(Electronic music)
- (Michael)
What’s up, Wisecrack? Michael here to talk about a brilliant film that captivated fans, wooed the
critics and pissed off no one. Just kidding. I mean the live-action film, The Last Airbender.
Based on the very popular, very good Nickelodeon show, Avatar, this film seemingly had everything
going for it: great characters, a compelling story, and of course, live-action fire bending.
So why is this
film more cringe-inducing than having your blood bent? How does the guys who did this:
- I see dead people.
- (Michael) Royally screw up source material as truly great as Avatar?
Anytime a movie confounds our expectations like this, we’re forced to pull out our detective’s
pipe and start puffing until we either get cancer or figure out: What the hell happened?
- (Sokka) Special outfit, hat and pipe, do these things mean anything to you?
- (Michael) And so welcome to this Wisecrack Edition on The Last Airbender:
What Went Wrong? And of course, spoilers ahead for a bad movie and a good show.
- (Michael) Let's do a quick recap. The film, like the tv show that inspired it, introduces
us to siblings Sokka and Katara, two water tribe youngsters whose dad’s off warring
against the evil Fire nation. While hunting, they stumble upon a bald kid frozen in ice.
Instead of running away screaming, they take him under their wing. Then, MIC DROP:
It turns out he’s the avatar, a messiah figure who has the ability to bend all four elements.
Normie-benders like Katara can only do one. Lost for a century, this ice-kid Aang is responsible
for keeping the four kingdoms in harmony. But first he’s gotta learn how to bend all
the elements. Katara, Sokka and Aang set off on a journey to help the young avatar master his
powers while also fending off the Fire nation. Simultaneously, the very moody disgraced Fire
prince Zuko hatches a plan : He wants to capture Aang like some sick trophy, thus restoring his
reputation and winning back his father’s love, at which point he will presumably stop sulking.
Now quick caveat: there are a lot of things wrong with The Last Airbender.
For one, the characters are almost systematically stripped of their endearing qualities - Sokka’s
sense of humor is gone, and Aang’s carefree sense of fun is undetectable. What’s more,
the stakes are never made urgent or clear enough and Aang never really struggles to
beat his opponents. And importantly: Aang’s character arc is murky at best. On the show,
he struggles quite compellingly with guilt about the death of his people and anxiety
about the demands of his title that culminates in visible character growth. In the movie,
his arc doesn’t unfold with the same clarity and resonance - there kind of just isn’t time. Then
there’s the fact that show makes a point to show a rich world with all kinds of cultures and peoples,
whether it’s the influence of Southeast Asia seen in the Fire Nation, inuit cultures in
the Water Nation, Buddhism in the air benders, or even these florida-inspired swamp people:
- You want me to eat Old Slim? He's like a member of the family.
- (Michael) The richness of each culture depicted is a big part of what fans loved about the show.
The movie, on the other hand, casts its protagonists in such a way as
to make the central conflict look kind of like a race war.
Casting aside
I think this film is actually a great lesson in one of the central problems in any adaptation:
how do you shorten a lengthy book or television series into the runtime of a movie and still
make something enjoyable? Obviously, it’s been done, especially with books:
you don’t hear a lot of complaints about Jurassic Park, Fight Club, or A Clockwork Orange. The Last
Airbender, in a somewhat Herculean adaptation challenge, had to fit 9ish hours of television
content into a feature film. To stay somewhat faithful to the show, which it does in its own
very flawed way, the film needs to function like an abridged version, squeezing in the
most important plot events so that it starts and ends at approximately the same point.
Luckily there’s
one screenwriting tool that will let you breeze right through all the complicated information:
exposition. But it’s a dangerous tool, at best. In storytelling, exposition is any information that
fleshes out the rules of the world, explains a character’s motivations, and so on. If I kill you
that’s an action. If I TELL you I want to kill you because you murdered my father, that’s exposition.
- My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.
- (Michael) Sometimes exposition is extremely memorable and very iconic
- I am your father.
- (Michael) But more often than not, action is more fun to watch. Flip through any decent book
on screenwriting, and you’ll find a section warning young writers that bad exposition has
an apocalyptic effect on your career. Any time a bad piece of dialogue makes you
cringe because it sounds wooden, false, and maybe a little embarrassing for the actor,
it’s often the result of poorly-executed exposition.
- You've never been stung by a bee, have you? - No
- Bees are genetically designed to recognize royalty.
