Format: Streaming video from Paramount on Fire!
Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the greatest television shows ever made. I say this with no conditions or reservations. The show is smart, the characters are deep and believable. There are moments of great humor and moments of real tragedy, and it depicts a world in terrible conflict, with young kids at the center of it—kids who are essentially charged with solving that world-spanning conflict on their own. It is (my opinion) the best animated show in history, and without qualification, a show that I think everyone should watch. So I was very excited to see that Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender was a thing. I was also happy to see that it received just enough of a limited release for it to qualify for awards season.
It would be impossible to give a comprehensive look at the Avatar universe, but a quick primer will help with understanding the movie. In this world, there are essentially four nations, each one based on one of the four classic elements. Some people in each of those nations—the Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, the Air Nomads, and the Earth Kingdom—have the ability to “bend” those elements, something akin to performing magic with those elements. Overseeing all of this is the Avatar, an element bender who has the ability to learn all four elements and who is charged with maintaining balance. When each avatar dies, the spirit is reincarnated in the person of another bender, and the title rotates from someone in one nation to the next.
The show, which takes place over three seasons, concerns the attempt of the Fire Nation to take over the world. The latest avatar is Aang, who is 12 when the show starts. On the run from the Fire Nation, Aang winds up frozen in an iceberg at the south pole, and is eventually thawed by a couple of kids from the local Water Tribe. Turns out he had been missing for 100 years, and when he awakens, all of his people, the entirety of the Air Nomads, have been killed.
Avatar Aang picks up a little more than a decade or so after the close of the television show. Aang (Eric Nam) is close to 30 and is with Katara (Jessica Matten), who originally rescued him from the iceberg and taught him how to bend water. Aang has come to the realization that when he dies, the Air Nomads die with him, something that is brought into sharp focus when he is attacked by a group who call themselves The Denied. This group feels marginalized because they do not have the ability to bend elements. They believe that because most of the power in the world and all of the leadership of each people falls to element benders, they have no ability to advance.
The reality of Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender is that if you aren’t familiar with the television show, no amount of my talking about it is going to get you to understand exactly what is happening. For those who have watched the show, saying that the writers have nailed the personalities of characters like Sokka and Zuko doesn’t need any additional explanation. If you haven’t seen the show, this won’t mean anything. The same is true if I say that the fan service includes an appearance of the cabbage merchant. You’ve either smiled at that, or you’re confused by it.
That is the biggest issue with Avatar Aang: it has a built-in audience, but not much ability to attract a new audience. The Avatar universe is good enough and strong enough that it’s not going to lose fans. The only Avatar viewers who won’t watch this will be the ones who don’t have access to Paramount, at least for now.
And that’s genuinely frustrating. If you have watched Avatar: The Last Airbender (the show, not the horrifyingly bad movie which fans pretend doesn’t exist), you’ve already seen this or you’re trying to figure out how to see it. If you haven’t seen the show, you have no reason to watch this. But, and I mean this sincerely, if you haven’t seen the show, you should watch it as soon as you possibly can. Seriously, the show is a masterpiece without a single down episode. The characters are rich and deep, the writing is brilliant, and it touches on difficult subjects in a way that young kids can connect with and understand.
Why to watch Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender: The Last Airbender is one of the greatest pieces of worldbuilding ever made.
Why not to watch: If you’re a sad person who never saw the show, you won’t find much here that will make sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment