The first pictures from M. Night Shyamalan's "no twists, no trees" comeback, The Last Airbender, have been released to USA Today. Not a lot of surprises, since the film's look is heavily influenced by the cartoon it's based on (and incidentally, am I the only one who immediately hums the theme song to Mysterious Cities of Gold when reading about this project?). Oh, but there is one unpleasant revelation in this paragraph about Slumdog Millionaire's Dev Patel, who plays the film's villain. See if you can find it:
Patel, too, seems suited for the film, the first of a planned trilogy. He earned his black belt in tae kwon do before he turned to
Wait, I'm just gonna cut it off right there. Another trilogy? Another goddamned trilogy? Didn't we warn you guys about this already? Yes, we did.
This trilogy-ification is really harming our genre movies, especially when the trilogy is planned before the first film is even shot. Do you know what happens then? Nothing, at least in the first movie. The villain is never completely vanquished. The hero's journey is never resolved. The love story, never consummated.
Need a good example? Check out (or don't) Terminator Salvation, which was planned to kick off a whole new trilogy. Virtually nothing significant happens in the entire film, and the mythology is advanced hardly one iota. What typically should be compressed into the first act of a movie is now an entire first movie. Were they to remake T2 today, they'd wring three films out of the same plot.
So, Night? if you really want to make an ongoing series out of Airbender, can I advance a thought? Such a thing already exists. It's called Avatar: The Last Airbender, and it's the cartoon your movie is based on.
ยท First Look: Actors put up a real fight in 'Airbender' [USA Today]