After the nearly career-killing disaster that was The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan could have tried yet again to recapture the faux-Hitchcock weirdness of The Sixth Sense, or he could have blown things up to start over. Well, it looks like someone went out and got himself a large quantity of dynamite. And a bunch of DVDs. Say hello to M. Night Shyamalan v.2 in the trailer for The Last Airbender...
As the hilariously deep-voiced narrator intones at the beginning of the new full-length trailer: "The power to control the elements is bestowed upon a chosen few." And, as it turns out, the power to control all the elements is bestowed upon a kid with a shaved head. So, perfect.
Anyway, Shyamalan's uses this other-worldly premise to borrow set pieces from Lord of the Rings, Superman, The Matrix, Star Trek, The Matrix again, Watchmen, Star Wars and The Matrix (he really must have liked that one) and while on first blush this seems like a step back, the trailer is pretty confident in its derivative nature. The only question: Will audiences -- who partially shunned Kick-Ass because they didn't want to see little kids play grown-up -- want to watch a little kid save the universe? If it's in 3D, probably.
VERDICT: Maybe.
Here's the YouTube embed (but Apple's got a higher quality version in case it gets yanked):