"The Last Airbender," by M. Night Shyamalan is the live action adaptation of the popular Nickelodeon cartoon, "Avatar: The Last Airbender."  The series and the movie are set in a land where martial artists can control, or bend, the four elements (earth, fire, air, and water).  The main character is Aang who is the Avatar; a being who is the bridge between the real world and the spirit world.  The Avatar can bend all four elements, where all other benders can only bend one element.

There were good and bad parts of the movie, first, the bad.  The acting was utterly atrocious.  The actors all felt stiff and dead and when they showed signs of life it felt forced and fake.  Some of the minor characters were fairly decent actors, but the main characters were terrible  The worst actor by far was Noah Ringer who played Aang.  As the main character, there must be a lot of pressure on the actor, as well as a lot of expectation for a good performance.  He did not deliver at all.  This caused the entire movie to suffer.

Nicola Peltz who played Katara was equally as stiff and as another major character brought the quality of the movie down further.  Katharine Houghton’s portrayal of Katara and Sokka’s grandmother felt out of place in the eskimo-themed southern water tribe and interrupted the whole scene.  She was also trying too hard to sound old while not quite pulling it off.

The other glaring mistake is only really noticed by fans of the cartoon.  The actors could not pronounce half of the names correctly.  The worst ones were Uncle Iro, Sokka, and Aang.  Even the word avatar was pronounced strangely.  The movie is based off of a popular cartoon which had very distinct ways of pronouncing names, there is no excuse for the movie not to follow suit.  Fans of the cartoon will find it very irritating to hear how they mangle the names.

The movie did have some good parts to it amongst all the badness.  The martial arts were decent, at least as good as any b-grade martial arts movie, which were adequate for this.  The special effects for the elemental bending were perfect and exactly as how I had pictured them.  The sets and backdrops were gorgeous and felt as though they came directly from the cartoon.  The costumes were also almost exactly as they were in the cartoon.  The movie followed the story of the show almost perfectly and it is nice to see Shyamalan not adding his signature twist to the story.

The Last Airbender does an admirable job bringing the cartoon to life, but its presentation was marred by horrible acting and atrocious pronunciation issues.  The special effects and sets were perfect and the story was followed faithfully. However, It’s Geektime has to give this movie a 4 on the d10 of disappointment.