Avatar: The Last Airbender (1/2)

So I recently got into Avatar: The Last Airbender. With the impending release of M. Night’s newest flop, all of my friends were shaking with excitement over the live action title. Being that I never watched Avatar before, my friends demanded I watch it before the movie come out, so I finally gave it a shot. Now, Nickelodeon hasn’t been the same since I was a kid. Without shows like Doug, Hey Arnold and Rugrats before they were All Grown Up, the channel of my youth just isn’t entertaining with all the CG shows and bad acting jobs done by Disney Channel flunkies who think screaming about nothing is funny. I assumed Avatar would be no different, but I was quite wrong.

Starting off, the first book didn’t hook me yet. It was better than I expected, but wasn’t the groundbreaking television series I had heard it was. But it gave me enough to keep me interested in Books 2 and 3. What I found in this show was a well paced program that delved deep into the four elements with a cast of interesting characters. There were only a couple of characters I didn’t like in the show, but even those characters came around eventually. To be honest, I hated the primary antagonist, Zuko for the first two Books. It wasn’t until a certain event in Book 3 that I started to like him, but I loved him after that. Jet also was dislikeable for the first two seasons, but even he redeemed himself eventually.

Azula, Toph, and Iroh were among my three favorite characters. Azula was everything I ever wanted in a villain. She was cunning, she was sinister, she was sadistic, and she was crazy. She had her close allies, and she was very charismatic. She never lost sight of her goal, but she never obsessed over it like Zuko did. She was also patient, took her time, and didn’t take her losses too heavily. She of course wasn’t the only villain, but God was she a great villain. Toph was my favorite amongst the hero party, and Iroh was the best of the neutral characters. But I don’t need to go in depth on why I loved all three of them.

Another thing I loved was the way they physically and culturally portrayed the elements. I’ve been obsessed with the four primary elemental forces since I was a kid, and would like to someday incorporate them into my own projects for the industry I’m entering. As such, I really appreciated the fact that all four elements were extremely cool. I found myself making a difficult decision as to which was coolest. Air and Fire were pretty standard, but Water and Earth impressed me most. Earth benders for the most part with pretty standard, but I really liked the way they molded the earth into specific shapes to create specific objects. Alternatively, Water benders were really impressive because of the sheer amount of stuff they were capable of. Snow bending, Ice bending, Grass bending, Vine bending, Water Absorption, Sweat manipulation, Water Cutting, Mud bending, and Blood bending, just to give an idea of how versatile it was.

I also loved the way that the four nations were portrayed. Racially, the Fire Nation primarily resembled Japanese folk, Earth Kingdom represented Chinese, the Water Tribe favored Inuit, and the Air Nomads were based off of Tibetan monks. Each nation was represented by a different color, Fire being red, Earth green, Water blue and Air was yellow/orange. Their cultural aspects came in the form of their clothing, skin tone, hair color, hairstyle, architecture, military structure and general ways of city living. It really showed a separation between nations, but at the same time a cultural similarity between them, a theme that the show thrived heavily on.

My only complaints with the show were that Zuko was so dislikeable for a majority of the show. Aside from that, there were a couple of specific plot points that should have been developed better. The final battle, while exciting should have been longer. Also the final attack I felt was a bit of a cop out considering the training Aang was supposed to be enduring throughout the show. The characters interacted well with each other and various relationships were formed and dissolved differently throughout the show. The heroes were fun, the villains were great, and all of the additional characters helped move along the show in a fun and interesting manner. But how did the movie fair?