The Last Airbender, commonly called the 'ultimate 3D movie of the summer', but then again what isn't these days? Anything to sell tickets right? Anyway, I am a fan of the animated NickToons series: Avatar: The Last Airbender so of course I watched all four books from the first day the series was released to the very end. The animated show is great, it has a wonderful plot and amazing animation but the movie, unfortunately fails to even compete.
When I first walked into the theatre to see the movie I was so excitied! I couldn't believe they made one of my favorite animated shows into a movie, and 3D at that! So, as you could imagine, when I sat down in my seat I was bubbling. The movie started off like the animated series did: Water, Earth, Fire, Air etc. The effects were great and I enjoyed it until... they pronounced Sokka's name wrong(in fact, in this movie a correctly pronouced name was quite rare). I continued to watch, slightly disappointed in Nickelodeon's over look of this 'seemingly' minor defect.
My disappointment turned into utter shame of even walking in the door was the movie progresses. They skipped parts & characters, added new things and changed character designs willy-nilly. Katara doesn't have her 'hair-loopies' (SOKKA WORD), you can barely see Zuko's scar(if he even has one), Uncle Iroh's beard isn't puffy and gray like it was in the series and Admiral Zhou(?) doesn't have his huge sideburns. Also, Monk Giatso(?) is black(he was an old white man in the animated series for those who don't know) and the Fire Nation is like anicent Rome. They skipped meeting Haru and Suki. The entire Kyoshi Warriors episode was cut but they did manage to put in a small segement about Aang(pronouced as Ong, like 'wrONG') encouraging the Earthbenders to fight back aganist Fire Nation tyranny(however in Haru's episode it was Katara who did the encourage speech, not Aang). They also decided to create a whole new segement about Katara, Sokka(pronouced as So-ka), and Aang go around and free random Earth Kingdom towns(which is exactly what Sokka says NOT to do in the animated series). By this time I just wanted to get up and walk out the door.
So they FINALLY get to the Northern Water Tribe and surprisingly things went okay until I noticed how Master Paku(?) didn't put up a fight when Katara enrolled in his lessons. The Princess(who I think was played by Carlie Casey from Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide)'s name was pronouced correctly for a change but they added an extra scene with Sokka and her on a tower which becomes the new soot scene. So they go to the spiritual place and Zhou and Zuko find them and Zhou kills the koi fish blah blah blah but then I learn something new! Firebenders in movies can't make their own fire like they can in the animated series! Oh my Goodness!
Over all, I viewed it as a low budget youtube parody of the series with good special effects and they had enough special effect programs to do the fight scenes and everything they skipped. I'd love to see how they make up for all of this in the next book if they aren't already overwhelmed by the flaming they probably got and are still getting from enraged Avatar fans all over the globe.
I'm giving this movie 2 1/2 stars because although they skipped most of book one they did fit a good size of it in the film and the plot still held as they weaved their way in and out of sync with the animated series. The special effects were also pretty good but the missing important parts, pronouciation of names incorrectly, new character and set design, skipping of important characters which do appear later on and adding of new scenes is something I cannot forgive, especially if the actual network who produced the series had a hand in this.
My advice? If you haven't seen the animated series, go ahead and see this movie to get a quick bearing on the entire plot but if you have seen the animated series don't waste your money on this. Go see something better.
-JWolf the Rogue
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