The Last Airbender Rocks
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 02:00PM
[Editors Note: Applewood Johnson does not necessarily reflect the views of Insert-Disc, he's only here because his uncle is one of our corporate overlords]
Midnight Shamalon is an awesome director. After he did the lame Sixth Sense, he started making awesome movies like that one with that chick in the swimming pool. So obviously I went to see this movie.
Some retards called Midnight's decision to get white people in this movie as "racist" or "the dumbest things I've ever heard," but I believe these people are the idiots because they fail to see the genius in this move. Everyone knows Asians can't act, you can't argue with Google.
The Last Airbender takes the Japanime Avatar: The Last Airbender, and makes it even better. Based off of James Cameron's hit movie, Avatar, the Japanime is really weird and isn't even like that cool movie with the blue people. I find it kinda dumb that they are making a movie based off of a Japanime of a movie, but that's hollywood for ya! The Japanime is pretty lame, I watched one entire episode of it once,-- except for those 8 minutes where I went to get a snack--and I really didn't like it. Besides, it was Japanese so like the lip-syncing sucked and it was really lame and had ugly art. So the live action movie fixes all of that because obviously its better than a dumb cartoon!
The best part about this movie is that stuff just happens. They don't do that lame thing that other dumbass directors do like slow down to show you why they're doing stuff. They just do stuff! Like some princess is in love with a really lame dude, and instead of wasting our time on dumb scenes of them going on stupid dates, the narrator just tells you they're in love. They don't do any of that stupid Rocky bullshit of showing him like punch the air a lot to get better, the narrator just says Jesus can do cool shit now.
I should probably explain to you guys what the movie is about. There's this eskimo chick who finds some bald kid in an iceburg. He's magically alive because he's actually Jesus and he's going to stop Satan and his demon lizards. You see, 100 years ago, all of the countries were living in peace and picking flowers or something gay like that, but then Satan and hell decide to stop being pansies and take over the world. They kill all of the angels in heaven except Jesus, who escaped to an icebirg with his pet flying hippo.
Anyway, the eskimo chick takes Jesus back to her village with her brother and they do some gay shit for a while and then Satan's son figures out where they are! So shit goes down and they go to a temple where gay stuff happens and Jesus meets his dad, the like uber God, who is a dragon. He's kind of like a gay snake dragon instead of the cool fire breathing ones.
Oh yeah, I should probably talk about the magic powers everyone has. See, people can do really gay dances to make fire, rocks, water, and wind and grass and stuff appear. It's kind of like Captain Earth or whatever that gay-ass cartoon was called. So they do these dances and stuff appears, it looks REALLY GAY!!! I guess its still kind of cool, but if I could summon fire by doing stupid dances, I might not just not do it instead.
Anyway, they get in trouble and they get locked up with a bunch of guys who dance to make rocks appear. They're fucking idiots though, so Jesus has to tell them to get off of their asses and dance the rocks out of the way so they can escape. They're complete wusses though and it takes like 5 of them to do anything cool, but Jesus is there so he does magic stuff better.
Then Jesus gets caught by the cousin of Satan or something like that, so Satan's son is like "that's my prisoner, bitch" and kills a bunch of people to set him free. Jesus then makes it rain for 40 days and 40 nights to say thanks. Then they go to the North Pole so Santa can teach them how to make water fountains. So then the eskimo's lame-ass brother falls in love with Santa's daughter, but they don't do it because eskimo dude is so pathetic. They learn how to make waves and stuff, but then Satan attacks!
This is where the movie really screws up, because Santa and his elves don't sink the ships of satan. They're attacking on boats, dumbasses! Make a giant tidal wave and kill them all! Instead, they do some other cool stuff like freeze people in ice. Then Satan decides to kill Zeus so they can't create magic water, but it turns out Zeus is just a fish! Zeus and Hades are just two fish sitting around in some dinky pond. Talk about lame Gods. Then Satan kills Zeus and everyone gets really mad. Santa's daughter then kills herself and Zeus comes back to life. Which is too bad because she was hot.
