Katara starts narrating as they fly off and now, after eighteen minutes of film, we get a name for the title character. 18 minutes is approximately 20% of the film, so our title character has been without a name for 20% of the screen time. What wonderful writing.
His name is Ong. Aang. No, Katara clearly said Ong; it's pronounced exactly the way they pronounce Ong Bak in that movie. The series, and the credits to this movie, call him Aang. Um, OK. Is Katara pronounced right? Yes. One wonders how he got that one right.
We see a temple high on a hill. Text needlessly tells us that this is the Southern Air Temple. Thanks, movie; I couldn't figure out that they just arrived at the place that they said they were going.
They're walking through a forest near the temple. Wait a minute; there were no forests near the temple. We saw it from the air; there were a few trees around it, but there wasn't room for anything like we see here. Ong Aang, dammit! Find whatever, Aang starts calling out to some people we don't know. He talks about how one of them, a Monk Gyatso, was his guardian. And he expects them to jump out and scare him.
Katara then asks his name.
M. Night, did you even bother to watch your film after it had been edited? (though to be fair, I can understand the sentiment.) Weren't you in the room with the editors, cutting the film? There had to be between 2 and 4 people there assembling the edit of the film; HOW DO YOU SCREW THIS UP? Katara just used his name in the narration. Twice! The only possible explanation, besides M. Night sucking ass, is that Katara is narrating from the future.
Even if she is, it seems rather odd for nobody to have asked Aang's name in all the time it took to get here. From a Doyalist perspective, also makes no sense to put this here; they could have just cut right after Aang walked out of frame. We can assume he told them off-camera on the trip here; we get nothing out of hearing it first-hand.
As they enter the temple, a "flying lemur-bat" enters. Wrong, but consistent. Momo was introduced in the show in the days before the writers settled on hybrid animal names for all of the animals. Therefore, he was only a "flying lemur," and was therefore grandfathered in the show. The lemur-bat thing lands on Aang's shoulders and walks around on him, while he says dialog.
And it's abundantly clear that Noah Ringer has no idea what the hell is supposed to be on his shoulders. He looks like he's showing off some prize that's randomly moving from shoulder to shoulder.
Katara apparently thought they were extinct. Aang is rather surprised by this, as there were plenty of them around. Katara is then surprised that the friends Aang was talking about are monks. OK Katara, you already know he's the Avatar, and you already know he's an airbender. He took you to an Air Temple, and he's been talking about his friends who lived there; who in the hell did you think he was talking about if not Air Nomad monks? Also, what the hell did you think Monk Gyatso was; did you think that was his first name?
Anyway, apparently only now realizing that he's an airbender (even though their grandmother told them), Aang runs off before she can tell him what happened. The two find their way to a field where there are a bunch of bones. And for some reason, the grass is brown and trees are broken, as though this happened maybe a few months ago instead of decades. And yet, the skin of everyone has completely rotted away, as have their clothes.
Katara explains that the Fire Nation destroyed the Air Nomads in order to kill the next Avatar. And now we know why she didn't mention it before; so that it could be a surprise to the audience as well. Which of course is the difference between a character-based story and a plot-driven one. In a character-driven story, the tension is on how the characters will react. We the audience are afforded more knowledge than the characters so that we can feel the tension as they start to learn the truth. In a plot-driven work, we learn it as the characters do, and thus are able to be surprised when they are.
The problem is that this should be a character-driven scene. It simply doesn't work as part of a plot-driven story because we don't know anyone who died. We've never been here before. We don't care about these people who were already dead before the movie started. So while we are surprised, we aren't exactly sharing Aang's pain. The show was smart enough to make this a character-driven moment. The episode turned on the tension of how the happy-go-lucky kid would react to finding out that everyone he'd ever known was dead. Here? There's no tension.
Aang walks among the bones of his people and angrily yells that she's lying. He then finds a skeleton with a wooden necklace on it, which somehow didn't rot in all that time. Aang exposites that it belonged to Gyatso, that he made it for him. We cut to a flashback of Aang giving it to Gyatso.
Um, M. Night? You don't have to Show and Tell. Doing one or the other will be fine. If you're going to have a flashback, just have a flashback of Aang giving it to him, have the flashback mention Gyatso's name, and that's all we need.
He screams in pain at finding his guardian dead and then... his eyes and tattoo's start glowing. A whirlwind starts being kicked up around him, and he floats into the air. Katara and Sokka desperately try to act like they're being buffeted by strong winds; it's laughably bad.
Cut to Aang in blur-world. We hear some of Katara's lines from before, as Aang walks around blur-world. He finds a cave. There's a coiled up... thing in the cave, which reveals that it is a dragon. It recognizes that he's the Avatar, and asks him where he's been. Then we hear Katara yelling that she and Sokka will be with him for as long as he needs, that they can "do this" (whatever "this" is) together. This is apparently enough to pull Aang out of blur-world and back into his body.
