I'm going to make a movie. It's based on a beloved animated series whose storyline, cast of characters, and quotes have been adored and memorized by children and lovable nerds across the world. But I got a big ego, so I'm going to remove critical plot elements, strip down the heroic battle scenes fans remember, and mangle the pronunciation of all of the characters' names because market research says fans love when you mess up a good thing.¹

Let's say the blurb would read something like this: "it's an epic, featuring an awesome, sword-wielding cat, Leon-O, his band of brothers, and his leading lady, Chetura, in their good fight against evil." I want people to come and see it, though, so I'm going to use the title of the original series as a draw, despite how much I've deviated. World, meet a Jersey kid's ThunderCats.

Violently disappointed yet? No? Fine. I'll also insist on the movie only being shown in theaters near you in cornea-tearing, migraine-inducing 3-D, even though there's only one actual scene of the movie in 3-D. And I'll charge you $15.

Sadly, this is almost exactly what happened Saturday night. Over the course of the last few weeks, Miss Bianca and I raced through three seasons - we even put The Wire on hold² - and about thirty-five hours of Avatar: The Last Airbender, to get ready for its big-screen debut this past weekend. We rounded up some good people whose Airbender-fandom is of legend and bought tickets early in the week, only to watch each day up until Saturday arrive with a set of reviews more horrible than the last.

Airbender, the M. Night Shyamalan way, is pretty much the worst adaptation since Angels & Demons (which was the worst retelling of anything since some indie film studio in Rome let Mel Gibson direct The Passion of the Christ). There were butchered pronunciations, materially-altered scenes, and CGI that made the effects in Last Action Hero look Oscar-worthy.

My movie opinions (outside of anything animated-Disney) probably can't be trusted. That I watched-and-didn't-hate Gigli - yes, that Gigli - thought Soul Plane was hilarious, and have been bored to sleep by Oceans 11 three times are probably pretty good evidence that momma did raise a fool.

But we got hustled on this one, kids. Hustled. M. Night Shyamalan took our lunch money and then made us sit and watch him eat what he bought with it for almost two hours.

¹Read: my ego says I can get away with it.
²Yes, we're eight years behind.

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