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M. Night Shyamalan’s is a hate crime against film lovers. I’m going to speak plainly in a language everyone can understand. No one should ever have to endure what I was unexpectedly put through yesterday afternoon watching this murky 3-D shitstorm of a movie that appears to have been shot through unflushed toilet bowl water, which, upon reflection, seems 100 percent appropriate.

And if you are going to convert these poor, helpless movies, don’t choose ones in which 75 percent or more of the action takes place at night or in dimly lit settings. With the glasses? Everything looked like pond scum. I have no issues with shooting in 3-D or the array of lovely animated films made in 3-D, but you sons of bitches have not perfected the process of 3-D conversion to the point where it is safe for human viewing. There are huge sections of that simply don’t even appear to be in 3-D, and when I removed my glasses, guess what? I could actually make out faces and action and decently rendered special effects. And I know this wasn’t a projection issue here in Chicago, because I sat through two 3-D movies back-to-back on this particular day in the exact same theater, and the second one (an animated film) looked awesome and fairly bright. It doesn’t work, so just stop ruining my experience going to the movies. Before I launch into why this film is so abysmal, let me make a plea to all studios across the land. Fuck everyone whose job it is to convert movies to 3-D and the people who hired you. Stop cloaking your films in darkness on top of darkness. Please stop the unwatchable practice of converting movies into 3-D.

There isn’t a single element to this movie that works, and I say that knowing nothing about the TV series on which it is based but as someone who went into this film thinking there was a strong chance I might enjoy my experience. That said, nothing on heaven or earth could have saved from spiraling out of control and making it certainly the worst film I’ve seen all year so far, and an early candidate for the worst film of the decade.

Poor guy has had a rough week. They are played by Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone, who plays Jasper Hale in the films and does so in a far more interesting manner than in . And don’t even get me started on the Airbender himself, Noah Ringer as Aang, a young monk who is the reincarnation of the “Avatar,” a bender who can control all four elements (with proper training), as opposed to regular benders who can only control one. I guess. Ringer has decent delivery, but all of his lines sound so clear, they seem dubbed. And I don’t mean to crap on these poor kids, but they are across-the-board terrible, especially the two white kids who follow the title character (white kid playing non-white) around. And while he does get a chance to fight in the film, he mostly just rattles on and on about his history, his destiny, his abilities, blah, blah, blah.

It doesn’t take long for the story to inform us that some firebenders can actually create fire out of thin air anyway, so why waste our time? Because they can, dummy. Now I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing that a race of people that possess and operate such devices might also have invented and carry around with them, I don’t know, matches maybe. And then there are plot points in that are just plain dumb. See if my logic makes sense. Leading up to the big battle scene between the firebender warriors and the water bender monk-like people, a water dude makes a point to say that everyone in their camp should put out every fire so the fire people won’t have anything to.bend, I guess. We see these machines that look like a cross between a tank and a bulldozer driving on their own steam, plus there are these giant metal battle ships that the fire people travel upon that clearly are operating on something other than air. But it’s made very clear that the world in which this story takes place is somewhat industrialized. Perhaps even something as sophisticated as a flint-based lighter? Call me crazy. No really, call me crazy. Fair enough: fire people need fire to do their tricks, water people need water, etc.

That movie was only 90-some minutes long; it felt like three hours.” Truer words have never been spoken. But even without the 3-D, this movie would have been an endurance test. This summer is beginning to feel like the End of Movie Days. Fair enough. Enjoy spending the rest of your life with the memory of fouling your brain. God save us. But for , I’ve got nothing. No the 3-D doesn’t help the film in any way; it actually makes is a whole lot worse. If you still want to see this movie, you’re either too dumb to understand why you shouldn’t or too young to care. As a critic, I always try to find one or two positive things to write about every film, even for the most trying movies I see in a given year. There was a 14- or 15-year-old girl sitting behind me during this screening, and when the end credits began rolling, she turned to the person next to her and said, “Look at your watch.

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