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Author Topic: Remember how over a year ago I promised I would eat a hat ...
Samprimary
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I think it would be hilarious to get a sequel where M. Night barbarizes Toph (pronounced Toe-Fay, of course). Just to see how.
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Godric
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
Originally posted by katharina:
Clearly the 550M number is from GHPFB* Labs.


* Gross Hyperbole Pulled from Backside

On the contrary, it fits with the industry's profit model.
Interesting article. I really didn't think most films receive ~equal advertising dollars to production dollars. But maybe more do than I realized.

And I've never considered TV licensing. I wonder how much dollar figures have changed over the last 5 years since that article though. Online viewing has skyrocketed in that time.

In any case, thanks for the link.

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Samprimary
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Yeah, I can hardly make sense of where a given movie goes from red to black. Box office figures are almost completely deceptive now, because it's usually domestic and not worldwide, and it isn't accounting for how much the studio doesn't receive back from it. And that most studios totally expect to lose money at the box office anyway. So you hear that a movie cost 50 million to make and got 50 million at the box office and think 'ohhey, it broke even!' when in reality the studio is leagues away from breaking even.

I wish boxofficemojo had a studio intake from box office figure. Well, maybe they do, but I'm missing it. Someone did have that for James Cameron's avatar, when they noted the point that the film managed to profit at the box office despite costing an amazing amount.

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FoolishTook
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quote:
I get not liking something that has mass appeal because you think it sucks (Brittany Spears) or your tastes are not aligned with mass appeal products, but to not like something just because many people like it sounds very high-schoolish.
Sixth Sense had mass appeal because it was a horror story with a twist ending, which garnered a large amount of buzz. But when it comes down to the bare-bones story, it was no stronger than his other films.

I liked his other films better, not because they were unpopular. Trust me, it's no fun to fall in love with a movie (Lady in the Water), then find out later that it's The Worst Movie Ever Made.

But, anyway, having finally had a chance to see the The Last Airbender, I can safely say it was even worse than I expected. And I went in with low expectations.

Worst Movie Ever Made?

Well, there's still Plan 9 from Outer Space, so no.

The dialogue was pretty horrendous. There were many scenes that were unnecessary and should have been cut in favor of some measure of pacing and character development.

If not for the bending, which I thought was pretty good, the choreography, and the last 20 minutes, the film would've been a complete wash.

I thought the actors they chose did well with what they were given. Some lines can't be delivered by anyone without sounding awkward or out-of-place.

The actors with more experience and skill made the best of it, but even they suffered from weird, unflattering camera angles, and too much, way too much over-stating the obvious.

I know there are people who take a certain amount of pleasure in seeing M. Night Shyamalan fail, but this just makes me sad.

This will probably kill off any potential for another Airbender movie, so that franchise is dead. I like the animated series, but I feel the story is stronger than the delivery--which, like the movie, can be awkward and jilted at times. So what I had hoped for, a cleaner, more powerful telling of the Avatar story, is not going to happen.

Time to find a place to sulk for awhile.

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Samprimary
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quote:
This will probably kill off any potential for another Airbender movie, so that franchise is dead.
It will not be for lack of trying on m. night's part.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1643066/20100706/story.jhtml

quote:
'Last Airbender 2' Will Be 'Darker,' M. Night Shyamalan Says
Sequel has not been green-lit, but writer/director already has two scripts in the works.

because there was any humor or happiness left to excise.
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Samprimary
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TLA went down to 17m in the last box office tally, so it's at about 100m domestic + 10m international.

Who wants to take a bet whether or not we get a sequel? I am ambiguous, but a 'darker' sequel with toph might be twice as unintentionally hilarious!

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scifibum
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
Yeah, I can hardly make sense of where a given movie goes from red to black. Box office figures are almost completely deceptive now, because it's usually domestic and not worldwide, and it isn't accounting for how much the studio doesn't receive back from it. And that most studios totally expect to lose money at the box office anyway. So you hear that a movie cost 50 million to make and got 50 million at the box office and think 'ohhey, it broke even!' when in reality the studio is leagues away from breaking even.

I wish boxofficemojo had a studio intake from box office figure. Well, maybe they do, but I'm missing it. Someone did have that for James Cameron's avatar, when they noted the point that the film managed to profit at the box office despite costing an amazing amount.

