Film Review: Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender

The film opens big questions, but being an interquel constrains how deeply it can explore them

It’s hard to keep track of all the productions involved in the Avatarverse. The original 2005 Nickelodeon show is called Avatar: The Last Airbender. The epically embarrassing 2010 live-action film is called The Last Airbender. The 2024 Netflix live-action series is called Avatar: The Last Airbender. And now we have a sequel film (technically an interquel if you count The Legend of Korra and the upcoming Seven Havens), streaming on Paramount Plus and launched on a handful of movie theaters, called… Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender.

I’ve been less confused trying to sort out all the Ghost in the Shell series and films.

The first impression I got from this new film is the refreshing return of the goofy sense of humor that distinguished the original show and is so noticeably lacking in the Netflix retelling. The core characters have reached early adulthood by this point in the timeline, but they still feel like the same fun team we met 21 years ago. However, this plot is heavily focused on Aang, with the rest of the team confined to admittedly cool-looking combat scenes but no story arcs of their own.

The plot begins with Aang following clues to the location of another frozen airbender, Tagah, who sparks Aang’s hopes for restoring the air nation. Tagah is interested in unearthing an ancient magical artifact that a previous Avatar used to grant airbending powers to normal people. The twist, we eventually learn, is that Tagah is a supremacist who wants to punish the world for the historical mistreatment of airbenders. This creates obvious problems: Aang has already founded Republic City, where people from all nations coexist in peace. Tagah wants to replace that with an airbending empire, so Aang will have to fight to prevent a new world war.

You may have noticed that this story retreads discussions that have already been explored in the franchise. Korra season 3 also featured the return of airbenders to the world due to powerful world-changing magic, and also introduced a radical airbender who plotted to overthrow the world’s political system (albeit for diametrically opposed ideological reasons). The film has an undercooked subplot about a faction of rebellious nonbenders who perceive elemental bending to be a tool of oppression, which retroactively foreshadows the Equalist movement seen in Korra season 1.

Exciting action choreography and beautiful background landscapes notwithstanding, there’s a nagging sense that this film exists to tick off a line in nitpicking fandom’s log of complaints. The plot seems to care a lot about clarifying an uncertain point of magical lore: if Korra season 1 established that an Avatar who knows energybending can restore the powers of a bender who has lost them, what prevented Aang from simply giving airbending to random people and rebuild the air nation? This film answers: no, you need special powers from the Lion Turtles themselves to do that, like for example the magical staff that everyone is looking for. That does solve the question that had been left open, but at the cost of oversimplifying the political themes of the franchise.

Aang’s peculiar situation has always lent itself to lengthy discussions about the nature of nationhood. He’s the only survivor of a genocide (until he meets the frozen airbender Tagah, but that guy dates from way before the genocide), and a big part of his mission as this incarnation of the Avatar is to heal that wound in the world. But the methods available to him carry their own complications. Korra shows us that, once Aang became an adult, it took him three attempts to conceive an airbender child, which I’m sure must have caused immense tension in his marriage with Katara, not to mention Lion Turtle-sized daddy issues for his children. The Korra series didn’t explore that famly dynamic deeply enough.

But also, why are Aang’s first two children not considered part of the air nation? If ethnic membership means anything, it has to be tied to ancestry. But in the Avatarverse, the nations are not exactly defined by shared ancestry, but by the ability to practice a magical art, to the point that, in Korra season 3, completely unrelated people from other countries who suddenly gain airbending are invited to join the restored air nation (and it’s a stain on Tenzin’s moral character that he only repairs his relationship with his brother Bumi after Bumi wins the magical lottery and becomes an airbender). The comic book The Promise adds another twist to these questions by introducing the character of Kori, an earthbender who politically identifies with the firebending side of her ancestry.

