‘The Last Airbender’ is the worst movie I have ever seen and will haunt me forever.

This review contains spoilers, but let’s be honest you’re not going to watch this film.

I’m someone who gives movies the benefit of the doubt because films are subjective, but I’m not doing that with this movie. It really is that bad.

Story

The story takes place in a world where some individuals can bend the four elements, Fire, Water, Earth and Air. The avatar is the only individual who can bend all 4 elements and is tasked with keeping balance in the world. However, he vanished for 100 years and in that time the Fire Nation started a war and wreaked havoc throughout the world in a quest to be the most powerful nation.

Katara and Sokka find an Airbender in an iceberg who turns out to be the avatar, and they travel the world trying to right the wrongs of the fire nation.

The story isn’t the issue in this movie because it’s an adaptation of a TV show that is easily one of the best animated shows ever made (I am prepared to debate this). The skeleton of the story is still the same, however, this movie is based on the first season of the show which spans 20 episodes with each episode running for 23 minutes. This movie tries to cover over 400 minutes of story in 103 minutes which is virtually impossible. Some story elements were changed to condense the story, and I have no problem with trimming down the story. However, this movie makes fundamental changes to the source material which results in a movie that makes no sense and is inconsistent.
Did no one watch the show? And if they did were they paying any attention?

Acting

Before I address the acting, I have to address the casting. This movie is one of the most ethnically diverse movies I have ever seen. However, that is cancelled out by the whitewashing of two of the lead actors and the mismatched casting of everyone else.

Katara and Sokka are clearly darker skinned but were cast as two Caucasian actors, it makes no sense. Aang’s casting is fine (his acting, however, is not.) I also mentioned mismatched casting, when you watch the show it’s obvious that the people from the Fire Nation have names and physical attributes that we…