Cut to a shot of Zuko's ship, as seen through a spyglass. We then see the person looking at Zuko is... Aasif Mandvi.
OK, WTF is this, M. Night? You hired one of the most recognizable Daily Show correspondents, well known for comedic awesomeness... for your action movie? It's far worse than you know, as Aasif is playing the part of Commander Zhao, who will be our Big Bad for this movie. Oh, you have got to be shitting me. Nope. He's our main villain.
Anyway, Aasif (I'm sorry M. Night. I'm not seeing him as anyone but Aasif Mandvi. It's just not going to happen) says that Zuko is a banished prince, and decides to invite him for lunch. We then get a shot of Zuko's ship next to Aasif's much more massive one.
Cut to lunch. Aasif and his soldiers are in the galley, with himself, Iroh, and Zuko on a raised platform. Aasif thanks "the great General Iroh" and Zuko for joining them. He then starts expositing on Zuko's backstory. To people who already know it, since everyone in this scene knows the story (he even starts with "As You Know.") To be fair though, this does serve as something other than clunky exposition; it shows that Aasif is a giant dick.
He explains that Zuko was banished by his father and cannot return unless he finds the Avatar. Aasif says that it is to make Ozai's weak son strong. During this, we see Zuko draw on a flame (without moving any of his body mind you), and start to move it across the table towards Aasif. Iroh grabs Zuko's hand to stop him, and he does. Aasif goes on to say that Zuko is not supposed to be wearing a Fire Nation uniform during his banishment, but he does magnanimously allow it, as one would a child wearing a costume.
We get shots of everyone in the ship looking rather concerned at this obvious disrespect shown to the prince-in-exile. Zuko gets up, goes to Aasif and whispers that his father will restore his place on the throne and that Aasif will bow to him. Then he storms off, followed by Iroh, who shoots Aasif a contemptible look.
Ahh, character assassination. We've already seen Katara reduced to... to... has Katara actually done anything at all, besides suggest going after Aang? And now we see that Zuko has been gelded in this version. By all rights, Zuko should righteously wreck Aasif's shit for saying that, and Iroh wouldn't be able to stop him (or particularly willing to try, considering the comment). That would have given us a bit of action in a movie that desperately needs it, and make us like Zuko a bit for sticking up for himself.
But no. He just whispers a line and storms off.
Cut to Zuko, back on his ship, looking at a drawing of a family, that I'll assume is his. It is. After putting it away, he nods to his crew. Then we have the scene where Zuko establishes that he is a reasonable threat, as he kicks a little ass in a training exercise, five on one. This fight is decently choreographed, but poorly shot. It also lasts only 20 seconds. We see a bit of firebending at the end, where Zuko hurls some nearby fire at people that somehow knocks them down. The firebending moves take a while to take effect too, having to go through several movements before the fire actually goes somewhere.
Why M. Night?
We talked a bit about the story behind M. Night making this movie, but I want to talk a bit more about M. Night being the writer and director. Regardless of how he was chosen, he was a terrible choice for the film. I knew the movie would suck from the moment I heard he was the director.
I'm not saying that to bash him; I'm going solely from what most consider his best work here. But he is simply not a good fit for this kind of movie.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is, first and foremost, an action show. While there are a lot of intricacies and such around characters, backstory, and world-building, it is ultimately an action show. And the simple fact is this: M. Night Shyamalan is not an action director.
His best films have been dramas, not action movies. Indeed, I don't think any of his films up until this one could be classified as action films. While Unbreakable is ostensibly about a superhero, it's really about the characters and the drama that his powers create within his family. And while The Sixth Sense has supernatural elements, it's really about a man helping a boy overcome a problem, while dealing with his own life. The tension and suspense are in whether he can succeed where he failed before, or will this boy kill himself like the last one.
Action films are a very different animal. Even highly dramatic action movies like The Dark Knight are still action movies. How does The Dark Knight start? With an action scene: breaking into a bank. But it isn't a gratuitous action scene; it serves multiple roles as part of the overall story. It gives us our first look at the Joker, how he runs his gang, what he thinks about his gang and the mob, his intricate planning, etc.
It takes The Last Airbender a full 25 minutes before we get our first action scene. And it's an action scene of the villain basically blowing off steam. It does do double-duty, as it shows that Zuko can take care of business. But this action scene shows many of the problems with M. Night as an action director.
He really has absolutely no clue how to shoot an action scene.
Most of this 20-second scene is shot from one angle, with one camera, in a long-ish take. While the fight choreography is fine, the cinematography does nothing to help sell the scene. You see it basically as if you're standing there. The camera is wide enough and distant enough to show everything that needs to be shown, but it has only one angle. There are no intercuts from multiple angles, nothing to emphasize particularly brutal hits, or anything.
M. Night shoots action the way he shoots drama. And you cannot do that and expect to get a decent action scene.
Look, I don't want 00's style ADD hyperactive cutting or anything. But the way that fight was shot did nothing to help sell it. And as we will see in the very next sequence, this will only get worse.
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