There was a Planet Money podcast from a few weeks back, titled "We can see Angelina's bottom line" that talked about Hollywood movie accounting. The bottom line was that one business entity might "lose" money by paying high "fees" to another corporation owned by the same stakeholders.

It was interesting.

Obviously some movies really do lose money. But a lot of the ones that purportedly don't break even are just using peculiar arrangements to obscure what's really happening. Some of the costs are really just putting money from the left hand into the right hand.

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FoolishTook
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It's looking more positive for a sequel at this point, but it still may not happen.

Aren't the creators of the animated series going to work with M. Night on the second film?

http://avatar.wikia.com/wiki/Film:The_Last_Airbender_2

If this is the case, maybe, just maybe, they'll work to make a stronger movie than the first film. Better dialogue, a better script, a little humor, a little more time to flesh out the characters. I'm willing to give it a chance if they come out and say something along the lines of, "Hey, guys, we'll be addressing the problems of the first film."

This movie would've raked in a lot more cash if they had made a good movie. Word of mouth and staying power is a big deal.

Instead, they put a lot of work into marketing the film. The movie trailers were killer! But they neglected the actual film, which is how Hollywood works. Get us into the seats, then throw crap at us. It's bad business.

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Shanna
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I only want a sequel if Shyamalan is removed from the project. This is only time I'm going to use the phrase "They should take a note from Twilight." The bigwigs got rid of Hartwicke as the director and I don't think she got nearly the number of director-focused negatives reviews that Shyamalan has earned.

I know he played a big role in getting the first movie greenlit, but I'd be shocked if the studio gave him another chance.

I don't think giving Bryan and Michael a bigger role would really help. They could write a great script but without a decent director on set and someone with a brain doing the editing, it doesn't matter. A funny script won't make a difference if the scenes are only used in the trailers and cut from the actual film.

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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by FoolishTook:
It's looking more positive for a sequel at this point, but it still may not happen.

Aren't the creators of the animated series going to work with M. Night on the second film?

I highly doubt it. I believe the removal of M. Night as both director and script writer is a prerequisite.
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katharina
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Based on what?
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Raymond Arnold
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prerequisite for having a sequel, or prerequisite for having a good sequel? (And by extension, having the final movie).
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Shanna
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"Not all of Shyamalan's changes in Last Airbender were wrong. For instance, as an Indian himself, he was entitled to correct the bad American pronunciations of character names in the original anime series with more correct ones."

This is from OSC's non-review. He makes some excellent points about film adaptations. However, the above statement is just ridiculous. I'm not sure if I'm more upset about the use of the word "anime" to describe an American produced animated show or OSC's belief that being Indian means that Shyamalan is "entitled" to change the pronunciations of names in an imaginary world that are based loosely on Chinese and Japanese names. Or occasionally incorrectly change names and phrases that were pronounced properly in the show (agni KI?!?0. Or not paying attention when the wardrobe department has the Korean-inspired Earth Kingdom costumes tied on the wrong side.

I guess I'm alittle wound up because I'm rewatching Book One and during the two part finale there is an ill-informed character who pronounces Sokka as "Soh-ka" and Zhao as "Choi." For a guy who claimed to have rewatched the series over and over again, he sure did miss alot.

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Raymond Arnold
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I actually have no problem with the name pronunciation change. It's a little silly that he did that WITHOUT actually having the rest of the accent change, just those few random words. But the people complaining about the whitewashing in one breath while in the next complaining about that one point where Shyamalan reversed an instance of whitewashing in the original series seem silly to me. (While giving characters in an American cartoon American accents is understandable, it's a pretty clear cut moment in which the creators decided to "adapt" their world in advance to a western audience).
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Shanna
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"Aang" and "Avatar" are really the only two pronunciation changes the argument really works for. As a result, those were the least noticeable of the changes for me. The pronunciation of "Iroh" was changed to fit the casting of a Persian actor and yet the rest of the Fire Nation characters retain that Japanese inspired names. And "Sokka" which as far as I've seen (having perused some pretty research-crazed fansites) doesn't really have any ties to Inuit language and culture. Its one of the more original names so I'm not sure what Shyamalan was attempting to correct there.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by katharina:
Based on what?

