'The Last Airbender' = 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' + 'Seven Years in Tibet'

I watched “The Last Airbender” for the first time yesterday, and I have to admit that I was disappointed by the quality of this much-publicized movie.

Released on July 1, the movie was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, which was the main reason I wanted to see it, given the quality of some of his earlier movies. I assure you, “The Last Airbender” falls far short of such films as “The Sixth Sense” and “The Village.”

The movie starred Noah Ringer (who reportedly got the lead role because he has a black belt in Taekwondo), Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone (aka Jasper Hale in The Twilight Series of movies), Dev Patel (aka Jamal Malik from “Slumdog Millionaire”), Shaun Toub (who was in “Crash” and “Iron Man”), Aasif Mandvi (a regular on The Daily Show with John Stewart) and Cliff Curtis (aka Rabbit from the TV show, “Trauma”).

For those of you who haven’t seen “The Last Airbender,” it’s a fantasy film with heavy doses of martial arts and magic, very “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” meets “Chronicles of Narnia” meets “Seven Years in Tibet.” The movie is set in a world in which humans, depending on which tribe they’re born into, have the ability to manipulate one of the four primal elements – earth, wind, fire and water. One person, called the Avatar, is the only person in the world who can manipulate all four. When this person dies, he’s reincarnated as a member of another tribe elsewhere in the world.

“The Last Airbender” is about an Avatar named Aang, who becomes trapped for nearly a century in ice and awakens to learn that the rest of his tribe has been wiped out. Aided by the two members of the waterbending tribe who free him from his century-long trap and others, he sets out on a quest to unite the earth and water tribes against the Fire Nation, who killed all of the Airbenders.

To me, the most interesting thing about this movie is the fact that it is based on the first season of the animated TV series, “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” which aired for three seasons (2005-2008) on Nickelodeon. (Shyamalan reportedly first became interested in “Avatar” when one of his daughters, a fan of the cartoon, dressed up as one of the characters for Halloween one year.) The series was created and produced by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.

Financially, “The Last Airbender” movie has not done as well as expected. Its shooting budget was $150 million, and its marketing budget was around $130 million = total cost of about $280 million. Gross revenues from the film, as of this writing, were $319 million. No official announcement has been released regarding a potential sequel to the film.

In the end, I was disappointed by this movie, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it wasn’t worth watching. Looking back, it’s more of a kid movie anyway, so maybe I’m just outside of the film’s target audience.

How many of you have had a chance to see “The Last Airbender”? What did you think about it? Did you like it? Hate it? Let us know in the comments section below.