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The Last Airbender

The Last Airbender (2010)

tomatometer

6

Average Rating: 2.8/10
Reviews Counted: 175
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 164

Despite flashy special effects, The Last Airbender squanders the potential of its popular source material on an incomprehensible plot, laughable dialogue, and a joyless sense of detachment.

6

Average Rating: 2.8/10
Critic Reviews: 32
Fresh: 2 | Rotten: 30

Despite flashy special effects, The Last Airbender squanders the potential of its popular source material on an incomprehensible plot, laughable dialogue, and a joyless sense of detachment.

audience

42

liked it
Average Rating: 2.8/5
User Ratings: 284,156

My Rating

Movie Info

Suspense auteur M. Night Shyamalan takes a break from crafting original screenplays to tell this tale of a 12-year-old boy (Noah Ringer) who provides the last hope for restoring harmony to a land consumed by chaos. In a world balanced on the four nations of Water, Earth, Fire, and Air, people known as the Waterbenders, Earthbenders, Firebenders, and Airbenders have mastered their native elements. Though the masters can each manipulate their native elements, the only one with the power to

Nov 16, 2010

$131.6M

Paramount Pictures

Cast

All Critics (175) | Top Critics (32) | Fresh (11) | Rotten (166) | DVD (5)

[T]he film works so hard to explain its plot developments that it scarcely has any time left over to dramatize them. Exposition has not merely vanquished mimesis, it has burned its homes to the ground and sown salt in its fields.

July 2, 2010 Full Review Source: The Atlantic | Comments (9)
The Atlantic
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Stilted dialogue, wooden acting, glacial pacing, cheesy special effects, tacky-looking sets, ugly costumes, poorly staged and edited action sequences, all shown in murky, cut-rate 3-D.

July 2, 2010 Full Review Source: New York Post | Comments (41)
New York Post
Top Critic IconTop Critic

A dull, boring, poorly acted, limply written and thoroughly unappealing fantasy, featuring bland characters locked in a struggle of no interest.

July 1, 2010 Full Review Source: San Francisco Chronicle | Comments (6)
San Francisco Chronicle
Top Critic IconTop Critic

M. Night Shyamalan's big-screen live-action version of the popular Nickelodeon animated TV series constitutes a form of Chinese water torture in which tin-ear line-readings take the place of drips.

July 1, 2010 Full Review Source: Wall Street Journal | Comment
Wall Street Journal
Top Critic IconTop Critic

Please, Hollywood, if there's to be another Airbender movie, hand the job to some efficient hack, and not to a once mesmerizing artist who's lost his way.

July 1, 2010 Full Review Source: TIME Magazine | Comments (78)
TIME Magazine
Top Critic IconTop Critic

The Last Airbender is like a Care Bears movie that got waylaid in the fourth dimension. It's insufferably silly.

July 1, 2010 Full Review Source: Christian Science Monitor | Comment
Christian Science Monitor
Top Critic IconTop Critic

This is a kid's movie that doesn't seem to realize that it's a kid's movie.

April 4, 2011 Full Review Source: Movies.com | Comments (2)
Movies.com

Bad acting, overstuffed exposition and running time far too brief for the amount of plot shoved into it reduce The Last Airbender into parody of a big summer film as Shyamalan manages to hit every single fantasy film pothole.

March 29, 2011 Full Review Source: ComingSoon.net | Comment
ComingSoon.net

The Last Airbender is swollen with portentous mumbo jumbo and realized in the most simplistic and mundane ways imaginable.

March 9, 2011 Full Review Source: Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema | Comment
Reel Times: Reflections on Cinema

The Last Airbender is a horrific mish-mash of genres that follows a depressingly large number of dead ends in adapting its source material.

February 1, 2011 Full Review Source: What Culture | Comment

Kiddie-strength action scenes drag the film down, but the kiss of death is Shyamalan's gratuitous use of earth tones and the general dull, drab look of the film. ... drastically reduces the intensity of the 3-D effects

January 31, 2011 Full Review Source: Las Vegas CityLife | Comment

An amateurish mess.