Based on what I know of DiMartino and Konietzko's response to the movie.
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Raymond Arnold
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citation needed?
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Shanna:
I'm not sure if I'm more upset about the use of the word "anime" to describe an American produced animated show or OSC's belief that being Indian means that Shyamalan is "entitled" to change the pronunciations of names in an imaginary world that are based loosely on Chinese and Japanese names.

I think OSC just thinks that the show is actually an anime, as opposed to a show designed and written by westerners.

quote:
citation needed?
-Samprimary, 2010

[ July 12, 2010, 11:32 PM: Message edited by: Samprimary ]

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mr_porteiro_head
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quote:
I think OSC just thinks that the show is actually an anime, as opposed to a show designed and written by westerners.

It is an anime made by Americans.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
quote:
I think OSC just thinks that the show is actually an anime, as opposed to a show designed and written by westerners.

It is an anime made by Americans.
What's your definition of anime? I know that the show's production studio and the creators maintain that it's not anime, but some people have very different definitions of the term.
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mr_porteiro_head
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Heh. It's not like I have a definition or set of criteria for you.

But if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

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BlackBlade
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This man speaks the truth. I'm not sure what else you could call it other than an anime made by Americans.

I mean the first time I was sitting down and somebody turned it on after 5 minutes my brain essentially said, "Anime done by Americans looks like this."

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TomDavidson
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The idea that a distinguishing feature of anime might be its non-Americanness honestly never occurred to me.
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The Rabbit
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What I'd honestly like to know is why so many of you went to see this movie when.

a) You predicted it would suck.
b) The critics all said it sucked
and

c) it sucked.

edited to remove possibly snarky comment. I am honestly interested in why people go to see a movie they expect to be bad.

[ July 13, 2010, 10:17 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]

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Synesthesia
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Anime is really all cartoons when you start to think about it, but mostly it has come to mean specifically Japanese cartoons.
The show does pay homage to the awesome of Miyazaki.

I'm not going to see the movie. I'm watching the cartoon anime series instead and enjoying it deeply even though I've seen all of the seasons out of order but 3.

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Raymond Arnold
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quote:
x-Samprimary, 2010

[ July 12, 2010, 11:32 PM: Message edited by: Samprimary ]

As hilarious as that is (I say in all seriousness), um, seriously, where did you hear that? If it's some secret thing you aren't supposed to mention for creepy reasons... well, you shouldn't have brought it up in the first place.
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Samprimary
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quote:
Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
quote:
x-Samprimary, 2010

[ July 12, 2010, 11:32 PM: Message edited by: Samprimary ]

As hilarious as that is (I say in all seriousness), um, seriously, where did you hear that? If it's some secret thing you aren't supposed to mention for creepy reasons... well, you shouldn't have brought it up in the first place.
I work at a place which has involvement with the Avatar franchise and gets visited by them. According to pretty much everyone who has been witness to their (guarded) opinion on the movie gets the distinct impression that they would be unwilling to work 'through' the current creative team in charge of the movie.

Not their call, though. Viacom owns everything about Avatar and can produce anything avatar related they want with or without the creative involvement of the creators.


quote:
I'm not sure what else you could call it other than an anime made by Americans.
The creators call it 'anime inspired,' but not an anime. Or whatever. See atla's wikipedia. Many people's definition of anime has settled to 'them asian-lookin cartoons' as opposed to japanese animation which results in some hilarity between them and the sperglord anime purists. I dunno. There's a dude here who works directly for the show still. I'll ask if he's allowed to call the show anime. I was just told specifically not to.


quote:
I am honestly interested in why people go to see a movie they expect to be bad.
I already said why. My bet and promise that I would eat the hat if the movie didn't suck involved watching the movie with my friends. : )

Other people just have to know because they care about the franchise a lot. Others don't trust critics and just want to 'see it for themselves.' Or are just stupid and can't avoid a surefire miss cuz it has pretty ads.

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Blayne Bradley
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quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
This man speaks the truth. I'm not sure what else you could call it other than an anime made by Americans.

I mean the first time I was sitting down and somebody turned it on after 5 minutes my brain essentially said, "Anime done by Americans looks like this."

