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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Last Airbender, The

Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 33 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 267 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Adventure | Family/Kids | Fantasy | War
Written by: M. Night Shyamalan
Directed by: M. Night Shyamalan
Release Date:
Theatrical: July 1, 2010
Running Time: 103 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: PG
Starring Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Dev Patel, Jessica Jade Andres, Aasif Mandvi, Shaun Toub, Cliff Curtis, and Keong Sim
Air, Water, Earth, Fire. Four nations tied by destiny when the Fire Nation launches a brutal war against the others. A century has passed with no hope in sight to change the path of this destruction. Caught between combat and courage, Aang discovers he is the lone Avatar with the power to manipulate all four elements. Aang teams with Katara, a Waterbender, and her brother, Sokka, to restore balance to their war-torn world. (Paramount Pictures)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
USA Today Scott Bowles
He hasn't mastered the craft yet, but M. Night Shyamalan may be on to something with this action-movie thing.
Read Full Review >Movieline Stephanie Zacharek
Completely harmless and inoffensive, and at the very least, Shyamalan appears to be having a little fun here.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
The story is a much more serious problem, a run-on, overstuffed narrative that feels like a very long prologue for a climax that never comes.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
The movie is "Star Wars" with martial arts, plus a touch of "The Last Emperor." Technically, it's not badly done; I enjoyed the physical clash of elements, the water balls rising like sculpture in the air.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Unfortunately, this all proceeds at a supersonic tempo, with Shyamalan's directorial finger stuck on the fast-forward button. Significant plot points whiz by in this movie equivalent of speed-dating.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Airbender, whether intentionally or not, is pegged almost exclusively to a small-fry state of mind.
Read Full Review >Boxoffice Magazine Pam Grady
The problems begin with Shyamalan's script, which is an orgy of exposition. The characters explain and explain and explain some more, points driven home with the subtlety of a jackhammer.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten
With a surprising lack of verve, humor, and narrative tension, Shyamalan’s live-action foundation film is unlikely to woo new fans to the tale.
Read Full Review >Time Out New York Keith Uhlich
Only "Slumdog Millionaire’s" Dev Patel, as the bastard prince of the villainous Fire nation, truly gets jiggy with the fantasy. Everyone else stares off into green-screen space and waits for lunch to be called.
Read Full Review >Empire Ian Nathan
Far from the catastrophe the US bewailed, but still disappointingly clunky. Notch it between Eragon (below) and Dragonslayer (above) on a sliding scale of fantasy filmmaking.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The Last Airbender (they couldn't use the series' "Avatar" title because another film got there first, without all the bending) is more about marshaling extras and interpolating tons of computer-generated effects and keeping the factions straight. It's a tough sit.
Read Full Review >St. Louis Post-Dispatch Joe Williams
A toxic potion that will put children to sleep and kill his (M. Night Shyamalan) career.
Read Full Review >Arizona Republic Bill Goodykoontz
While the special effects are impressive enough, M. Night Shyamalan's film doesn't make a lick of sense.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt
Even during the climax, the film still is struggling to introduce the world of the film and its strange rules.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
It's a little bit Tolkien, a little bit Lucas, a little bit "Matrix," a little bit "Dune" and rather too much Philip Pullman, all stuck together with some powerfully expensive effects and lots of cute kids doing tai chi.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Playing a hero who's meant to be something akin to the young Dalai Lama, Ringer brings less than zero gravitas to the role. He makes the kid who plays Gibby on "iCarly" look like Sir Laurence Olivier.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
The Last Airbender is like a Care Bears movie that got waylaid in the fourth dimension. It’s insufferably silly.
Read Full Review >Orlando Sentinel Roger Moore
This colossal folly, the fiasco of the summer of 2010 — gives us all a ringside seat at the sight of Mr. “I See Dead People’s” career gurgling down the drain.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
The Last Airbender’ is dreadful, an incomprehensible fantasy-action epic that makes the 2007 film “The Golden Compass,’’ a similarly botched adaptation of a beloved property from another medium, look like a four-star classic.
Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez
Shyamalan takes the beloved Nickelodeon anime series -- the full title was Avatar: The Last Airbender -- and turns it into 103 minutes of overproduced, stilted nonsense.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The Last Airbender is an insult to anyone with a triple-digit I.Q. and a willingness to use it inside the confines of a movie theater. This is bad filmmaking and bad storytelling. It also sounds what should be the death knell to M. Night Shyamalan's career.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
The problem -- the catastrophe -- of The Last Airbender is not in the conception but the execution. The long-winded explanations and clumsy performances are made worse by graceless effects and a last-minute 3-D conversion that wrecks whatever visual grace or beauty might have been there.
Read Full Review >Variety Peter Debruge
This is all enormously disappointing, of course, since the best we could hope for from a live-action "Avatar" adaptation is the mind-blowing equivalent of our first encounters with wire-fu, rather than this cartoony nonsense.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
Unfortunately, its positive attributes are thrown out of balance by its abundant negatives - including chintzy effects, lumbering storytelling and an overstylized, earnest incompetence that evokes "Speed Racer."