- (Michael) Of course, proper exposition is a necessary evil
in any narrative work. But there’s an infinite number of ways to convey this
information. It takes a scene-long montage to establish that, say,
Rocky trained a lot to get in shape. It would have taken 2 seconds to say “I worked out a bunch,
and now I’m in shape.” but the universe would have been robbed of this glory. Exposition is
a struggle every screenwriter grapples with. And sometimes it can really fucking work.
- I don't like sand.
- (Michael) Just kidding, maybe more like this:
- But until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.
- (Michael) The Last Airbender unfortunately has a lot more of the:
- They're eating here. And then they're going to eat me! Oh my gooooooood!
- (Michael) And less of the-
- You're a wizard Harry.
- (Michael) Now that we've looked at some examples, let's see how Shyamalan does
exactly what every screenwriting teacher begs his novice students not to do.
It’s TELLING instead of SHOWING. Exposition TELLS us things:
- Dad!
This is my father.
- (Michael) Characters’ actions SHOW us things -- this boy running to embrace his
father communicates everything we need to know WITHOUT that pointless introduction.
Bad movies, like this one, chronically *tell* us things instead of *showing* them to us.
- In my raid of the great library earlier this year,
I found a scroll that tells the location of the Ocean and Moon spirits.
- (Michael) But why is exposition such a narrative kick to the nuts?
According to screenwriting guru John Yorke, the problem is really simple: “Most dramatic fiction
demands plausibility - for characters not to say things they wouldn't say in real life. However,
characters also need to impart essential information for the audience's benefit.” That is,
no believable character SAYS “Hello, brother to whom I lent my nintendo switch last week. Wherever
have you put it?” Instead, they’d probably say “Yo, asshat, where’s my switch?” This,
though a natural and reasonable reaction, could leave the audience confused. As Yorke explains,
exposition can be “awkward to present because it rarely occurs in real life.”
To bring it back to The Last Airbender, nobody would actually say
- (Sokka) The fire nation is here.
- (Michael) Instead, they’d grab the princess’s hand and start running for their freaking lives.
Examples like this are more rampant in this film than
Covid-19 at the University of Alabama. Roll tide.
But first a quick caveat: The show Avatar,
as amazing as it is, is not innocent of all expository sins.
- (Zuko) The sages tell us that the Avatar is the last airbender.
He must be over a hundred years old by now. He's had a century to master the four elements.
- (Michael) But we would never make a video ranting about it. There are a few reasons why.
First, we’re talking about an animated kids show that
explicitly does not take itself very seriously.
- My cabbages!
- (Michael) As a result, its expositional statements come off as far less wooden,
- (Sokka) It's rock and water mixed together! It means our way out.
- (Michael) Aided by its hyper-expressive animation style. The film, in contrast
and perhaps out of necessity, is just a lot more serious,
and it can’t get away with the same child-like use of earnest exposition.
- (Aang) After all that time searching for a teacher, I'm finally starting earth bending!
- (Michael) What’s more, the show uses slightly-didactic exposition
mostly in attempts to create a coherent viewing experience and keep kids engaged
week after week ... even if they happened to forget the whole deal with Zuko and his dad.
- (Iroh) Zuko had shown shameful weakness.
As punishment he was banished and sent to capture the Avatar.
- (Michael) The movie, on the other hand,
regularly repeats information as if the audience is suffering from amnesia.
- (Katara) The fire lord's son.
- (Michael) In our final defense of the show,
its expository elements tend to lean hard into EMOTION and motivation. The TV show brilliantly
balances exposition with emotion - information is conveyed to characters during scenes filled
with conflict. Their reactions tend to render the exposition almost invisible:
- (Zuko) You're the airbender? You're the Avatar?
- (Katara) Aang? - (Sokka) No way
- (Michael) In contrast, the film’s expositional sins come in two distinct flavors:
voiceover and on-screen dialogue.
- He's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there.
And that's The Dude.
- (Michael) Voice over is the nuclear reactor of screenwriting exposition. Used with care,
it can be incredibly effective and efficient. Used incorrectly, it’ll blow up your entire script.
- Tiarella told me that Rachel was special. No termination date.
I didn't know how long we'd have together.
- (Michael) Screenwriting expert Hal Ackerman warns that “Any time you use such a device
(voice-over, flashbacks), you are calling attention to it as a device,
and (1) you had better use it effectively, and (2) it had better be the best way of telling
the story.” If that’s the case, what is the purpose of voiceover? According to Ackerman,
it serves like a portal into the character’s psyche,
making us privy to their “inner thoughts” which would otherwise be inaccessible.