January 18, 2011 Full Review Source: iAfrica.com | Comment
iAfrica.com

Is it a masterpiece? Oh god no, but... I'm intrigued to see where the next film goes...

January 4, 2011 Full Review Source: Cinema Crazed | Comments (20)
Cinema Crazed

The constant references to 'benders' can't help but elicit sniggers from British audiences ... the plotting is stodgy, the dialogue stinks and the acting is wooden.

January 4, 2011 Full Review Source: Movie Talk | Comment

As an exercise in making conservation fun it makes you want to eat a McDonalds, set fire to the packaging and laugh in defiance at the film's lumpen, patronising tone.

December 14, 2010 Full Review Source: SFX Magazine | Comment
SFX Magazine

As far as children's entertainment goes (and it is children's entertainment), it could be a lot worse.

December 7, 2010 Full Review Source: Window to the Movies | Comments (2)
Window to the Movies

The film is an unmitigated disaster, a putrid patchwork of the original series stitched together by wretched performances, bad creative decisions and a story that's all exposition, no depth.

December 4, 2010 Full Review Source: IGN DVD | Comment
IGN DVD

Mere words can barely describe the sheer inanity on display.

November 26, 2010 Full Review Source: Aisle Seat | Comment
Aisle Seat

...provides no drama, no suspense, and no excitement; just a series of almost random actions. (Blu-ray Edition)

November 18, 2010 Full Review Source: Movie Metropolis | Comment
Movie Metropolis

It's a nice movie to look at, as long as you ignore the characters, plot, and action.

November 18, 2010 Full Review Source: Movie Metropolis | Comment (1)
Movie Metropolis

It seems as if a good film could be made out of The Last Airbender's tale. But this is not that film.

October 21, 2010 Full Review Source: Quickflix | Comments (5)

The characters are completely uninvolving, the narrative incomprehensible for the most part, and the performances seem to reflect the bewilderment of the plot.

September 23, 2010 Full Review Source: At the Movies (Australia) | Comments (9)
At the Movies (Australia)

Why do the water tribe have so much difficulty defeating their fire opponents when the battle takes place on the ocean?

September 22, 2010 Full Review Source: Flicks.co.nz | Comments (7)
Flicks.co.nz

Unspeakably bad dialogue delivered by excruciatingly bad actors in a plot so illogical and stupid it kills unicorns.

September 21, 2010 Full Review Source: Channel 10 Australia | Comments (7)
More Critic Reviews

Audience Reviews for The Last Airbender

Never having seen the tv show i can say this. It was not a bad movie. Wasnt great just interesting. I like fantasy type stuff so this was a good show for me. A pretty unique story thanks to the tv show ive been told. But supposedly the director did not capture it. NOW knowing many people who did watch the show. I hear

June 29, 2010
jmanard52

Super Reviewer

M. Night Shayamalan made a mistake by making this horribly terrible storyline.

March 24, 2012
scottgreen96

Super Reviewer

    1. Old Man in Temple: My name is Old Man in Temple and I am as useless as this movie. Would not be suprised to hear of a few suicides of people who watched this garbage.
    – Submitted by Reid S (12 days ago)
    1. Commander Zhao: Gunna rape Katara cause she has the 'Know it all syndrome'.
    – Submitted by Farid S (16 days ago)
    1. Katara: Don't be afraid!
    – Submitted by Benjamin W (2 months ago)
    1. Aang: I don't know how to bend the other elements.
    – Submitted by Laura A (9 months ago)
    1. Princess Yue: It is time we show the Fire Nation that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs.
    – Submitted by Dallas R (10 months ago)

Latest News for The Last Airbender

April 12, 2011:
A Crowdsourced Film School Scholarship for M. Night Shyamalan
Got a few bucks lying around? Here's a site looking for donations to send M. Night Shyamalan back to...

February 26, 2011:
Awards Tour: Razzie Awards Winners Announced
The Razzie winners have been officially announced, and "The Last Airbender" and "Sex and the City 2"...

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Foreign Titles

  • Die Legende von Aang (DE)
  • The Last Airbender 3D (UK)
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