Yes, I actually watched both. Yes, I wasted 4 hours.

And I feel I should also provide this little disclaimer: I abhor the Twilight series, and I absolutely love the original Airbender cartoon series from Nickolodeon.

Like any other fan of any source material, I’m generally pretty excited when there’s an announcement that a movie adaptation is going to be made. I wasn’t really expecting much — I always seem to prefer the source material to its movie adaptation, and the backlash M. Night Shyamalan has gotten for “racebending” resulted in low expectations — but I couldn’t believe that mother freaking Eclipse, the third installment of the IQ-lowering Twilight series, had gotten a substantially higher rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

I tend to regard Twilight movies as comedies — they’re always good for a laugh. The acting is stale, the plot is horrible, and the fight scenes are, at best, mediocre. Yesterday, I set out to find the truth behind the ratings — could Rotten Tomatoes be true??? (Surely, not!)

On Eclipse (a.k.a. I bet RPattz is regretting his decision to take on the role of Edward right about now)

I watched Eclipse first. My logic was this: any following movie that I watch afterwards surely couldn’t be worse. It’s a pretty well known fact that Twilight has more or less become a cultural phenomenon, and it’s one that I particularly don’t understand. I have read all four books in the installment trying to figure out what teenage girls and their mothers find enthralling about it. (Off note: my mother recently watched Twilight on TV and thought it was “romantic” and “cute.” The biggest bashing fest ensued in my household, with my sister and I trying to make my mom see the light — and not the light Edward gives off when he sparkles. What kind of self-respecting vampire SPARKLES??) My biggest regret is the money wasted buying the books and the fact that I have to hide the books in my bookshelf to save myself from embarrassment if anyone happens to see that I actually own them.

It’s pretty much a given that I go in watching these movies with absurdly low expectations. The stiff acting of RPattz, KStew, and Taylor Lautner (TLaut?) are almost unbearable to watch, but they never fail to elict laughter from me — which is pretty much the only reason I’d voluntarily waste time watching them. That being said, I laughed considerably less in Eclipse than when watching its predecessors, which may or may not be because 1) there was an improvement in acting?, 2) random chance, or 3) I just tuned everything out. Things taken from the movie:

1. Our dear Bella is a horny teenager. So is Edward, but he’s more concerned about her ~virtue~, even though he likes to sneak into her room in the middle of the night to watch her sleep like a creeper.
2. Werewolves never wear shirts.
3. Bella is still useless.
4. Edward is still useless.
5. And the best message of all: it’s okay to give up everything in life and abandon your family for a guy because nothing can fight the power of love.

On The Last Airbender (a.k.a. what the f did I just watch)

I was confused with the movie from the get go — it seems M. Night Shyamalan decided to change everything about the original cartoon. Not only did he cast visibly different actors from the original characters (which I honestly would not have a problem with if the actors had actually been good at acting like he claimed them to be), but he also decided to change the pronunciation of names, etc. of various things in the movie. I had to watch the scene with Katara calling Sokka’s name a few times because I was so sure she said Zuko’s…but he was no where to be found. Who the heck is “Sow-ka?” And “Ong?” And “the oovatar?” (I really didn’t know how to phonetically spell that. It was just weird.)

And oh, dear Dev Patel…Dev was so adorable in Slumdog Millionaire, which pretty much shot him to fame. I really really wanted to like Dev in this movie. Zuko is my favorite character from the series, and I was happy that at least I liked the actor who was cast to portray him in the movie adaptation. But holy crap on a stick — Dev sucked in this movie. I get that he wanted to expand his acting repertoire to include someone who was different from the role he became famous for, but  good god — Dev, tone down the anger. Really. You overacted being angry so much that you made it ridiculous. It was kind of like watching Edward catching a scent of Bella when she first walks into the classroom. (DID HE JIZZ IN HIS PANTS??)

I really tried to watch this movie as someone who wasn’t a fan of the cartoon series. Would a neutral movie watcher enjoy this movie? I don’t think so.

It’s hard to believe, but the acting in this movie is worse than that in Eclipse. The only actors who I really enjoyed were the ones who portrayed Iroh and perhaps even Zhao. The acting was so bad that I started to multitask and do other things while watching this movie, sometimes even changing what I happened to be looking at on the screen and just listen to the audio. I’d say it was pretty on par with the acting that I saw in Twilight…which was pretty frickin’ horrible. (Coincidentally, it’s also the most comedic installment of the Twilight movie series. Correlation? Definitely.)

The movie also seemed kind of fast paced. If you weren’t familiar with the cartoon, I’m sure you would have definitely been confused, even with the attempts of the cast trying to explain everything that was going on with voice-over narration.

Good points to the movie?

1. The sets. I only wish everything else could compliment how well the sets were constructed.
2. The appearance of Azula at the end of the movie. It’s probably the one thing that will make me watch the second installment of this movie trilogy. I really hope the actress delivers.
3. CG? Appa and Momo were pretty cool. Hah.

Yeah, that’s all I got.

So, is The Last Airbender really worse than Eclipse?

Definitely. I found that my problem with Eclipse as a movie was primarily the message that was getting across, which I suppose can’t be helped in a movie adaptation of a novel. My problem with The Last Airbender encompasses so much more: the movie as a whole wasn’t enjoyable at all. All of the main actors were so incredibly mediocre, so without any feeling, that I found it hard to believe that M. Night Shyamalan personally believed he had cast the best he could find. If you were to compare 99.9% of the aspects of The Last Airbender with those of Eclipse, I think you’d find that they’re all subpar. Eclipse is already a horrible movie in my eyes without even watching it just by what it is, but for me to admit that The Last Airbender is worse is pretty telling — I thought it was impossible for me to say that anything is worse than Twilight.

THE APOCALYPSE HAS COME.