Conjuring conscience

Director M. Night Shyamalan has made a name for himself as a fashioner of fantastical sci-fi thrillers like The Sixth Sense (1999), Signs (2002) and The Village (2004). Now he's harnessed himself to a planned trilogy of fantasy films for young adults based on the first season of the animated television series Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The plot, complicated as it is, is almost incidental to the action. All of the characters have painstakingly detailed motivations, but the point of it all is to instigate selfless heroics from a collection of adolescent do-gooders. As the film would have it, four tribal groups are representatives of the four elements (earth, wind, fire and air). Each has developed the ability to render their respective elements as weaponry and has adopted them in talismanic fashion.

Our protagonist is Aang (the heretofore unknown Noah Ringer), a manipulator of air and the last of his kind. An ample back story sets him on a quest to master all the elements and restore balance to the world. Along the way, he picks up some hangers-on (Nicola Peltz as Katara and Jackson Rathbone as Sokka) and wages a rebellion that is not so much against the fire wielders as against their disproportionate role in human affairs. 

Shyamalan's young cast is quite good, or at least contagiously earnest. Ringer was selected for his appropriately hairless noggin and extensive martial arts training (a first-degree black belt rank in Taekwondo by the age of 12!). His costars include Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire and Jackson Rathbone from the Twilight franchise.

Shyamalan has received considerable flack for recasting the series ethnically (it was originally an Asian-dominated cast of characters), and he was at the very least naive for thinking the changes would go unnoticed. For viewers unfamiliar with the original series, however, the landscape is bound to feel less ethnically homogeneous (and therefore more plausible). Questions about the Westernization of the players smack of xenophobia to a certain extent, and the uproar is more disturbing in itself than is Shyamalan's choice to mix things up. At any rate, the originators of the series have gone on record as supporting the director and his efforts.

The most laudable aspects of the film are its themes of self-empowerment and self-reliance. These kids are keen critics of adult indiscretions. They respect their elders and betters, but they don't cower before tyrants or wait for anyone to save them. For them, pluck and measured courage are key, as well as self-sacrifice. Better role models would be difficult to imagine.

Apart from The Sixth Sense, The Last Airbender is the best effort Shyamalan has put forward to date. Insofar as his evident ambitions as an auteur are diminished here (this being far less a "signature film" than his others), his abilities are better used and his tendency to err on the side of affectation is less prevalent. Followers of his films aren't likely to find much in the way of the intentionally bizarre that features so prominently in his previous films, but fans of the genre should be grateful that there are two more installments yet to come.

James Walling can be reached at
jwalling@praguepost.com