New Last Airbender Trailer, New Awesome Stuff, New Crap to Worry About

So let’s start with the good: the bending still looks amazing — like, really amazing — and it appears that whoever’s choreographing the fights has watched the cartoons closely. Very cool. It’s also cool that M. Night Shyamalan can apparently direct a CG/special effects heavy action film with little or no problem — given his body of work so far, there wasn’t much indication to me he’d be able to do a film like The Last Airbender. But if the trailers are any indication, he doing an amazing job. It’s also cool to see that he’s following the cartoon so closely; it appears this movie ends right where season 1 ends. And hey, Yue!

Here’s my worry — and yes, this comes after I’ve watched the entire Avatar cartoon and no, it’s not about Aang’s voice although he still sounds like a middle-aged transsexual to me. It’s the humor… or the lack therof. The thing that most surprised me about the Avatar cartoon — and the biggest reason I enjoyed it so much — is that it was funny. And there’s been zero indication that Shymalan has included any of that humor into his movie. Even if he has, I’d say humor is actually harder to do than directing a CG/special effects heavy action film, so there’s no guarantee he’d do it well. Plus, given that Shyamalan wrote the script himself, well… there not being any comedy might be the lesser of two awfuls.