M. Night Shyamalan: Ranking His Films From Worst To Best

The Last Airbender (2010)

CORRECT Airbender I have no ties to Avatar: The Last Airbender, the television show that Shymalan€™s 2010 disaster was based on, so while the film is bad, it didn€™t offend or revolt me on any personal level the way it did for many of the show€™s fans. But bad filmmaking is bad filmmaking, and on that level, we€™re all in the same boat. The Last Airbender is a mess of poor storytelling, bad acting, and all around dismal effort by all parties involved. This is the first €œblockbuster€ film (in its true sense) that Shyamalan helmed, and watching it, it seems that the farther he gets from his safety zone of tight-knit, family stories, the more out of sorts his direction becomes. The Last Airbender has almost no focus; as someone who came in cold, not knowing any of the story, I can say that I understood the basics but was not compelled by any of it. Nothing here makes the world of the film come to life for its viewers. That the primary villain is a routine contributor on The Daily Show doesn€™t help either. The bigger his films get, the more lost Shyamalan seems in his writing, and often in his direction as well. We€™ll see this again in After Earth, a better directed film that still pushes no emotional buttons and feels sterile and disposable at best. It seems that in trying to escape the messes he made with films like Lady in The Water, Shyamalan intentionally moved away from the sort of stories he was comfortable with and got in over his head with movies he isn€™t suited for. All directors have their place and limitations (although some certainly cast a much wider net with their talents than Shyamalan does); moving too far away from what you€™re good at can either be rewarding (you discover that you can handle something new) or disheartening (this movie). On the bright side, the visual effects were pretty impressive. On the much larger not-so-bright-side, whitewashing many of the main characters didn€™t go over too well.
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Contributor

David Braga lives in Boston, MA, where he watches movies, football, and enjoys a healthy amount of beer. It's a tough life, but someone has to live it.