So then God is like "HEY JESUS, YOU DUMBASS, JUST MAKE A GIANT WAVE AND SINK THEIR SHIPS!" Jesus is a wuss and just makes a big wave and then lets it down, letting Satan's army escape. I guess that's like turning the other cheek or something. Then it turns out that Satan has a daughter and she's going to try to kill Jesus in the next movie!
While the gayass dancing sucks, the fight scenes are really awesome. They have people getting set on fire, getting crushed by rocks, and all sorts of awesome. You know what made them even better? THE 3D.
The 3D in this movie is the best 3D I have ever seen. They even made it where you didn't have to wear those gay glasses, the movie looks almost the same with them off! Except the parts when they have words and bigass boats, you can just switch between having glasses and not having glasses and it looks almost exactly the same! I don't know how they made 3D without the glasses, but they did an incredible job of it. A++++ on the 3D.
The acting was pretty good too, that kid who played Jesus is almost exactly like Keanu Reaves! That guy from the Daily Show was on here too! He was just like on the Daily Show, but as Satan's nephew! I can't remember much about the other people, but I bet they were good too.
The Last Airbender is a frickin' sweet movie that everyone should see. My girlfriend wanted to see that vampire movie, Twilight, instead, but I took her to The Last Airbender instead because I have actual taste. Midnight Shamalon is a great director, possibly the greatest and will hopefully make the next 4 movies in this trilogy just as good.
I went into Avatar not expecting much. I expected a mediocre, but pretty, action movie. Somehow, it went far, far below my low expectations and continued to become even worse. Here's why Avatar sucks
The villain is all but giggling as he kills children and destroys homes, the villain hates blue people because they're stupid and don't appreciate humans invading their territory, the villain is not an actual character. He is a plot device. He exists for the audience to hate him. He has no real given motivation for his action (I GAWT THESE SCARS WHEN I INVADED THE NAVEE'S HOMEZ) and is so one-dimensional that he makes Boris Badenov from Rocky and Bullwinkle look like a well-developed character.
The villain is also incredibly bad-ass to incredibly goofy degrees. He doesn't let problems like a lack of breathable air or being on fire stop him from killing blue people; he's still gonna over-dramatically kick doors open and start shooting. This is why he is the only likable character in the movie, he's the only one who seems to realize he's in a crappy movie and he just rolls with it.
He's so insultingly simplistic that I love him and consider him to be the true hero of the movie.
Also he makes really obvious political references that are several years old now (SHAWK AND AWE!).
Speaking of insultingly simplistic, there is the other villain who is less awesome: THE BIG CORPORATION CORPORATION INCORPORATED®. THE BIG CORPORATION CORPORATION INCORPORATED® wants the unobtanium because it does magic things that can be useful for making big ships and cool guns. The representative of THE BIG CORPORATION CORPORATION INCORPORATED® is as stereotypical as you can get, he's even playing golf on the ship. That's how creative they were with their characterization.
See, in Avatar, you, the viewer, cannot be trusted to figure out anything beyond the most basic of concepts. This is why every single character is completely flat and fits in nicely with familiar stereotypes. Can't expect the billions of dollars to come in if the audience has to stop looking at the shiny stuff for a second to pay attention to characters.
I think James Cameron assumed that if he put someone in a wheelchair he could make them a douche and they'd still be likable. Sully is not remotely likable. He arrives on the planet, is a smartass for a while (and not a likable one) and then gets into the avatar. Once in the avatar he instantly can do everything, including walk in it. This would have been a good opportunity to make us warm up to Sully and grow to like him as a person by showing his struggle to relearn how to walk and the joy that comes from having full use of a body, even if it is not his own. Instead Avatar has him instantly be perfect at it, like most of what he does.
