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elfsKenneth Turan, the usually professional movie reviewer for NPR's morning show, All Things Considered, gave his review of The Last Airbender this morning and said what has to be one of the dumbest things I've heard from him ever:
Avatar: The Last Airbender had plenty of "something for adults" in it. It was a smart, complicated show with a huge arc, an intertwined collection of relationships, and definitive crises involving life, death, redemption, vice, and failure. I'm not sure what Turan was getting at here, but whatever it was he surely missed out on the essential issue: Shyamalan has apparently done horrible things to Konietzko and DiMartino's original story, and the 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes gives every indication of that.
The best films for kids have always had something for adults in them. That was true when The Black Stallion came out 30 years ago, and when Toy Story 3 came out last month. So one problem with The Last Airbender is that it's pegged almost exclusively to the small-fry state of mind that earned fans for the original Nickelodeon series.If Shyamalan aimed for the "small fry state of mind," well, that's a serious blow to the film's possibilities, but Turan shouldn't speak of the TV series without having, you know, watched it.
Avatar: The Last Airbender had plenty of "something for adults" in it. It was a smart, complicated show with a huge arc, an intertwined collection of relationships, and definitive crises involving life, death, redemption, vice, and failure. I'm not sure what Turan was getting at here, but whatever it was he surely missed out on the essential issue: Shyamalan has apparently done horrible things to Konietzko and DiMartino's original story, and the 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes gives every indication of that.
