I'm Just A Guy Who Likes Comedy
Jan. 2nd, 2011 05:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodyrosemccoySo my sister and I saw the Rifftrax for The Last Airbender.*
Wow. That was … impressively bad.
I mean, I’ve seen terrible movies, but I’ve never seen one that was so … artistic about it. There’s something sublime about the way they took a fantastic series—a truly sweeping fantasy story—whitewashed it,** and made it into an experience rather like … well, like watching my screensaver.
Yes, my screensaver specifically. My screensaver is probably a significant portion of my hard drive. It is a slideshow format that cycles through over 4700 images I’ve collected over a decade—concept art, photographs, portraits, drawings, anything that strikes my fancy online hits my screensaver. It rotates silently along, displaying random pretty images that have no real connection, no thread, nothing to tie them together. Just picture, picture, picture. TLA was rather like watching that. It did have pretty set design and costumes (no idea if they had any Asiafail, because I am not an expert, but it sure LOOKED nice), but the images apparently cycled across the screen at random.
Of course, the simile falls apart when you realize that the character sketches that also live on my screensaver were chosen because the characters—who cannot move or speak, as they are static images—were somehow interesting. This never happened in TLA. Nothing happened in TLA.
The attention to detail was the stunning part. Aside from the sets and costumes (which could still be wrong),*** I was impressed at how they managed to get every single thing wrong. Fun highlights:
-The Harpo Guy Jackson Rathbone being chosen for Comic Relief. Remember when you did Read Aloud Time in class and there was always a kid who did not understand that punctuation was there to change how you read something? That was Harpo’s line-reading strategy. He just ran through each word as fast as possible. I never thought I’d say this, but when you’re the comic relief, you do need to mug some, or it looks vaguely creepy. He needed Actual Sokka's advice to do real comic relief. ("Aang, would you say that you and Toph have a ... ROCKY relationship?")
-The pointless conversations between Aasif Mandvi (who is better than this movie) and Cliff Curtis (who is also better than this movie), one of whom can apparently teleport to the other’s house for their scenes. The Firelord is not the immediate antagonist in the first season; he’s a looming threat of Greater Travails To Come. Here he’s just an actor who is rather glad he hasn’t gotten killed in the first ten minutes of the movie, as usually happens to Curtis.
-Uncle E-I-E-I-roh’s accent. He is the only person with an accent. His nephew, his fellow officers, and his brother do not have accents. Nobody does. Just him. (MY SISTER: “You just know he went off to the Spirit World and came back with this pretentious accent—like when some American goes to the UK and comes back sounding like Masterpiece Theater.”)
-Pronouncing “Aang” like you’re a Honker from Sesame Street. My sister and I couldn’t help but honk back every time they’d honk his name, and then we’d collapse into giggles.
In conclusion: The Rifftrax wasn’t all that great, either. Don’t even bother with this movie. You want a good Rifftrax, go watch the OTHER Avatar, the James Cameron one, with Mike, Kevin, and Bill along, because that was goddamn PRICELESS. And then god dammit go watch the animated Avatar series. And if you want a badly cast, not-quite-accurate version of the show that’s actually interesting, the Ember Island Players already got that covered for you in the show itself.
Anyway, off to watch the animated duel between Katara and Master Pakku again. Just, you know, FOR COMPARISON.
*No, don’t panic, nobody got any money from me for that movie, except for the Rifftrax guys. And the public library would, because I got snowed in and couldn’t return it on time, but hell yeah I work there and don’t GET late fees. THAT’S RIGHT YOU WISH YOU WERE ME.
**As a white person, let me just say THANK GOD there were no nonwhite people among the protagonists. Such a thing would obviously have brought my tiny egocentric world crashing down around me because FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE the heroes wouldn’t look like me, and we can’t be having THAT. I was of course threatened enough by the Extras and Villains of Color. Can you imagine the chaos and of course lost revenue I would have generated if anyone in the foreground didn’t have blue eyes? Why, when I saw that the cartoon had no white people I had to lie down on the fainting couch for several hours, and of course I never spent any money buying all three seasons and the big book o’ concept art!
***And one inspired moment when Yue’s hair turned back to black as the Moon Spirit siphoned her life out.
Wow. That was … impressively bad.
I mean, I’ve seen terrible movies, but I’ve never seen one that was so … artistic about it. There’s something sublime about the way they took a fantastic series—a truly sweeping fantasy story—whitewashed it,** and made it into an experience rather like … well, like watching my screensaver.
Yes, my screensaver specifically. My screensaver is probably a significant portion of my hard drive. It is a slideshow format that cycles through over 4700 images I’ve collected over a decade—concept art, photographs, portraits, drawings, anything that strikes my fancy online hits my screensaver. It rotates silently along, displaying random pretty images that have no real connection, no thread, nothing to tie them together. Just picture, picture, picture. TLA was rather like watching that. It did have pretty set design and costumes (no idea if they had any Asiafail, because I am not an expert, but it sure LOOKED nice), but the images apparently cycled across the screen at random.
Of course, the simile falls apart when you realize that the character sketches that also live on my screensaver were chosen because the characters—who cannot move or speak, as they are static images—were somehow interesting. This never happened in TLA. Nothing happened in TLA.
The attention to detail was the stunning part. Aside from the sets and costumes (which could still be wrong),*** I was impressed at how they managed to get every single thing wrong. Fun highlights:
-
-The pointless conversations between Aasif Mandvi (who is better than this movie) and Cliff Curtis (who is also better than this movie), one of whom can apparently teleport to the other’s house for their scenes. The Firelord is not the immediate antagonist in the first season; he’s a looming threat of Greater Travails To Come. Here he’s just an actor who is rather glad he hasn’t gotten killed in the first ten minutes of the movie, as usually happens to Curtis.
-Uncle E-I-E-I-roh’s accent. He is the only person with an accent. His nephew, his fellow officers, and his brother do not have accents. Nobody does. Just him. (MY SISTER: “You just know he went off to the Spirit World and came back with this pretentious accent—like when some American goes to the UK and comes back sounding like Masterpiece Theater.”)
-Pronouncing “Aang” like you’re a Honker from Sesame Street. My sister and I couldn’t help but honk back every time they’d honk his name, and then we’d collapse into giggles.
In conclusion: The Rifftrax wasn’t all that great, either. Don’t even bother with this movie. You want a good Rifftrax, go watch the OTHER Avatar, the James Cameron one, with Mike, Kevin, and Bill along, because that was goddamn PRICELESS. And then god dammit go watch the animated Avatar series. And if you want a badly cast, not-quite-accurate version of the show that’s actually interesting, the Ember Island Players already got that covered for you in the show itself.
Anyway, off to watch the animated duel between Katara and Master Pakku again. Just, you know, FOR COMPARISON.
*No, don’t panic, nobody got any money from me for that movie, except for the Rifftrax guys. And the public library would, because I got snowed in and couldn’t return it on time, but hell yeah I work there and don’t GET late fees. THAT’S RIGHT YOU WISH YOU WERE ME.
**As a white person, let me just say THANK GOD there were no nonwhite people among the protagonists. Such a thing would obviously have brought my tiny egocentric world crashing down around me because FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE the heroes wouldn’t look like me, and we can’t be having THAT. I was of course threatened enough by the Extras and Villains of Color. Can you imagine the chaos and of course lost revenue I would have generated if anyone in the foreground didn’t have blue eyes? Why, when I saw that the cartoon had no white people I had to lie down on the fainting couch for several hours, and of course I never spent any money buying all three seasons and the big book o’ concept art!
***And one inspired moment when Yue’s hair turned back to black as the Moon Spirit siphoned her life out.
