Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I don't understand how Shyamalan could mess this up so badly. My girls and I own the 3 books of the nick cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender and we watch it all the time. It has everything a great story needs - action, a little bit of romance (not too much - thank goodness), humor, great characters - both the good and the bad, suspense, and the plot keeps moving forward taking the viewer on an exciting adventure. But this live action version is an overblown waste of Millions of $$. This is just a big M. Night ego trip. There's an action sequence where Aang who is supposed to be fighting for his life, escaping with the help of the blue spirit, finds himself in a large circle surrounded by boards and he just starts blowing the boards into different configurations for a few minutes while the blue spirit is left hanging fighting the bad guys. This is pretty much the way the entire movie goes. MNS doesn't seem to know how to use the characters powers in any useful way, he just goes into special effects mode like "oh, this would be cool to see" without thinking of whether it makes any sense for the character to be doing that. So, the story tends to sits like a big steaming pile of flying bison poop. Main problems with this movie: 1. Names are pronounced differently from cartoon (is this an elitest version of the cartoon? Aang is now Ahng?) 2. This is supposed to be an asian based world... uhm, where are the asians? 3. Characters are pretty clueless and they do a lot of monologuing (argh!) 4. Where are the laughs? Avatar is filled with jokes and lighter moments, this is just dull, dull, dull. Highlights: Zuko's uncle Iroh is the best looking character in the movie. hmmm... yep, that's about it. This money would have been better spent creating a 4th book in the legend of Aang. Nickelodeon, if you have any say in the live action movies I seriously recommend taking more creative control or just getting a different director. Luckily, the creators of Airbender have announced a new show called Avatar: The legend of Korra set to air November 2011. In the meantime, I'll be watching all of my old episodes from the cartoon series just to clear my head after watching this junk.