Martial arts fantasy flick "The Last Airbender" swept the board at the pre-Oscar Razzie awards for worst movies of 2010 Saturday, while "Sex and the City 2" also won one of the dubious honors.
"Airbender," a box office hit but a critical miss, took the Golden Raspberry for worst movie, worst director, worst screenplay and worst supporting actor, as well as the useful new category of Worst Eye-Gouging Mis-Use of 3D.
Director M. Night Shyamalan, described as a "repeat offender" at the annual spoof eve-of-Oscars awards, could take some comfort as he failed to win Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel, for which he was also nominated.
Shyamalan "re-imagined the faux-anime TV series ‘The Last Airbender’ into a jumbled, jump-cut mess of a movie that fans of the TV show hated even more than critics did (if that’s even possible!" said Razzie organizers.
"He managed to take a cartoon property and make it even less lifelike by making it with real actors," said John Wilson, founder of the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation, which has been handout out the Razzies since 1981. "Most people who like the show, and this would include my 14-year-old son, hated the movie. It made no sense whatsoever."
Shyamalan has been on a downward spiral since 1999 Oscar best-picture contender "The Sixth Sense," which earned him directing and writing nominations at Hollywood’s highest honors. He won Razzies as worst director and worst supporting actor for his 2006 fantasy flop "Lady in the Water."
"The Last Airbender" tells the story of Aang, a young successor to a long line of Avatars, who must put his childhood ways aside and stop the Fire Nation from enslaving the Water, Earth and Air nations.
Someone must have liked it though, as the summer 2010 movie has so far taken nearly $320 million at the box office around the world, according to the Box Office Mojo movie tracking website.
"The Last Airbender" was among movies that critics knocked for smudgy, blurry 3-D images. The movie was shot in 2-D and converted to digital 3-D to cash in on the extra few dollars theaters charge for 3-D screenings.
"They call it converted. We call it perverted," Wilson said. "The more times you trick the public and charge them that fee and don’t really deliver, eventually it’s going to be like Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football. Fool me ten times, I’m done."
"Sex and the City 2" — which has earned $290 million — meanwhile earned worst ensemble Razzie, as well as the worst actress award, jointly bestowed on the stars Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Kim Cattrall and Cynthia Nixon.
Wilson said the characters of "Sex and the City 2" were getting too old to cavort the way they do, calling the movie "The Expendables,’ but with estrogen," referring to Sylvester Stallone’s tale about aging action heroes.
"Sex and the City 2" also was offensive, Wilson said, showing Parker and her gal pal co-stars disrespecting Arab culture on a trip to Abu Dhabi and flaunting their privileged ways.
"It was released in the middle of a period of American history when everyone’s scrounging not to lose their homes, and these women are riding around in Rolls-Royces, buying expensive shoes and just throwing money around like they’re drunk," Wilson said.
Worst actor meanwhile went to Ashton Kutcher, for his performance in two films: "Killers" and "Valentine’s Day," while the unfortunate Jessica Alba won worst supporting actress for four movies she appeared in last year: "The Killer Inside Me," "Little Fockers," "Machete" and "Valentine’s Day."
The Razzies winners were announced on the eve of the Academy Awards, the climax of Hollywood’s annual awards season.
Nominees for the Razzies rarely turn up to claim their awards up at the spoof pre-Oscars event — this year was no exception at the Barnsdall Gallery Theater in Los Angeles.
Actress Halle Berry turned up in 2005, and Sandra Bullock gamely appeared last year, handing out DVD copies of her offending performance in box office flop "All About Steve."
The following day she won best actress Oscar for her role in "Blind Side."
While the Oscars winners are voted on by the nearly 6,000 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Razzies are chosen by 637 voters in 46 US states, and 17 other countries, organizers say.
Unlike the prestigious gold-plated Oscar statuettes handed out Sunday evening, the Razzie trophy is in the form of a raspberry, roughly the size of a golf ball, sprayed with gold paint and nestled on a reel of old Super 8 film.
It has an estimated value of about five dollars.
(From left) Actresses Kim Cattral as Samantha Jones, Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, Cynthia Nixon as Miranda Hobbes and Kristin Davis as Charlotte York are shown in a scene from "Sex and the City 2." (AP Photo/Warner Bros., Craig Blankenhorn)