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Cliff Doerksen
The current national priorities should be as follows: reduce carbon emissions and stop funding the films of M. Night Shyamalan.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The Last Airbender is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Robert Wilonsky
This is one muddled attempt at franchise making: confusing, drab, sluggish. (Ugly, too, if you're forced to see it in 3-D.)
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
A dull, boring, poorly acted, limply written and thoroughly unappealing fantasy, featuring bland characters locked in a struggle of no interest.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
If M. Night Shyamalan sold his soul to the devil for the success of "The Sixth Sense," I think His Satanic Majesty has finally collected in full with The Last Airbender.
Read Full Review >Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
The filmmaker has delivered yet another iteration of what has become a classic M. Night Shyamalan film, only much bigger than before, and, as a consequence, mind-bendingly turgid.
Read Full Review >St. Petersburg Times Steve Persall
The Last Airbender makes the cartoon version with its ratchet-jawed characters and clunky animation seem like a Pixar classic.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
The Last Airbender isn’t that much different from the rest of this summer’s generally dire multiplex fare—from "The A-Team" to "Jonah Hex"... But it is remarkable in one respect: It’s the worst of them.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 3.1 (out of 10) based on 267 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Tyler S gave it a1:
Poorly written, rushed plot, horrible dialog, painful acting, amazing effects, ok fight scenes. The "benders" took way to long to get the elements moving. Watch the cartoon series and skip this disaster.
Dave C gave it a2:
I have to hand it to M. Night, he is THE most consistent director in Hollywood... Every film he makes is consistently worse then the last! Check out all his movies on metacritic: 64, 62, 59, 44, 36, 34, 20... in that order!
Dave gave it a2:
Being a huge fan of the animated series on Nickelodeon, I was skeptical when I heard that that a live action movie was in the works, and it seems my skepticism was well placed. Everything I loved about the animation was missing in this film, most notably the personalities of the characters. Where the television cartoon had wonderful character, in this movie they might as well have all been zombies. Horrible acting, overworked dialog and for a movie that was supposedly 3-D, only about 5% of it was visibly so. I had to keep taking off my glasses to see the diffference and honestly it was hard to tell then too... This was the first book in four if they follow the animated program. I won't bother with the other 3 films. I wish now I spent the money to check out 'The Karate Kid' instead.
Aang A gave it a0:
1) My name is Aang not Oong! Everyone else's name is correct, why not mine? 2) My markings (Arrow) are a lite blue (kind of turqoust) color with no hieroglyphics. And it goes all the way down and around my body (arm and legs). 3) I'm a kid that loves to play around in all the books. I'm not that serious, yet. 4) Sakka, is a comedic strategist who loves to pick on his sister. He is not a serious warrior. 5) Katara, is a strong courageous and inspiring leader, not a needy little girl. 6) The "Fire Nation" wants to take over the world. They don't care about the spirit world. This movie was the worst movie my kids and I saw all year! We walked out very disapointed. My recommendation to all of my friends is to wait for the dvd to see me and not to waste your money!
Jake P gave it a0:
Absolutely terrible in every respect. The movie was incredibly dull; I found myself more concerned with how uncomfortable the seats were than what was going on in the movie. The acting was incredibly poor, the special effects at times were okay, but nothing special. The fight choreography was the worst I've seen in quite some time. The plot had more holes in it than old socks. Moreover, there was absolutely NO character development. We aren't given any reason to care about Sokka, Aang, or Katara! They are just there. I went into the theater unaware of the bad reviews or anything like that, and I thought it was absolutely terrible. Why do they allow M. Knight to continue making movies? This was so poorly written that no matter who directed it, it wouldn't come out with decent reviews. A failure in every possible way. I guess if you are going to fail, fail big. That's exactly what M. Knight did.
Ken F gave it an8:
How is it possible that no one has caught on yet? M. Night Shyamalan is a JOKE FILMMAKER! He's a latter day Andy Kauffman. I was shocked that no one seemed to catch on after The Happening. A man slapped a lion in the face! How can people have attempted to take this film seriously? It was obviously a comedy. This film is exactly the same. You can't tell me that it wasn't a joke for him to cast Aasif Mondvi as the heavy, or that the entire cast woodenly reciting terrible and mostly pointless dialog would have passed muster for any major studio film that wasn't intended to be taken with tongue firmly in cheek. Seriously, this movie was a comedy, and the joke was on everyone who tried to take it seriously. One of the more enjoyable movies I've seen this year.
anonymous anonymous gave it a1:
The only reason this movie doesn't get a 0 is because of the cool special effects (saw it in 2-D). If you're a fan of the show don't watch it, the horrible script, worse acting, worse camera work, and worse decision to take the fun out of it make this an awful movie. the fight scenes weren't very good either, unlike in the show it looks like interpretive dance. I didn't like anything in the movie besides the special effects, and it basically ruined the show for me. don't waste your time.
