Some friends and I decided to binge Avatar the Last Airbender when it hit Netflix last month, and as an added bonus decided to do a drunken Netflix party for the live action movie after we were all done.
Now, we knew it was bad going in.
Nothing prepared us for just how truly bad it was on so many levels.
Warning, this review has spoilers for the cartoon (though I’m assuming you’ve seen the show), and, I guess, for the movie, but if this review tells you anything, it’s don’t watch the movie, not even as a drunken late night there’s nothing better (trust me, there’s something better) to watch.
The movie is basically the first season of the TV show (around 8-9 hours), condensed into about 90 minutes. All of the broad brush strokes of the show are there, from the basic storyline to the characters.
Yet it gets just about everything wrong. It’s almost as if "M. Night" Shyamalan only watched The Ember Island Players, and wrote the movie based on that. And none of the actors was allowed to watch the show at all, based on their performances.
Let’s start with the characters.
Aang, the fun loving airbender rarely cracks a smile and isn’t shown playing around.
Katara looks like she’s constantly on the brink of crying, can’t act, and just looks wrong, and not just because she’s white. She’s missing the hair loops! Actually, bad hair choices are a constant, but we got here first. Plus it feels really awkward for her to be hitting on Aang.
Sokka is the most whiny Anakin Skywalker character since Hayden Christensen. Where are the jokes? Where are the sarcastic comments? Where is anything that makes Sokka the ‘normal’ member of the Aag Gang that we know and love? And back to the hair… they ALMOST got it right… Which makes it kinda worse? Cause it stands out when no one else is even close… except for Aag, who’s just bald. Hard to screw that up.
Zuko… What’s Zuko’s defining visual characteristic? The scar. What’s barely visible in the movie version? The scar. His face should be seriously messed up. The scar should be angry and livid. Zuko should be Angry, full of the fire of pain and shame and resentment, and the scar should be the visual symbol of it. Instead Zuko comes off as the second whiniest Anakin Skywalker character to grace the big screen since Hayden Christensen.
And look, I think Hayden Christensen gets a bad wrap. He wasn’t exactly working with stellar script writing, and Lucas is crap at dialogue. But since Episodes II and III, there’s no excuse for any teen character to come off this poorly.
Appa… good lord, that face will haunt my nightmares…
Momo was… there.
Fire Lord Ozai was also there… and didn’t need to be. The Emperor didn’t show up in Episode IV. Ozai also totally lacked any of the menace the cartoon version presented. Just… He was a rich dude in charge and… eh?
Commander Zhao also just came off like a chump. Seriously, where’s the menace? Where’s anything that looks like they’re actually a danger? Where’s the fact that the Fire Nation has spent the last CENTURY taking over the world? Also, why does Zhao spend all his time at the capital? Doesn’t he have an avatar to capture? Instead we get him briefing Ozai, and delivering tons of exposition (more on this below). You know what’s not menacing? Briefings.
General Iroh… Were they even trying? At all? There was a vague attempt to make most of the characters look at least sort of vaguely like their cartoon counterparts, but Iroh? Not even close. Also no focus at all on his love of tea. How do you set up season 3 (or the 3rd movie) without mentioning tea?
Princess Yue was… good. I think they actually got her look right. The actress was fine given how little she had
Then we get to all the random changes to the plot from the original that they changed for no good reason that I can tell. A couple of these really stuck out to me.
Master Pakku/Waterbending - Instead of the Push/Pull theory of waterbending, we get “acceptance” a kinda of wishy washy go with the flow line of BS that divorces it from the yin/yang of the ocean and moon spirits… Why? Yet another example of Shyamalan shooting himself in the foot.
Also where were all the anti-sexist themes that ran through the show and made it more than a cartoon? Sokka’s big character arc (one of them, anyway) was outgrowing his sexist attitudes. Katara had to fight Master Pakku to get him to teach her. Princess Yue was being married off to a young promising soldier. All cut out.
The Siege of Ba Sing Se from 600 days in the show to 100 days in the movie… Why? Instead of seeming impressive with a 600 day siege, this makes Iroh seem weak, and the Fire Nation toothless.
Aang has a dragon spirit guide instead of Roku. Why? The whole deal with the Avatar is that he has the power of all his past lives living inside of him. Another failure to properly set up future storylines.
Firebenders have to have some fire around them to do their bending. That’s a HUGE change from the show, and changes the entire nature of the relationship of the Fire Nation to the other nations of the planet. Was M. Night Shyamalan actively trying to make the Fire Nation as neutered as possible? Again, where’s the actual menace? This movie doesn’t even have a Phantom Menace, it’s got negative menace.
The drill hats of the Fire Nation for the assault on the Northern Watertribe’s city were brilliant. The lone moment of genuine amusement in the whole depressing movie. They’re ridiculous, but I really liked them.
That out of the way, the editing and pacing of the movie was completely off. For example, early in the movie when the Fire Nation comes to the southern water tribe’s village looking for Aang, Zuko threatens the village if Aang refuses to come with him. Aang says he’ll go instantly. Zuko barely even finished the threat before Aang agreed. No pause to look around, nothing. Then… THEN a firebender kicks some fire toward the villagers. WTF?
The interruption of the action of the movie for long boring moments of exposition were painful and frequent. For what should have been an action movie, there was way too much telling, and not showing. Most of the exposition seemed unhelpful and confusing on top of being delivered in the most boring way possible. Even the info scroll at the beginning of the movie was less helpful than the tv show introduction.
Since I’ve mentioned the “action” can I just say how unconvincing it was? Not even getting into the bending, just the basic martial arts were pretty terrible. When you can have the Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya perform one of the most brilliant sword fights ever captured on film, even though neither actor was a trained martial artist, when you can have someone like Jackie Chan do amazing things, when you have countless trained fight choreographers and martial artists there’s no excuse for such lousy fights on a martial arts film.
And the bending… I get it. It had to be CGI. But it was done in such a way as to look like CGI. No one bending ever looked like they were actually bending, they never interacted with it like it was real. They didn’t believe it, and so neither did anyone watching.
All in all, this was perhaps one of the worst movie experiences I’ve ever had. My friends and I all stopped the movie multiple times to vent at how bad it was, and to refill our respective drinks of choice, because there was no way we’d have made it through the movie sober.
I haven’t even gotten to the horrible racist casting choices. Making the Fire Nation all Indian/Middle Eastern looking while all the protagonists are white? Really?
REALLY? That's some messed up internalized racism there.
But going on about this is beating a dead horse.
In the end, the best thing any of us could say was the drill hats were funny, and Aasif Mandvi has a great voice, even if it was criminally used. The worst things (and it was really hard to pick) were Iroh, Sokka (his hair especially, but everything really), and Appa.
Save yourself, and never see this abomination.