The elemental bending disciplines influence everything: visual art, clothing, urban design, military technology, even the respective cultures’ favored metaphysics. This is a conception of nationhood unlike anything seen in the real world. It would be like defining the Swiss people as only those who can ski, including anyone from anywhere who can ski (plus structuring all of Swiss society and culture around the visual markers and philosophical analogues of skiing). And this wouldn’t necessarily restrict Swisshood to Switzerland itself; we’re used to conceiving of nationhood as fundamentally connected to territory, but airbenders are nomads, so they’re not tied to a specific territory in the way conventional nations are.

In the film, finding the magical staff that gives airbending would put Aang in the position of choosing who will join the new air nation. This is a decision he has strong opinions about (remember how, in the comic book The Promise, he chastised fans of airbending culture for appropriating the arrow tattoos without having any airbending ability). Even if he’s the only remaining representative of his culture, it’s still worth asking: should one single person have the power to decide how an entire national identity is to be built?

All these questions are brought to the forefront in the film. Unfortunately, established characterization exerts a force against this potential for drama. Although Aang is a bit too eager to follow Tagah even when it endangers his friends, once Tagah’s true intentions are exposed, Aang remains morally immaculate, never feeling the temptation to use horrific violence to Make Airbenders Great Again. Part of this has to do with the need to keep the timeline in harmony with the established events in the sequel Korra series, but it’s also a waste of big themes that the film introduces and then dispatches unaddressed.

Overall this is a worthy addition to the Avatarverse. It can’t be emphasized enough: a core component of the appeal of this franchise is its goofy humor, and here there’s plenty of it. The animation is impeccable, and the music is in keeping with the real-world inspirations of the setting. I only lament that the story could only go as far as established lore allowed.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

With the new Avatar series, one has to ask: What do we really want from an adaptation?

This version isn't perfect. It isn't horrible either. The world is at balance again.

Before anyone watched 2005's Batman Begins, one strong argument for its existence was that audiences' definitive memory of that world couldn't be allowed to be 1997's Batman & Robin. Such a lamentable misfire needed to be overwritten with something more dignified. The same reason explains the quasi-reboot of the X-Men films with First Class after the not-quite-beloved The Last Stand, the casting of Tom Holland to replace Andrew Garfield as Spider-Man, and the ongoing quest to one day, finally, make a decent Fantastic Four movie.

An even harsher approach is to not restart the timeline, but resume it from a well-liked beginning that was less well served by its sequels: 2019's Terminator: Dark Fate is intended to ignore everything that happened after 1991's T2, while Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a deliberate erasure of the unfairly hated 2016 remake. Although this method is called "soft reboot," it's actually more aggressive, because at least a "hard reboot" doesn't go out of its way to discourage viewers from enjoying previous works if that's what they prefer (e.g. Godzilla, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan). While a "hard reboot" is content to do its own thing, a "soft reboot" executes a hostile takeover of an ongoing storyline and tells viewers to pretend that some portions of it never existed.

All this is necessary context before jumping into the rather complex relationship that viewers have had with the Aang/Korra franchise. The original cartoon show is now acclaimed as an almost perfect classic, but before the ending aired (and even for some time after), fan ships used to launch cannonballs at each other with the ferocity of Twilight subreddits. This situation didn't improve once the sequel series launched: one segment of fans flatly refuses to acknowledge Korra as part of the canon, another segment accepts only season 1, and yet another segment didn't believe the Korrasami pairing was official until the comic books spelled it out.

There ought to be a way for audiences to love a story without getting so petty about it. But one specific portion of such fierce protectiveness isn't totally unjustified: 2010's film adaptation The Last Airbender was so calamitously plagued with incompetence that any substitute was destined to be an improvement by default. And the 14 years fans had to wait for the palate cleanser couldn't pass fast enough.

The new live action adaptation, which just launched on Netflix, condenses the 20 short episodes of the cartoon's first season into 8 long episodes. Some plotlines have been condensed, others have been merged, and a few have been omitted. Whereas the cartoon took its time to explore at leisure the impressively varied and rich setting of its fictional world, the Netflix version focuses on a handful of key locations. This cutting and stitching of material isn't accomplished successfully. Sometimes an entire animated episode's worth of plot is wedged in as an easy-to-miss line of dialogue, and characters that are indispensable to the story but lived in locations that were removed from the adaptation appear now where it doesn't make full sense to find them.

