it might be the room that I’m sitting while I’m trying to write. I don’t think I’ve ever successfully written more than a couple of paragraphs when I’ve been in the lounge room. I’ve always been more successful when I’ve written in the so called dining room (it’s supposed to be the dining room, but we don’t use it for that).
I guess I’ve just come to associate the lounge room with procrastination and the like.
So maybe I should just change my location.
Although as it is, this was just a writing exercise to help me get into the flow of writing in the hopes that it would help me with my story that I’m stuck on at the moment.