Twi-Tards Piss Me Off

So, work has been a bit crazy this week. 14 sold out theaters for the midnight premiere of Eclipse plus two theaters for a 3 am show. And with Airbender having a midnight the very next day, I watched it at about 3 in the morning, during that Eclipse. Not some good sleep being had. Then I worked the Wednesday midnight of Airbender (hello again my Comic Sirens) followed by a 2-10:30 shift today and I keep working through the next week. 9 strait days. Not that it's "killing" me or anything, but it's nice to have a day off. But, I mostly wanted to share my feelings on these two movies so...
Eclipse wasn't crap. Much. I don't like the Twilight crap. I was never a big fan of vampires but I'm even less a fan of gay vampires that sparkle in sun and argue over emo girls who don't have anything about them worth arguing over. The first two movies were crap about vampires and werewolves loving them same women. Boo hoo. However, this third one actually had some action in it and it wasn't as bad as the other. Sadly, I kinda enjoyed it. Until Edward (gay vampire) and Jacob (gay werewolf but with a lot of good looking muscles...) start bonding. While Jacob is keeping Bella (gay girl they both love) warm. With no shirt on. In a tent. In the snow. While Edward watches. Whom she is engaged to. While this is going on, they start talking about how they actually appreciate the other one for always trying to keep her safe. "Hey man, thanks for cuddling with my girl with your shirt off in order to keep her warm. Wanna go to Chuck E Cheese after this?". Stupid. But sadly an ok movie.
Now comes the hard part. The Last Airbenders. Now, I will say that I am a huge fan of the cartoon and that I actually liked this movie. However, I do find it a disappointment. It wasn't as good as I was hoping for and it definitely wasn't as good as it should have been. In case you aren't familiar to the tv show, Avatar: the Last Airbender is the story of a land where the Four Nations (of the elements air, water, earth and fire) rule. Some people are able to control these elements (or "bend" them) and one person (the Avatar) is able to control them all, bringing peace and balance to the Four Nations. However, for the last hundred years, the Avatar has been missing, leaving the Fire Nation capable of taking most everything over. After finding the 12 year-old boy who is the Avatar, two others are determined to help him master the elements and bring back said peace and balance. For a Nickelodeon cartoon, is rather amazing. And now the movie.
First, they apparently went through a dialect expert who said the names are pronounced wrongly in the cartoon, so they are different in the movie. But oh well. I can live with that. And most of the cast has little experience, with Sokka (one of the ones who find Aang the Avatar) being arguably the biggest only because he is Jasper from the Twilight movies. However, Dev Patel plays the villainous Zuko and with his role in Slumdog Millionaire, he could also be the most famous name. But I can live with the lack of experience. What Took away from it for me was the pacing of the story. With the movie being the first season and that being roughly 8-9 hours long, I expected a lot to be cut. However, instead of trying to rewrite the story to fit the hour 40 movie, they seemed to just film the first two, the middle two and the last two episodes, with the characters explaining abundantly what should have been happening in between. And it made for an all to often jumpy and scratchy time. I still enjoyed it, but I can't help but feel cheated out of what could have and should have been an amazing experience.