Long ass review of the Aang film, an animated sequel to Avatar the Last Airbender, dedicated to @yvenin (you don't have to read it all, but she does.)
Aang is looking for airbending artifacts. He's upset at being the last airbender and spends a lot of time solo. Katara's there sometimes. Ummmm there are some naughty nonbenders who cause Aang trouble. Aang stumbles upon a second last airbender named Tagah, who's, what wouldĀ you know, also frozen in an iceberg. Tagah's a survivor of a war from a million billion years ago, and is horrified to learn that Aang's the only remaining airbender. Tagah tells Aang about a secret spirit island with a magic staff that can grant airbending to anyone. Aang invites his friends: Toph, Sokka, Zuko, and Katara. Aang platonically loves Tagah. Toph and Zuko are sexually attracted to Taga. Katara distrusts Tagah. Who's in the right here? They go through a dangerous storm to get to the spirit island to get the magic staff. They go into the spirit world at some point, they go to the beach that makes you old (from M. Night Shamalin's beach that makes you old), Taiki Waititi is there and he gives me a migraine. Tagah reveals that he hates all non-airbenders and wants to use the staff for evil, and he kills everyone. Katara brings them back from the dead. Aang and Tagah absorb positive and negative energy from the staff and turn into big glowing boys and fight. Aang starts to absorb too much negative energy. But he's okay! Tagah gets defeated. There's a short pre-credit scene where they find more wild Sky Bison. This is the best scene in the movie. Review below:Ā
The premise was an odd choice for a midquel. Textbook rule for midquelsĀ is they explore a story that either you don't know the conclusion of, or gives an alternate perspective/backstory for the sequel. Finding another airbender is a little shaky, we already know that Aang's descendants are the only remaining airbenders until Legend of Korra S2, we know whoever this is, they won't make it. This isn't reeeeeeally a deal breaker for me, though its odd they didn't pick one of the other mysteries of the show, still you could still make a good sequel to Aang's adventures without touching LoK. We'll try to meet this film where it's at.
I don't have much non-nitpicky critique of ATLA. Maybe it's nostalgia, but honestly it just feels like it says what it wants to say, has some lovable characters and a straightforward plot, neat influences, and doesn't overstay its welcome. Many try to replicate its tone, I haven't seen anyone succeed yet. Korra is imperfect, but I'd still give it like a 6 out of 10. It's alright. I prefer it to most of the other animated series inspired by ATLA, I think there are some legitimate innovations to the premise of ATLA here, but I could happily go my entire life without ever watching it again.Ā
Tonally, I might've expected the movie felt like something between ATLA and LoK, instead it feels like ATLA and LoK exist on a spectrum, and the Aang film is past LoK. It removes some of the things I liked about ATLA, removes some of the changes I appreciated about Korra, and emphasizes things I disliked about LoK.Ā
Tagah, Aang, and Airbending
First- Aang's central conflict works fine. ATLA didn't see a chance to give Aang space to process the loss his entire people and what that means for him, amidst the war and rushing to master the elements onĀ a tight timeframe. Now, as we've had time to let the Fire Nation conflict settle, of course it will reopen old wounds. He sees the world slowly recover and come back together, changing into something closer to the world he remembers from his childhood. But it's not the world he remembers, it never will be, his culture and people are the one thing that will never return.Ā He couldn't fix everything.
But Aang discovers spite of it all he's not the last Airbender, he's finally met another person who can share this special part of his life. He's overjoyed... but slowly, gradually, things feel off. The other Airbender has been twisted by war and hate, he's perverted the art and culture sacred to Aang. This story is almost... a rehashed version of Katara's arc in the S3 Bloodbender episode, the Puppetmaster.
The Puppetmaster is one of the most memorable episodes. It's dark, it's compelling, it's interesting worldbuilding. Katara struggles with love and grief and identity in a heart-wrenching way. Aang and Katara's bond comes from their similarities: both victims of genocide, both have had their most important people violently taken from them, both are desperate to connect with someone who shares a piece of that lost culture, and ultimately both are forced to balance idealism with ugly reality. I really like how their arcs echo each other, and how in spite of similar experiences they come from different places. Aang helps Katara reconnect with hope for a better world, and she helps him through grief because she and Sokka have been through something similar and have had time to process it. [put a pin in that]
An arc for Aang that echoes Katara's Puppetmaster (& maybe the southern raiders) arc could work! There's a few simple satisfying conclusions we could reach: let go of the past, balance your duties, there are no incorruptible good or purely evil elements, old love reborn as new love, etc, etc, the original series touched on a lot of these, nothing wrong with exploring any of these concepts in a deeper way with another character. Yet, the odd writing and wonky worldbuilding just takes me out of it.
So, Tagah the Airbender villain.