I made a lengthy post on the Other Side regarding this before seeing this and related posts here, should probly take that discussion to their and consequently make it a little more lively.
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The Rabbit
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:
I am honestly interested in why people go to see a movie they expect to be bad.
I already said why. My bet and promise that I would eat the hat if the movie didn't suck involved watching the movie with my friends. : )
Which then begs the question of why anyone would voluntarily agree to such a loosing proposition in the first place. If your right, you have to sit through a really bad movie. If your wrong, you have to eat a hat. You loose both ways. Why? Why?
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Samprimary
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Ha. I didn't lose at all! Liveblogging the movie was massively entertaining, and people are still talking about my bet, its aftermath, what the losers had to do, what I won, and thought the whole event was hilarious and vindicating. This has all been a lot of fun.

Not to mention how fun it was to rib each other over the bet for over a year.

alternate answer: my clothes were too tight anyway

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Mucus
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quote:
Originally posted by The Rabbit:
... I am honestly interested in why people go to see a movie they expect to be bad.

For the record, I didn't. I also pirated Dragonball Z for great justice.
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FoolishTook
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quote:
I only want a sequel if Shyamalan is removed from the project.
I have to say it. I'll be disappointed if Shyamalan is removed from the project. But he needs to be willing to take criticism and hear another perspective. If this isn't possible for M. Night, then I get it. He should be removed.
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Raymond Arnold
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I'm reminded of the writers for Heroes, who CONTINUOUSLY seemed to understand what they had done wrong in the previous scene, wrote long posts about why it was wrong... and then continued to make different (and sometimes even the same) mistakes in the next season.
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Samprimary
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heroes was more ambiguous to me because it represented a sort of profound failure cascade where good writers sheathed off the project, bad writers struggled with adapting tropes to a new medium, wrote themselves into corners, and had to make everyone act retarded in order to not be able to easily fix whatever situation they were in. Oh, how I wish they could have turned that around, or at least not totally failed and left us with only one decent season.

With The Last Airbender it was pretty straightforward. Literally all I had to hear was that M. Night Shyamalan was directing it, and I took the bet. It's him. You could have had Michael Bay direct the movie and it would have been better. :3

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The Rabbit
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
Ha. I didn't lose at all! Liveblogging the movie was massively entertaining, and people are still talking about my bet, its aftermath, what the losers had to do, what I won, and thought the whole event was hilarious and vindicating. This has all been a lot of fun.

So what did the loosers have to do?
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Samprimary
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between them all, pay for any movie I wanna go to for a calendar year. Among other things I won't mention. : )

But this still would have been worth it for the story alone even if I hadn't put anything up for others to lose to me.

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Shanna
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quote:
Originally posted by FoolishTook:
quote:
I only want a sequel if Shyamalan is removed from the project.
I have to say it. I'll be disappointed if Shyamalan is removed from the project. But he needs to be willing to take criticism and hear another perspective. If this isn't possible for M. Night, then I get it. He should be removed.
I wish he could learn from his mistakes. I really believed that "The Last Airbender" could have been a turning point from him. I thought his choice to do an adaptation showed his desire to try something new and challenge himself.

However, his response to all the negative reviews has been to say "the sequel will be darker." He is obviously ignoring the criticism because I have not seen one review that said the movie was too funny and light-hearted. Now, if he owned up to the failures of the first movie and made plans to bring in a scriptwriter, make the sequel longer, and perhaps hire a consult who knows how to make action/fight films, then I'd be willing to give him a second chance. But hell would freeze over before Shyamalan shows that level of understanding and humility.

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Sterling
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quote:
Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
I'm reminded of the writers for Heroes, who CONTINUOUSLY seemed to understand what they had done wrong in the previous scene, wrote long posts about why it was wrong... and then continued to make different (and sometimes even the same) mistakes in the next season.

Quite frankly, even when Kring et. al. were making a show of tearing at their garments about the mistakes they had made in Heroes in the past, I felt they weren't getting it. Comments like "romance isn't really a good fit for the show" seemed somewhat akin to "Ah! This beam had wood rot! That does it. Let's build the rest of the building out of polystyrene!" By the end it didn't matter to me whether the script was pursuing romance, action, suspense, super-hero antics, special-effects sequences, or what-have-you; virtually all character actions had become plot contrivances, rather than expressions of character.

quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
With The Last Airbender it was pretty straightforward. Literally all I had to hear was that M. Night Shyamalan was directing it, and I took the bet. It's him. You could have had Michael Bay direct the movie and it would have been better. :3

