I can vividly remember just how excited I was for this movie. My boyfriend and I had been marathoning the incredibly well written, hilarious, wonderfully charming cartoon and so when we saw the trailer we actually booked tickets to go see the movie. I mean look at this trailer:
And even though I don’t really like 3D movies because they’re usually unnecessary and uncomfortable, I was excited for The Last Airbender because I wanted to see water, fire and earth coming at me. However, as I’m sure anyone who’s seen or read anything about this movie knows, it was the most disappointing creation ever made. There is no charisma, no humour, no chemistry between the three main characters; it’s just utterly uninspired. It’s as though Shyamalan got one of his interns to watch the first series of the cartoon and make notes which he then based the entire movie off. Names aren’t pronounced correctly, literally none of the characters are the right ethnicity and there’s just no heart or passion in it. The CGI would be somewhat impressive if it had been made by a film student, but what Shyamalan chose to do with it is completely uncreative. For example, there’s a seen where the Earth benders are finally revolting against their Fire Nation captors and it takes six of them to throw a rock. Most of the time when fire or water bending is used it doesn’t actually do anything like, oh I don’t know, make people a bit damp or catch anything on fire. It’s just UH, worst thing ever.
Except for:
I’ve mentioned how much I love Dragonball Z in a few of my other posts; I watched it religiously when I was a kid, my first love was Goku and I wanted to be a Saiyan so bad. In short, this franchise means a lot to me because I loved it so much. So, when Dragonball Evolution came out I already knew that there was no way in hell this movie was going to live up to the franchise. But, not only did this movie not deliver it actually needs to be wished or Spirit Bombed out of existence.
Hey, do you remember the part in the manga/ anime where Goku is a white, human, American kid in high school? No? What about the part where he is completely aware of what girls are and has a huge, cliche, boring crush on Chi Chi? Waaaht?
I just, uh, GOKU ISN’T PETER FUCKING PARKER. STOP DESTROYING THINGS THAT ACTUALLY MEAN SOMETHING TO PEOPLE JUST BECAUSE YOUR RIGHTS ARE EXPIRING.
“If you’re a bird, I’m a bird.” … What?
I’m not even entirely sure why I don’t like this movie, it’s not that I don’t like romantic, mushy films sometimes: Love Actually, Notting Hill, and even Titanic are movies I will happily sit through without eye rolling into another dimension. But The Notebook is just so over-rated and so cliche that by the time the old people died at the end I was like “thank god for that, at least death is one decision that’s not up to them so they can’t spend another two hours mulling it over”. The two protagonists, particularly Rachel McAdams’ character, are selfish, indecisive, emotionally abusive, obsessive arseholes who just relentlessly throw hyper-romantic, creepy gestures at each other. Also, here’s a list of things that I personally don’t find romantic or attractive:
- Threatening to commit suicide unless I agree to go on a date with you. For some reason that level of immediate obsession, dependence and recklessness is frightening and not something I would want to see more of.
- Stories about how you like to watch traffic lights. That’s not deep, that’s fucking boring and weird.
- Encouraging me to lay in the road with you so I can also risk my life whilst you talk about said weird, boring hobbies.
This movie is about as empowering and loving as Twilight and I just can’t.
The amount of times I’ve been forced into sitting through the first hour of this movie must be in the double digits, although I’ve never actually finished watching it. What is it about? What’s funny about ‘McLovin’? What’s funny about any of it? I don’t understand?
Because Shia LaBeouf.
I’ve actively disliked this movie ever since my boyfriend first made me watch it, literally just because of the “YOU LIKE THE SMITHS, I LIEK SMITHS? I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO HAD EVER hEARD OF thE SMITHSKDNFBLKDFNGWRG?!” scene. As if we didn’t have enough of the “I am supah special and I am so individual and quirky because I own a record player” mentality.
But it’s not the actual movie that irritates me the most. It’s got some redeeming qualities such as it’s from the perspective of the guy which is rare and it’s actually based somewhat in reality unlike The Notebook. Yes, it’s incredibly pretentious at times, but it’s self-aware without beating you over the head with irony. What annoys me is the reactions from viewers who think this is a completely acceptable representation of love and romance and oh, you should feel sorry for Joseph Gordon-Levitt because Zooey Deschanel is a bitch waaah.
JGL’s character is mentally unstable and promotes being overly dependent on your romantic endeavours throughout the entire film, and having been in situations with guys who think this is acceptable behaviour due to watching movies like this it just annoys me to no end. Thankfully, JGL actually pointed this out in an interview which is great but surely people should have worked all that out on their own instead of just ingesting all of the unhealthy issues portrayed in the film?
