They Finally Dropped that New Aang Ish: Beautiful Gowns & Elements

Small confession that won’t surprise anyone: I can’t really mess with the live-action Avatar show on Netflix. Don’t confuse me not watching it as saying it’s terrible the same way we shouldn’t confuse something not being as atrocious as the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie as the same thing as being “good.”

What I’m saying essentially is that I watched a few episodes and realized I had to grab my clothes out of the dryer. If you told me that Toph got her eyesight in the second season, I couldn’t exactly call you a liar (nor would I act all the way surprised). But animated Last Airbender ish? Ok, you have my attention. Grown-up Aang and grown-up Team Avatar? Now we gettin’ into love language territory. Paramount finally dropped the movie that some of God’s chosen leaked months ago, but since I’m a law-abiding citizen, this was my first look at it. I know some folks, including myself at one point, were disappointed they didn’t put this in the theater. Gorgeous looking grown up Airbender shenanigans, I would’ve been there in the theater.

I would’ve been lightweight disappointed in the theater. These projects are always a little weird. You have the before (the OG Last Airbender series) and the after (The Legend of Korra), and we won’t even touch about the comics / graphic novels. So, what story do you tell when we not only know where you came from but where things ultimately end up? It can be done, it’s been done so many times before. I wish this one could’ve been done better.

What’s Good in these Avatar Streets?

You remember the part about it being gorgeous, right? Yeah, it’s a different process, digital component, etc. than Legend of Korra. But it looks modern and showy and projected in a way worthy of the four elements. If you pretend you’re just watching clips on YouTube without any context, the actions scenes can be pretty good. They show *some* new bending techniques and animations that are exciting (and lightweight terrifying). And you never hear me tell you no if you ask if I want to see my homies back in action again, especially when they look like this. Katara is still the mother hen, Toph is still above it all and cocky, Sokka still got jokes and often is the joke, and Zuko’s brooding to grounded ratio is about 30 to 70 now since he became Fire Lord. It’s both refreshing and maybe a little disappointing to find everyone right back where we left them.

So why is this not titled, “everyone go watch Aang do his thang, right now?” Because it’s kinda…boring? The story is uninspiring and thematically travels the same ground we left in the OG series. Aang discovers a long lost airbender, frozen much the same way he was. But he’s even older than Aang, much older, connecting him to a world Aang only has glimpses of through his Avatar line. Tagah, the aformentioned airbender (voiced by Dave Bautista) is powerful and an enthusiastic mentor to Aang, guiding him towards a McGuffin that could bring more airbenders into the world and…look, I ain’t gotta spoil anything for y’all to see where this is going right. We’ve seen Legend of Korra. Tagah ain’t in Rush Hour 3, nahmean.

It’s not that Tagah isn’t an interesting or compelling character, it’s the theme of Aang’s loneliness and his desire to do anything to bring more airbenders into the world that is a bit half-baked. Because we know, in real time, he will not succeed. Them Benders don’t pop until Korra Season 3 fam. So instead of making something that could bridge or foreshadow something we know is coming in the next series, we get a bottle episode (movie) that plays more like an elsewhere story more than some definitive movie. And that would be fine as a short story like tales of Aang or some shit. But a full feature length movie that kind of means nothing feels, dare I say, pointless. Except just beautifully animating some of our favorite folks.

And speaking of our favorite folks, they are instantly recognizable. That’s a good and a bad thing. If you, by chance, never got into Avatar, you won’t get half the jokes or references from the characters. The familiarity is built on years and years of watches and rewatches of perhaps the greatest cartoon series of the western world. But if you are a long-time fan, then you know how the story continues in Korra and halfway through the movie, you realize the story is kind of pointless. There’s no extra insight, no revelations, no connective tissue and our favorite folks are given so little to do.

Still Stuck in Ice

I think there are three true action sequences from Team Avatar in the whole film and one of them is not an actual fight. But even those sequences get more screen time than the crew actually talking, interacting with each other, the world, etc. I truly feel that they should have leaned all the way in on this and made it a series. There is no Zuko companion quests equivalent here. Just the squad to show up, share a joke, check in with their archetype and then disappear again while Aang goes through his midlife crisis.

The biggest missed potential may be a group of radicals called the Denied. A crew of fighters who have felt left behind as non-benders and have taken an extreme measure to even the playing field. There are clear parallels here to the Equalists in the Legend of Korra. But once their involvement in the big conflict is resolved, they basically fuck off again, never to be seen. The resolution doesn’t make them repent or have a change of heart. It kind of just kicks them out of a moving vehicle. Which would be fine if there was something shown that to suggest something was brewing that would later explode in Legend of Korra Season 1. But again, there wasn’t time for that and, therefore, deemed not worth revisiting.

Look, you’ve seen the trailer, and there are some great looking action sequences. If you want an excuse to check in with Team Avatar, this will do until we get more (or before you pick up the graphic novels). But it fails in many of the ways we fell in love with The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra (fam, do not get me started, we ride for Avatar Korra in this house, always and fucking forever). There is so much more Avatar to go around. Let’s hope the next time we see Aang its more story driven and less, cash-grabby.

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