And yet, one has to wonder why. (Why he failed, that is, not why you thought he would.) While it's true that his last few projects showed signs of a fundamental and distracting arrogance, this project was a high-budget would-be blockbuster based on a much-beloved property; it certainly seems like there ought to have been someone attached to the project with the clout and the guts to say, "You know, this really isn't going the way it should, you need to start going a different direction." Again I'm reminded of the chef's special that combines odd ingredients but which the patron decides to give a try because it sounds intriguing and, hey, the chef must know what he's doing, right? But in this case there were very real reasons to doubt the chef knew what he was doing in the first place.
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Samprimary
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quote:
And yet, one has to wonder why. (Why he failed, that is, not why you thought he would.)
But he failed essentially for exactly the reasons I thought he would!
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Blayne Bradley
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Because its fanfiction, the director decided that he wanted to make his interpretation the one shown on screen which means removing or adjusting things he didn't like, in theory I havet seen it yet, trying to get my mother to drive me so I can get some chinese lunch at a buffet as well.

Something tells me it would be a huge success had he gotten like 12 avatar fans in a room had them right an outline of the script and then flesh that out.

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sinflower
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Me and my friends happened to be the ONLY PEOPLE in the theater when we were watching this, so we just spent the whole time cracking up and making snarky remarks about it. So it wasn't bad. Also, Dev Patel is pretty hot when he's evil.
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Rakeesh
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quote:
I have to say it. I'll be disappointed if Shyamalan is removed from the project. But he needs to be willing to take criticism and hear another perspective. If this isn't possible for M. Night, then I get it. He should be removed.
Wow, you think the film was that good, FoolishTook? I can see someone thinking it was...well, enjoyable I suppose, but being disappointed if he were taken off it implies it's not likely someone else could do better, or am I misreading you?
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Samprimary
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http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm9/syonanto/TLA%20pics/cabbagebending.gif

http://i.imgur.com/tGpQN.gif

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FoolishTook
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quote:
Wow, you think the film was that good, FoolishTook? I can see someone thinking it was...well, enjoyable I suppose, but being disappointed if he were taken off it implies it's not likely someone else could do better, or am I misreading you?
No, I did not like the film. But I'm conflicted as well. I can't pinpoint it, but there were parts that stuck with me.

If anything, M. Night is willing to try things that haven't been tried before. He did not take a safe route with The Last Airbender. The safe route would have been to fill the film with movie-house-approved action sequences and minimal dialogue, to take all the burden of emotional depth off the child actors who were playing the leads.

He didn't do that, and it ultimately failed. But I appreciate the effort. I don't appreciate the bad dialogue, the needless exposition, and the lack of pacing. But that can be fixed with a new scriptwriter (M. Night should fire himself), a new editor, a longer cut of the film, some acting lessons for the kids, and cleaner fight sequences.

What I fear the most is that another director may take over only to churn out a generic, martial arts, action-heavy flick just to get it out of the way.

Edited to add: ROFLMAO at those links. The cabbage guy!

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Samprimary
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CABBAGEBENDING
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Threads
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I disliked the movie but didn't hate it like my friend. I suspect that's because my friend enjoyed the anime series while I knew nothing about it. I would rate the movie a 25% because while the execution was horrible, the underlying storyline isn't broken and the visuals were nice. I think that an 8% is too harsh because there are plenty of movies out there which are fundamentally unsalvageable because of their plot and this movie is at least above that category. That said, man, it's been awhile since I've seen a movie with such an awful script. If the script were fixed and the movie devoted more time to character development and explaining what the hell is going on then it could have been decent. As it was, I had a difficult time following the character's names and the story seemed to jump from one point to another without any transitions. I don't fault the actors too much because I don't expect child actors to be able to put on a decent performance with such an atrocious script.
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Nighthawk
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quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
You could have had Michael Bay direct the movie and it would have been better.

Yeah. I mean, the fire scenes would have been awesomely explosive!!! [Wink]


I thought I would have to go to see this movie with my son. But to hear my son say "everybody says the movie sucks" was quite gratifying.

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Synesthesia
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Today I finished the original series and it was SO GOOD.
So funny, so powerful, so just awesome. It was great!
I wish it could have lasted longer. It was a great series.

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Blayne Bradley
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You got your wish, google "Avatar: Legend of Kora" Paramount just copywrited the name, so we might be getting a new series soon.
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Samprimary
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it's 'korra' and it is happening. they are staffing up on it here and at nickelodeon's animation studios.
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