Reviews

I have been a fan of the series for a long time and ever since I heard that there was going to be a live action version, I was looking forward to it. I live in Europe so I had to wait till last weekend to see it. I did read all the bad reviews on IMDb, but I thought it's probably just people dissing the movie because they are upset over the casting. But oh my god was I wrong! This movie is the an absolute disgrace to the series. Really, it's a disgrace to professional film making! And it's not even the acting or the casting that are bad. It's the writing and directing all the way. Yes, the acting was bad, too, but I don't think it's really any of the actors fault. Every single actor had at least one moment that showed that they had great potential that the director failed to bring out - even Noah Ringer really sounded like Aang sometimes. They just needed someone directing them... About the screenplay: I don't know what Mr. Shyamalan thought while writing that screenplay. It was like watching random scenes from the first season of the cartoon with no connection and no seg way. The little dialog the movie did have was stiff and unnatural. There was no character development. A story like this needs to be told in an epic way, not in what seems like a theater student mash up! Where did all the budget go? Another thing that was wrong with the movie: The music! The music was horrible, a mere shadow of what we heard in the cartoon. How can the same person who composed the music for The Dark Knight do such a horrible job on another movie. There was no recognizable theme at all! Why does Shyamalan hire his friend who clearly didn't care for the movie or try hard, when he could have just hired the cartoons composer. The music from the cartoon was perfect and more than worthy of a big Hollywood production. There is much more I could say about this movie but I think it amounts all to the same thing: M. Night Shyamalan ruined this movie, and that saddens me greatly. I wish he had cared, but the end product proves he didn't.

I had to watch this movie (it's really a play) in my 12th grade German class. Our teacher praised the actors and told us it was one of the best movies ever made. Well, I didn't really feel the same way. And here is why:

1. It is ridiculously long! 814 minutes. That's almost 14 hours. You gotta at least be a monk to be determined enough to sit through that. 2. The acting is horrible! I know that a lot of people praise the performance of Bruno Ganz, but really, he's just halfheartedly reciting poems that he learned by heart. And since he has to do it for 13 straight hours, he gets more and more tired and his voice modulation becomes the same for every verse he recites. But I guess I have to give him credit for one thing: out of all the bad actors who worked on this, he's the best. 3. It's exactly like the book. Instead of watching it, you could just as well read the whole thing and have a real literary experience. That's probably the most important reason why this movie is so unnecessary. After this, I really can't think of any reason whatsoever to watch this. 4. The stage looks boring and uninspired at all times. So they blew the only thing that could have made it worth watching. Trust me, you are better of reading the book and imagining everything rather than having this movie put dull places in your head.

Having said all that, I am a real fan of the book and even though it was a class assignment, I had fun reading it and I enjoyed most of it! The language is wonderful and so many proverbs and sayings used today in the German language originated with this great piece of literature. So read it! 14 hours should be plenty of time...