Upon controlling the avatar, Sully becomes an even bigger douchebag as he jumps around like a moron and destroys equipment as scientists and other avatars tell him to stop being a moron and let them run some tests. He then runs outside and just skips around like an idiot. This is because Sully is one of the dumbest protagonists of all time. Apparently he was not a very good marine, I know several marines and they know to follow basic orders like "don't run around like a moron, we need to run some tests on your body." Apparently the standards have laxed in the future.
If you told a marine to stay with the group because the entire planet is basically a deathtrap, they would not walk off to look at mushrooms and then get lost. Also in the future cellphones and tracking devices no longer exist because they can't seem to find Sully's avatar at all. Even though his body is beaming his brain signals to the avatar. Please note that these avatars cost millions of dollars and yet they have not put the most basic of tracking devices on them. My dog could be found more easily than the extremely expensive avatar.
Back on subject though, Sully does stupid things and gets into further stupid adventures until he meets Love Interest. Love Interest is the daughter of the chief and next in line to be the 
After Sully gets the hangs of things in his avatar body, he goes on to become better than every actual Na'vi at just about everything. All this takes is a few montage scenes, and it doesn't ever feel like he worked at this. Because he's the protagonist, he gets to be super-cool and succeed without any real effort. You would think he would struggle with various Na'vi customs and ridiculous feats of athletic ability, but despite being a crippled human, he can do everything the Na'vi can, only better. He has slight struggles at the beginning, but after only three months of training, the cripple is now the best blue person who ever lived.
Now that I've actually seen Avatar, those idiots who wanted to commit suicide to be reincarnated on Pandora seem even dumber. Pandora is a jungle with more blue. There are some more phosphorous plants and big trees, but it's not all that different from a jungle at earth. All of the creatures are basically like a [insert animal here], but with 6 legs. Also, I find it rather odd that all but one species on the planet has 6+ limbs. The USB hair would be cool if they had actually done something with it. They plug into animals at the beginning, but it didn't really mean anything. Also they use their USB hair in sex, so bestiality is apparently quite common on Pandora.
Imagine your significant other told you they were actually there as a spy and getting close to you was part of their mission. This cliche' is quite common, but generally it doesn't also come along with an entire peoples' home being destroyed. In the real world, when something like this happens, riding a giant dragon doesn't count as an apology. Love Interest is happy to leave Sully for dead after he reveals that he was there to learn their ways just so they can be more easily conquered. Then he decides to go jump on the different colored dragon and the movie cuts away so they don't have to show him actually struggling to capture the thing that is supposedly really hard to control. He then rides the dragon into the midst of the Na'vi and they all love him again. Because he has a sweet dragon.
Deus ex Machina endings are bad enough, but when it's worse than that, when it's literally just God fixing everything, there's a problem. The vague Na'vi god decides that after half the Na'vi were dead it is time to make all of the animals attack the nasty humans. They don't ever attack the Na'vi, just the humans and the day is saved by the birds and dogs. This is the actual ending. God fixing everything. Also known as the laziest possible ending.
Also during this final battle there is one human helicopter fighting on the side of the Na'vi, she is identified by the war paint on the chopper. For some reason none of the humans noticed this really obvious hint that she might have betrayed them and don't attack her until she attacks them, which is towards the end of the battle.
The final mech vs. Sully battle was incredibly stupid. After jumping onto a mech while on fire, Villain starts a big fight against Sully. This mech has an Evangelion-style comically large knife. Which they use in their not very interesting final battle. While this whole battle is uninteresting, I find the large knife so stupid its worth mentioning. It's exactly like in Evangelion, just a knife that he pulls from the back of his armor. Also Villain looks really plastic during this final battle.
I liked unobtanium when it was called upsidaisium in a Rocky and Bullwinkle storyline. In Avatar, a movie that takes itself seirously, it's just idiotic. Since it has become the future equivilent of oil, they would probably have a name for it by the time the movie takes place. Also, if they need unobtanium so badly, why not just mine it from the floating mountains? Given that they are floating, I'm guessing they have a pretty good amount of unobtanium inside. Wouldn't that be easier than going at war with the locals over their holy lands? Oh wait, I get it, Iraq.
I see what they did there.