Well I promised I would post a review of Avatar: The Last Airbender so here it is. Now, I will do my best to not give away anything but if you’ve seen the series, then you already know everything :)

(Proceed with caution….and grab a drink its rather lengthy!)

Now first off, I am a huge fan of the series, and albeit I have not seen every single episode, I’ve seen a vast majority of them (before you start sending hate mail don’t worry, I’m catching up on them (gotta love netflix) So anyways…I had been anticipating this movie’s release since I first heard about it and although so many people were skiddish about M. Night Shyamalan directing it, I was actually glad. A lot of movies he does end up getting bad reviews, but they’re not bad reviews because his work is bad, I believe they are bad reviews because the critics who gave the bad reviews just didn’t “understand” his work. I personally don’t think its fair to give someone a bad review just because you didn’t understand it, however so many people chalk up them not being able to understand it as bad writing, bad film work, ect.  Unfortunately this movie is not exempt, I hear it is getting torn apart by critics and other reviewers and you know why?  Yep..you guessed it, they didn’t understand it! This movie is not like your normal remakes where people just take the source and put their own spin on it and show it they way they wanted to (example: Dragonball: Evolution). Nope, this movie actually followed the series to the letter. So if you went to see it, and had never seen the series, then you would probably be a little bit confused.

I was thoroughly impressed. From the opening scene that had “Book One: Water” appearing on the screen thats when my excitement began. I’ve seen many filmmakers take anime and video game remakes and butcher it by trying to do too much of “their own thing”, which as an aspiring filmmaker myself I can respect, but you kind of spit in the face of the fans when you overdo it. M. Night Shyamalan did not do this, he followed the book to the letter and I think did an excellent job of cramming the entire first season into one movie and I hope more than anything he pumps out two more (Book Two and Three) Now I will tell you before I get into the negatives that I THOROUGHLY enjoyed the movie, and yes I did go see it in 3D, however there wasn’t much 3D to the movie but you cannot blame M. Night Shyamalan or any of the other people who made this movie because it “was not shot in 3D” it was simply converted later.  When you do not “shoot” something in 3D it’s not going to be the awesome 3D where everything comes flying out of the screen at you all the time. However it did improve the quality of the movie, the visual effects looked astounding! It was fully digital..but I digress…let me move on to the very minor problems I had with the film

Characters!  The most important part pf any story is the main protagonist(s) and antagonist(s) (heros/villains) as well as their companion characters. Now they did an AWESOME job of making the characters look and sound like the ones in the series, I’m serious, AMAZING job. However the character development could have used a little bit of work.

Aang: he wasn’t as playful and free spirited or act like a “child” in the movie as he does in the series. In the series he was always playful and you could really see that he was still a child that had this great responsibility forced onto him.  In the movie, he looks like a child, but doesn’t act like one as he should be. I do not know if this lay at fault in the writing, the director, or the actor, it’s hard to say. But still other than that he did a great job at playing Aang.

Sokka: Well, for those of you who saw the series, he was the comedy relief, always goofing off and getting into trouble or being scolded by Katara. In this movie, he was not comical at all, he tries in one of the very first scenes but it lacks enthusiasm. He actually played a bit too angry, and although his character is that of a strong warrior type, his character was not angry all the time. That is how Zuko’s character is..but we’ll get to him in a minute.  Again I don’t know where the fault lies here either, but given these minor faults I don’t want to give the movie a bad wrap because it has to be EXTREMELY difficult to physically “act” as “anime characters” as they can be drawn doing crazy things and having insane expressions on their faces that aren’t quite humanly possible without a little CGI lol and that usually looks cheesy so I’m glad they didn’t go that route.

Katara:  No complaints here actually, the girl playing Katara did an AMAZING job, I could get the same feel from her as I did the character in the series. You can sense and feel the caring nature of her, and the balance. She was always the balance of the group, and would keep people straight and on the right path. You can even see that she cares for Aang dearly and is protective of him, and I’m not talking about by scenes where the two are together or anything and words are spoken I mean by her acting, her facial expressions ect. There was one scene (and I wont give anything away don’t worry) that she comes in and helps Aang and this was shortly after she fought somebody and gets injured, but when she comes into the room and helps him you can just see it on her face.  If I was going to say any of the actors hit the nail on the head with their character it was her.

Zuko: Well this guy did a very good job also. If you know him from the series, he is always angry, very angry because he is trying to reclaim his “honor”. He did a good job at that too however a touch more angry would not have hurt. The only real problem I have is the fact that the scar on his face should have been MUCH more noticeable than it was. Now I’ve seen people make comments about the ethnicity of him and everyone else from the Fire Nation and said that this is not right and not how it should be. Well I say to those people you’re wrong. In the series there is no “Ethnicity” it’s just the different nations, and you cannot go by the “color at which the characters were drawn“. They did an awesome job at separating the different kingdoms the way they did and I believe they did it this way so you could easily tell them apart just by looking at them, regardless of what clothes they were wearing. This was excellently done by Shyamalan in my book because when you’re dealing with anime its very hard to get actors to fill the roles you want that match the characters, and when you’re dealing with whole “nations” that are separated by elements, this was a smart way to separate them so you could easily determine who was who. I would bet that even if you never saw the series I think you could differentiate between them.

Iroh: This is another character that I have NO complaints from, he did an excellent job and matter of fact, he did so excellent of a job I really don’t have much more than this to say about the character lol.

Toph Bei Fong: What about Toph you say? ..well sorry to burst your bubble but she wasn’t in the movie, but of course if you saw the series you know that she doesn’t come in until Book Two: Earth.  Soooo M. Night Shyamalan screw all the critics who give you a bad review. PLEAAAAASE make two and three!!  Especially two! Toph is my favorite character :)

Now this last and final problem I have with the movie is probably the worst problem I have with it…..the pronunciations…they pronounce Aang’s name wrong, and even pronounce Avatar wrong.  They pronounce Aang’s name “Ong” and pronounce Avatar as “Ah-vatar” this really irked me when I was watching the movie. I read that they pronounced Sokka’s name wrong too but I don’t remember, if so I didn’t catch it. I had a major problem with this until I read something from the IMDB website and found out why he did it and (although I wish he didn’t do it) I’m actually ok with it as his reason for doing it was to show respect for the “roots” of the show’s culture.  Here I’ll quote the page and section:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0938283/

According to M. Night Shyamalan, the “mispronunciation” of the names of some of the characters (Aang, Sokka, Avatar, etc) is due to the fact that he wished to ‘honor the source material’ and use the Asian pronunciation

Well all in all I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. After leaving the theater I felt satisfied and although there wasn’t as much 3D as I had hoped, I wasn’t mad that I spent the extra money, I was actually glad that I did because I got a far better experience (but I’m stickler for audio and video quality). After watching the movie it left me wanting more, to the point that I’d almost go see it again! I hope that M. Nighy Shyamalan decides to make at least one more if not two more. Unfortunately all the naysayers out there who rip this movie and give it bad reviews and trash it are going to be the ones who destroy any chances of that happening. Now, although I am an avid fan of the series, I try my best to give an unbaised review and I think I have done just that.

Comments, Thoughts, Additions, Suggestions, Hate Mail ect are all welcome as always!

-Shawn-