With stilted dialogue, an inconsistent script and sleepwalking actors, what could have been the next Star Wars Trilogy ended up instead being the next Star Wars prequels: an effects-laden extravaganza that looks good, but fails miserably to connect with its audience.

The deeply disappointing Last Airbender conjures up a fascinating new world, worthy of an epic saga in the grand tradition of such classics as The Lord of the Rings or the more recent Avatar. It’s a world where mystical abilities are common, with leaders wielding special power over the four elements of the earth.

It’s a beautiful land, with quaint villages nestled in at the water’s edge, vast kingdoms sporting rows of towering ramparts across long mountain valleys and delicate cities built upon wide northern ice-flows like crystal cathedrals glistening in the eternally setting sun.

Drawing on elements of the steampunk movement, the mechanical world is a spectacular menagerie of delights, from fighting sticks that convert into oriental hang gliders to massive icebreaker warships that ply the icy waters like 19th century dream machines, all iron and fire and grease and steam.

Painted here is an incredible, and beautiful, world filled with wonder and amazement; a world that draws you in, and makes you long to visit, and perhaps stay awhile.

But then the someone says something, the action starts, or the story takes another stumbling step like a drunkard ostensibly wandering home, and the viewer is rudely ripped from the wonders on screen and subjected to some of the worst dialogue, acting and editing ever to grace the vaunted silver screen.

Comparisons between M. Night Shyamalan and the legendary George Lucas are nearly impossible to avoid here, for both fall victim to a similar self-worship that destroys what should be their best work.

Idea men with strokes of brilliance, both make the sad error of believing too deeply in their own personal vision, refusing to relinquish control, or even creative influence, to those whose input would save the final product from a dismal and disappointing end.

Deep egos and a misplaced conviction that their own visions are perfect at conception seem to keep such men from playing as a team, and so from the very success they seek. Much like a successful band’s lead singer who becomes convinced the music would improve if only their own creative influence weren’t constantly bent by the necessary compromise inherent in group efforts, and so quits the band for a lackluster solo career, never to achieve the heights once held as a team, Shyamalan insists on the purity of his own ideas, writing, producing and directing all of his films himself, keeping his hand in much of the minutia that should be delegated to specialists with talent and skill in their field.

The result is juvenile dialogue more worthy of a high school project than a major motion picture event, and deeply flawed acting that leaves one wondering where the director was during shooting of the film. Add to that music eerily similar at times to Star Wars itself, and obvious borrowing from A NeverEnding Story, among other much better films, and you are left with a chaotic wreck that, while still beautiful, should promptly be towed to the wrecking yard.

All of which makes watching The Last Airbender, based on a Nickelodeon cartoon series called Avatar: The Last Airbender, an exercise in disappointment. Watching a film with the fundamental potential for greatness, but seeing it devolve into inept dreck, is disheartening. Watch the trailer, and skip the film.

—gparker@vernal.com