Jabarkan Sambutan dari The Last Airbender dalam bahasa melayu

Critical reception of the film was panned by critics dan audience alike. Berdasakran 165 ulasan kumpulan Rotten Tomatoes, filem mendapat 7% "rotten" approval rating daripada para kritik, dengan purata skor 2.8/10. Antara Kritik Teratas (Top Critics), yang consists of popular dan notable critics dari surat khabar terkenal, laman web, televisyen, dan program radio, the film holds an overall approval rating of 7%. Walau bagaimanapun, masyarakat RT memberi skor 42% kepada filem itu. Sebagai bandingan, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, calculated an average score of 20, berdasarkan 33 ulasan. Undian CinemaScore melapor bahawa purata gred yang diberi cinemagoers adalah "C" menurut skala A+ ke F.

Liam Lacey of The Globe dan Mail stated the film tidak memberi cukup peluang mengembangkan watak dan therefore suffered, with the overall storyline of the film becoming a run-on narrative. Menurut, Owen Gleiberman dari Entertainment Weekly, "The Last Airbender keeps throwing things at you, but its final effect is, in every way, flat." Roger Ebert memberi filem setengah bintang dalam ulasannya, stating that it "membosankan dan mengasingkan penontonnya," dan notes the poor use of 3D among the film's faults. The A.V. Club memberi gred F kepada filem itu, criticizing the performances of the child actors, overuse of exposition, dan shoehorned 3D special effects, calling it the worst summer blockbuster of 2010.  The Hollywood Reporter said the lack of correct casting caused the film to lose substantial credibility in regard to its source material but did praise the casting dan acting of the main character, Aang.  Variety criticizes the casting, the scoring, dan the overall effect each play into making the film a bore.

Charlie Jane Anders in the review by io9 criticized "the personality-free hero, the nonsensical plot twists, the CG clutter, the bland romance, the new-age pablum...", concluding that "Shyamalan's true achievement in this film is that he takes a thrilling cult TV series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, dan he systematically leaches all the personality dan soul out of it — in order to create something generic enough to serve as a universal spoof of every epic, ever."  Anders summarized the experience of watching the film by stating that, "Actually, my exact words when I walked out of this film were, 'Wow, this makes Dragonball Evolution look like a masterpiece.'" Ulasan Ain't It Cool News' menanyakan mengapa Shyamalan dibenarkan menulis skrip, as well why he was even chosen to direct such a high-profile film after a string of previous flops: "Burdened by [a] never-ending onslaught of expository dialogue awkwardly delivered by actors giving career-worst performances across the board, The Last Airbender is so outrageously bad it's a wonder it ever got before cameras."

Scott Bowles of USA Today gave a generally favorable review, claiming that Shyamalan delivered on fight scenes dan filem berfungsi sebagai filem kanak-kanak. He also added that poor scriptwriting made some of the performances sound wooden. Another favorable review came from Stephanie Zacharek of MovieLine, who praises the way Shyamalan captures the art of action dan human motion. David Roark of Relevant Magazine menuduh kritik lain berat sebelah terhadap Shyamalan lalu menberi filem ulasan positif, menyatakan bahawa visual dan hatinya far outweighed the shoddy script dan blatant mispronunciation nama watak utama.

Dalam wawancara Vulture, Shyamalan argued bahawa gaya dan art-form of storytelling resulted in the negative reviews of the film dan membandingkannya menyuruh seorang pengecat untuk berubah ke gaya yang berbeza, "I bring as much integrity to the table as humanly possible. It must be a language thing, in terms of a particular accent, a storytelling accent. I can only see it this certain way dan I don't know how to think in another language. I think these are exactly the visions that are in my head, so I don't know how to adjust it without being me."

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian noted an masalah linguistik unfortunate linguistic problem yang reduced penonton British ke "a state of nervous collapse". Dalam Bahasa Inggeris British perkataan "bender" adalah bahasa kasar untuk lelaki homoseks. Ini memberi maksud yang sangat berbeza kepada baris-baris seperti "I could tell at once that you were a bender, dan that you would realise your destiny." Bradshaw commented that the response from the audience to such lines was "deafeningly immature" dan akan "tanpa elakkan diulangi dalam setiap pawagam dalam negara yang menayangkan The Last Airbender". ("inevitably be repeated in every cinema in the land showing The Last Airbender)."