Enter: Katara,
our narrator From the get go, the movie piggybacks off of the tv show’s intro, which features her
45 second, efficient narration that ends with powerful emotional insight into her character:
- (Katara) But I believe Aang can save the world
- (Michael) Movie-Katara is a little … less economical. Let’s look at a sample line
- (Katara) The scroll we had was proving to be helpful. Aang was practicing -
- (Michael) Oh wait, it keeps going?
- (Katara) We tried to stay out of sight but Sokka became concerned that we were being followed.
- (Michael) Here, Katara’s voice over functions like a shitty wikipedia plot summary. Like the
rest of her narration, it gives us precisely zero information about her emotional state.
According to Ackerman, successful voiceover works when it shows us a different perspective,
- After that you invent. The spending, the abuse, the fear, the threat of violence.
- (Michael) as is the case when a character is being dishonest with the audience or themselves.
- Fezzik took great care in reviving Inigo.
- (Michael) But Katara’s voiceover doesn’t elucidate any internal struggles,
or reveal anything new about herself or even about her deep faith in Aang.
- (Katara) Aang flew us to his home. He told us how he left there in a storm on Appa.
- (Michael) Here, voiceover is merely a piece of duct tape over the torn fabric of the plot.
- (Katara) Aang showed them
he was the last airbender and was accepted to train with the master.
- (Michael) Throughout, we see information conveyed through voiceover like:
- (Katara) My brother and I often go hunting for food but
unfortunately my brother isn't the best hunter in the world.
- (Michael) Rather than shown through action, as it is on the show
- (Sokka) It's not getting away from me this time. - (Katara) Hey!
- (Michael) In the film, painful information can be conveyed through clinical narration:
- (Katara) My mother was taken prisoner and killed when I was young.
- (Michael) On the show it’s organic, resulting from a heated confrontation
- (Katara) Ever since Mom died I've been doing all the work
around camp while you've been off playing soldier!
- (Michael) What’s more, good voiceover is often compelling because it's MOTIVATED. A given
character has a reason for dispensing this piece of information. The most common way to do this is
through the use of a storybook, as seen in just about every Disney movie. Modern audiences may
be less compelled by Cinderella’s plight, but the device, creatively used, certainly can still work
- (Shrek) Like that's ever going to happen! What a load of-
- (Michael) But filmmakers have gotten creative with voice over throughout the years.- For
example, in the classic noir Double Indemnity, voiceover functions as a recorded confession to
a crime. Indeed, successful noir films very often employ superb voice over that adds to
the characters’ complexity, or reveals their subjectivity, sometimes rendering them unreliable.
- I saw it once he was dead! And I was in for it. Who would believe he would fall out of a car?
- (Michael) This makes it tense and dynamic. The Last Airbender’s narration,
in comparison, is flat, wooden, and just kind of lazy.
- I believe the child Avatar only has knowledge of his brith element air.
- (Michael) But let’s move on to perhaps the greatest sin in the Last Airbender:
the dialogue. Now, dialogue is frequently used as exposition in film. But what distinguishes good
expositional dialogue from bad? According to Yorke, “good exposition is disguised
by making it dramatic - by injecting conflict… The greater the conflict,
the less visible the exposition.” As an example of successful dialogue, he cites Apocalypse Now,
which crams an entire film’s worth of exposition into one brisk scene:
- Did you not assassinate a government tax collector in Quang Tri province, June 19th, 1968?
- (Michael) The result? As Yorke explains, this scene manages to "incorporate subtext,
desire, conflict, and the deeply personal to get across
almost every fact the film needs in order to be understood." The character’s evasiveness
gives us just as much exposition as the interviewer’s purely informative questions.
In contrast, The Last Airbender tends to rely on conflict-free exposition,
as when Katara blatantly pumps her grandma for information:
- (Katara) What is the spirit world grandma?]
- (Michael) The result is boring and static - there are no
stakes to the reveal of any piece of information.
- (Grandma) I believe, that little boy might be the Avatar.
- (Michael) Grandma and Katara both think this kid is the Avatar, and what’s more,
both think Katara and Sokka need to leave the village to help him. Katara has to convince Sokka,
but it’s still pretty low conflict. Contrast this with similarly-themed encounters on the show,
wherein Katara and GranGran disagree about whether Aang's the Avatar:
- (Katara) I told you! He's the real thing, Gran Gran! I finally found a bender to teach me.