For example, Teo, an inventor's son, no longer lives on a mountain, but he still has his mechanical flying wheelchair. The owl-shaped spirit of knowledge didn't even appear until the cartoon's second season, but here it makes a gratuitous cameo. Koh the Face-Stealer is moved to a completely separate plot in the Spirit World. And the traveling musicians from The Cave of Two Lovers are shunted to a scene of clumsily shoehorned exposition. The inclusion of characters and plot points that the cartoon didn't introduce this early in the story may be due to the fact that any show produced for Netflix exists under the hanging sword of capricious cancelation. Fire Lord Ozai, Princess Azula, Avatar Kuruk and even Fire Lord Sozin are shown much earlier than in the cartoon, consuming precious runtime in really unnecessary scenes that explain too much.

This is the main sin of this version of the story: it doesn't trust viewers' patience. The cartoon didn't  jump at the first chance to explain the backstories of Zuko, Iroh, Katara, or even protagonist Aang. It knew how to set up its mysteries and pay off its reveals at the right dramatic moment. The Netflix adaptation seems afraid of letting any question linger for more than two seconds. Part of this problem is caused by the quicker pacing, another part by the aforementioned risk of cancelation, and no small part by ongoing changes in viewers' preferences, namely the widespread misconceptions about what constitutes a plot hole. By this point in the story, the cartoon hadn't even revealed why the Air Nomads had been singled out for extermination in the first place.

What redeems the Netflix Avatar is the technical side of the storytelling. The combat choreography is flawless, and it takes care to represent the different styles of each elemental discipline. The degree of detail in set design is to be commended, as is the faithfulness of the casting (let it never be forgotten that the 2010 film is the whole reason why we have the word "racebending"). Even when the script leaves little space for emotional development, often replacing it with overstuffed lines of dialogue, the child actors do a fantastic job of portraying the anxieties of living through a world-changing crisis. Gordon Cormier understood the assignment perfectly: in the role of Avatar Aang, he knows how to channel with the same believability the enthusiasm of youth, the grief of absolute loneliness, and the paralyzing cluelessness of someone forced to grow up too soon. His antagonist Dallas Liu expresses the right mix of bravado barely concealing Prince Zuko's profound insecurity. As Katara, actress Kiawentiio displays both the tenderness of a gentle soul and the determination of someone who knows she can be much more. And Ian Ousley nails Sokka's brand of deadpan sarcasm every time.

In general, the visual effects are very good, except for a few acrobatic moves that look too obviously digital. And the makeup for Iroh and Bumi looks fake to the point of self-parody. As well-executed as this production is otherwise, it doesn't manage to justify its existence as something separate from the original cartoon. Unlike most reboots, this one retells exactly the same story viewers already know, which is always a recipe for unreachable expectations. Avatar: The Last Airbender set an incredibly high bar for fantasy animation aimed at children, and the openly confessed Game of Thrones-inspired grittification of this version doesn't make the story any more meaningful or exciting. It does fulfill more than satisfyingly the mandatory mission of giving fans something to show to newcomers that isn't the horrible 2010 film, but beyond that, it can't hope to match the first telling.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10.

POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.

Holiday Gift Guide: TV and Movies

Welcome to the final instalment of the annual Holiday Gift Guide where the flock takes a break from talking about all the awesome and not so awesome things to, well, talk about some more of the awesome things that you might want to consider for your Holiday shopping this year. Today, it's movies and TV!

A Quiet Place (recommended by Joe)

Maybe I just watch fewer movies than I used to now that I have two small kids, but A Quiet Place was genuinely unsettling and frightening. If you're not aware, it's the story of a family navigating some post apocalyptic future where making noise is a near immediate death sentence. The need for real silence makes any rustle, any deviance from otherwise excessive precautions a moment of terror. How do you raise children in that situation? How is it even possible? One of the best movies of 2018.

