Tai Chi – Action Hero Movies

The first 15 minutes is a combination of some pretty good action and some extremely trashy junk chat by adults acting in such an idiotic manner with such consistency of borderline vulgarity that I wouldn’t even disrespect children by calling it childish, i’ll just say it’s far from ladylike and far from gentlemanly. Welcome to what has become of half the Marvel movies these days.

With two or three strong-ish action scenes in the first half hour though, and the odd glimmer of real humour popping out, this movie looks a bit better than it did earlier on and seems set for a Bang Average rating.

It gets more interesting in the second hour, and the action becomes more meaningful. As such, by 90 minutes in, it looks worthy of an Above Average rating, and by the end I’ve upgraded it yet again to Decent which is so much better than its impressions early doors — mainly because the annoying characters and attitudes hogged less screen time later on, and strong action took the lead.

To its credit, aside from some of the special effects, and some aspects of the core concept, the most of the music is also pretty good in this movie — from tolerable pop to oriental-style acoustics — it all works pretty good, with just the odd exception, which is quite surprising for considering how the dialog is so trashy.

Even while all the comments online are along the lines of “this is terrible compared to the original cartoon series” I personally thought this movie was Very Good (compared to what else is out there). I haven’t seen the original cartoons and have no interest in seeing them either. When I were a young child, maybe I’d have watched the cartoons if they were on TV, but as an adult now, I generally avoid animations – I need movies with real people in them, and this one fits that requirement. Having said that, this movie has a theme very similar to one of my favourite cartoons as a child – Captain Planet. Both have the idea of people who can use individual elemental powers, and a main hero capable of using all the elements together.

Sure, there’s plenty of missed opportunities here, for example, there could have been plenty of kung fu moves that better match the elements. And I’m not a fan of calling air manipulators “air benders” – that’s a bit queer. But flaws aside, this movie still has a lot going for it – especially its highs – especially near the end.

There’s a strong awakening theme with this movie, as the Avatar realises his true potential and his duty to bring harmony between the clans and restore peace in the world.

Noah Ringer stars as Aang, the Avatar – the one person in the world capable of manipulating all four elements.

If you enjoyed this movie, you may also like to watch the Netflix series by the same name – again, it’s not an animation, but it’s still quite juvenile, yet still quite entertaining.