- (Gran Gran): Katara, try not to put all your hopes in this boy.
- (Michael) These tense moments are expository in that they give background information - clearly
Katara has been searching and waiting to find someone to teach her. These moments culminate in
Katara choosing to go exploring with Aang largely in defiance of her grandma, although Gran Gran
eventually gives her blessing, all resulting in a compelling emotional arc. In contrast,
film-Katara leaves the village with zero emotional tension or stakes.
- (Katara) We're going with you.
- (Michael) Let’s compare another plot point: when Aang finds out that his the air nomads were
killed by the fire nation. In both the movie and the show, Katara tries to warn Aang about
what to expect when they get to the Southern Air Temple. But on the show, after Katara’s
worst fears are proven right --the air nomads are dead -- she starts to tell him but falters:
- (Katara) Aang there's something you need to see. - (Aang) Ok.
- (Sokka) Ow! - (Aang)
What is it? - (Katara)
Just a new water bending move I learned.
- (Michael) Katara tries to HIDE a painful truth - Aang’s temple was destroyed by
fire benders. Meanwhile, Aang’s trying to figure out what the eff happened to his home.
This setup innately bakes conflict into the reveal of this information - the helmet becomes a ticking
time bomb, and when Aang learns the truth, we’re too wrapped up in the EMOTIONS to realize that we
are being given crucial background information. In contrast, the truth comes out pretty
seamlessly in the film, with Katara eagerly volunteering all the information Aang needs.
- (Katara) Aang, the firebenders knew that the avatar would be born into the air nomads.
- (Michael) But our greatest grievance with Last Airbender is in the way it
deals with Aang’s central conflict - whether or not he can be slash is ready to be slash
wants to be the Avatar. In both the show and the movie, it takes some time to find out why
Aang was in the ice - that is, because he ran away from his duties as the avatar. However,
in the film, this information is revealed quite readily and without prodding
- (Aang) I ran away before they trained me.
- (Michael) Aang’s confession SHOULD be huge.
Instead it’s accepted by everyone pretty much without reaction. In contrast, on the show,
Aang tells the truth after prodding from Katara, and only to correct her misassumption
- (Katara) You have a right to be angry
after the monks sent you away like that. - (Aang) Well, that's not exactly what happened…]
- (Michael) He admits it slowly:
- (Aang) I was afraid and confused. I didn't know what to do.
- (Michael) What’s more, he lets Katara, like the audience, put the pieces together herself,
creating a much more dynamic, though still expositiory, scene.
- (Katara) You ran away.
- (Michael) The Last Airbender film seems self conscious about its overreliance on exposition,
and sometimes the script almost tries to repent. For example,
you see the writer TRYING to create a compelling reason to tell us about
Zuko’s banishment, first via his rivalry with General Zhao
- (Zhao) As you know the fire lord has banished the prince,
renounced his love for him and will not let him have the throne unless he finds the avatar.
- (Michael) But the line reveals its own redundancy:
Zhao literally says AS YOU KNOW, rendering the dialogue self-consciously unnecessary.
Then, the film imparts almost the exact same information just minutes
later when Zuko gets a little boy to retell the story of his banishment.
- (Zuko) Tell me what you know about the prince, the fire lord's son.
- (Michael) Here, there’s no reason why Zuko needs to hear his own life story. It’s lamely justified
by the fact that he’s trying to explain to his uncle why he can’t party and meet cute
girls - he’s been disgraced and must regain his honor. However, there’s no tension to the reveal
of his back story, and it mostly amounts to what Ackerman calls “a big vomit pail of information."
In a remarkably on the nose moment near the end of the film, Aang begs the dragon spirit for help:
- (Aang) Please tell me how to beat the fire nation
- (Michael) The spirit replies:
- (Dragon) Use the ocean. Show them the power of water
- (Michael) It’s a little ironic that the tension between showing and telling
comes up in the literal dialogue of the film. If only the writer had taken the
dragon spirits' own advice and shown rather than told us Aang’s story.
But what do you guys think? Are we being too harsh on a film
so bad its two sequels were promptly abandoned? Let us know in the comments.
As always, big thanks to our patrons for your support. Go ahead and bend that subscribe
button like it’s the blood of your enemy and as always, thanks for watching. Later!