The Last Airbender

Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

(PG)

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M. Night Shyamalan may want to consider another line of work, said Joe Morgenstern in The Wall Street Journal. The director who once “electrified the movie world” with The Sixth Sense has released a new film that’s “botched from start to finish.” From its “stilted language” to its stultifying pace, The Last Airbender exhibits every awful aspect of the awful films Shyamalan has produced over the past decade. Shyamalan has “failed to do right” by his source material, a Nickelodeon animated series, said Keith Phipps in The A.V. Club. The series imagined a mythic world in which skilled practitioners could supernaturally control one of the four elements—air, water, earth, or fire. Shyamalan’s first mistake was making a live-action film out of material that was born to be anime. He then added unimaginative 3-D effects that blur the action and make the “already-dark imagery darker.” The Last Airbender may not be sophisticated enough for adults, but “10-year-olds will love it,” said Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times. Shyamalan’s mistakes this time could finally cost him his career—or perhaps he has found a new, younger audience.