A Netflix Subscription specifically to watch the Dragon Prince (recommended by Adri)

So, obviously there are quite a few reasons one might give the gift of bottomless on-demand TV this holiday season, but I'm here to recommend what could be an impersonal gift for a very specific purpose: introducing your loved one to the magic of The Dragon Prince. This show, created by some of the writing team that brought us Avatar: The Last Airbender, delivers the same sense magic and adventure to a fantasy world that's more western in its sensibilities but still provides plenty of nuance and diversity. We follow Callum, step-son to the King, and his half brother Ezran, as they encounter an elf assassin named Rayla and get sucked in to a quest to save both their own kingdom and that of the dragons and elves from endless war. Throw in some entertaining critters and a complex, funny set of antagonists with realistic motivations, and you've got a recipe for immense success. There's only 13 episodes so far, making it perfect for an evening marathon, and while there's lots of plot threads left to explore by the end, at least you've got the entire of Netflix to follow up with (starting with She-ra!)

Avatar: the Last Airbender Blu-Ray (Recommended by Paul)

Perhaps this happened to you, it happened to me. When the first DVD sets of the MG/YA groundbreaking series Avatar: The Last Airbender came out, there were numerous complaints of bad pressings of DVDs, DVDs that would not work, and a general lack of good quality in the set. The blurry line problem annoyed me no end, even on a small television. For an amazing series with strong story and characters that introduced anime concepts to many views of all ages, it was a disappointing production.

Gleefully, now, A:TLA is now on Blu-Ray, and the production here is top-notch. No issues with physical or image quality now. The series holds up still as one of the best SFF series of any type, animation or otherwise. Like Harry Potter, the series does start and is primarily oriented toward MG and YA readers, but the deeper themes and ideas emerge as the series progresses and grows. Watch it.

Annihilation (recommended by brian)

When I consider gifts of films, I often lean on films that provoke discussion. Annihilation will provoke discussion. It’s full of mysteries, incomplete answers, and unsettling scenes. So many unsettling scenes. Whether you read the novel it’s based off of (closer to “inspired by”, really) or not, I can safely recommend Annihilation because it’s weird and unsettling without taking the unpleasant but all too frequent route of using sexualized violence to provoke a reaction. It’s closer to body horror, but it’s not that either. It’s poking on bits of your brain that expect things to look and act a certain way, but they don’t. Even if you don’t find it as unsettling as I did, there’s enough to talk about in the film that it makes a great gift.

Black Panther (recommended by Adri)

February 2018 might feel like it was fifty years ago, but I have it on good authority (i.e. the laws of time and space) that its been less than one solar orbit since Marvel's big-screen Wakandan adventure helped put Afrofuturism on the cultural radar of a whole lot of new people. Smart, visually stunning and totally rewatchable (seriously, this is the only movie of 2018 that I've watched more than once), Prince T'Challa's rise to become king and see off an external challenger who threatens the integrity of his ultra-high-tech, secretive African nation is the very definition of unmissable. Hopefully it will be shaping the direction of superhero and science fictional aesthetics - and Hollywood's opinion of what stories are worth telling - for years to come.

The Expanse Season 3 (recommended by Adri)

"We set out to #savetheexpanse. And it has been saved - but not for me..." Such is the experience of every Earther outside the select regions of the planet blessed with the original broadcast of The Expanse Season 3, which never found its way to TV or Netflix before the show switched over to Amazon Prime. If you're feeling lucky, however, the Blu-ray of this season is now available and reports suggest it's actually region free, making this dramatisation of the tail end of Caliban's War and opening of Abaddon's Gate just that little bit more accessible to anyone who hasn't seen it. In its book form, the Expanse has grown into one of my favourite science fiction series, and the first two seasons of the dramatisation brought the crew of the Rocinante and the wider solar system to life brilliantly with a perfect cast and strong adaptation. Despite being one of those aformentioned geographically unlucky fans, I've heard nothing but good things from season 3 as well, and I'm happy to recommend it for others to enjoy before I finally get my hands on it some time next year.

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.