None of the bending nations are a monolith, yet they're all interconnected. The nations' "flaws" aren't in opposition to their virtues, but extensions of them (fire as life/drive vs. anger/destruction, earth as perseverance vs. rigidity)
We've had one Airbender villain before, Zaheer, in S3 LoK, and he's great! Zaheer embodies Airbending philosophy taken to an extreme. He's a compelling character with a full arc and clear motivation. Anarchist beliefs compliment his newly-found abilities as he violently dethrones and murders corrupted leaders (not without reason). He grieves the loss of his loved one before realizing that love and earthly connection was the only thing holding him back. (Not to mention he didn't grow up an Airbending monk, it's justifiable he might have some not-so-monkley ideas)
Alternatively, look at the puppetmaster Hamma, Hamma chooses hatred of others over love for her people. Bloodbending is an extension of the healing aspects of waterbending, in the sense that you intimately connect with someone not to help them, but to control them. Katara's disgust with Hamma isn't just that she's hurt innocent people, but that Katara sees darkness in Hamma that's reflected in herself, both in the ability to bloodbend, and her own hunger to avenge what the war had taken from her.Ā
Tagah is also an airbending villain, he's also a "mentor" to Aang, but his philosophy is pretty much diametrically opposed to everything Aang, the other monks, (and even Zaheer), stood for. He's kind of racist/nationalist, even when he's "good" he comes off as quite cold, he's bloodthirsty, he's disloyal, needlessly mean and taking personal shots at Aang. Airbending seems to just be an arbitrary power he happens to have. Sure, Both Aang and Tagah grieve the loss of their Airbender brothers, but like... Aang was pushed into a role too young and ran away (narrowly avoiding certain death), meanwhile Tagah was a traitor who got put into an ice bubble because he was a nasty boy. Now, I don't WANT Tagah to be some carbon copy of Hamma or Zaheer, but I want him to have /some/ deeper connection to Aang other a barebones "we have the same superpower" thing. They're from the same bending nation, but it doesn't feel like they're from the same /culture/, not the way Katara and Hamma were. The only thing that really connects him to Aang is both having the power to control wind, being human popsicles, feeling a little lonely.
Moreover, Tagah doesn't have any charisma. He's somewhere between calm and cold when we meet him, and then he becomes a twist villain with unclear morals and just an unnecessarily mean and emotional guy. Not every villain has to be a complicated tortured soul. Ozai had zero redeeming qualities, but he didn't need to! He's a genocidal fascist monster, we are never asked to empathize with him. On the flip side, LoK had quite a few villains who, again, had interesting motifs and empathetic moments, and so we understand why Korra wanted to hear them out. Sure, we can't expect Aang to be objective given his longing for other Airbenders, but we the audience should feel cautiously optemistic about Tagah too, right? Wouldn't that make the twist all the more impactful? Isn't that the whole purpose of having a twist vilain?
The singular scene that worked for me was Tagah demonstrating the airbending move that can only be done with two benders. Okay, cool, but imagine how meaningful it would be if they actually had a believable relationship. Oh, his arrow looked cool, too.Ā
Well we could talk about the worldbuilding and lore of ATLA all day. But you know, I wouldn't really give a hoot about the lore without the characters and relationships. Good character writing can make aĀ dogwater plot bearable. Character writing was one of the greatest strengths of ATLA, a flaw in LoK, and a major weakness of this film.
Aang and Katara... Unpopular opinion: in ATLA, I thought they were sweet, I was happy when they got a break from being child soldiers and had fun riding on animals or dancing in caves or doing ecoterrorism. Even if you didn't care for the romantic subplot, their deep friendship was still a core element of the story.
I think you COULD criticize the film for reducing a strong female character to a love interest,Ā you wouldn't be wrong, but in a backhanded defense, pretty much every character got reduced to one trait. Katara has more agency than Sokka, Zuko, and Toph, but only in the sense that she isn't fully a background-prop, and, uh, expresses an opinion. Of course, none of her actions really affect the events that transpire in a meaningful way. Except necromancy in that one scene I guess? You know, it was really unclear.
Throughout the film, Aang and Katara talk AT each other, not TO each other. Aang monologues about what it's like to be the last Airbender. Katara's developed amnesia about, basically, her entire backstory, and can't provide a word of comfort. This is the same Katara who knew Aang for like three days and brought him out of supernatural destruction mode moments after he'd seen the corpse of his father-figure, pulled him through his grief when Appa was lost, etc. Like, she's the one person who probably really gets what you're going through, she's the last southern waterbender! Or when she has misgivings about Tagah, you know, she went through something similar with Pakku (sexist waterbending teacher) and Hamma. Nothing??? Neither even has to change the other's mind, just acknowledgement or something.
Backstory amnesia aside, this conversation is just so funny when like Aang is monologuing about being the last airbender right? And how he alone has to be the only airbender ever? And like buddy you're talking to the one person who would gladly help you out with that!!! I thought that was just wonky writing, but apparently Katara was supposed to be pregnant in a few drafts of the film. Which like, thematically that fits with letting go of the past (Tagah) and looking forward to the new (Tenzin & co), but it wouldn't really fit the film in a practical sense. Either Katara is far along and has to sit out on all the action/adventure scenes (which would weaken the movie, she's also the only non-Airbender with any kind of conflict), or if she wasn't showing/went along anyways, then we have to accept that Aang not only endangered the lives of his four best friends, one of whom wouldn't be in peak fighting condition, but also his unborn child, which would make an already "eeeeugh" decision even worse. In general, it's a bummer in other media when the moment a character becomes a mom she can't have adventures when the same doesn't go for dads, but in the context of this story, I see why that was cut. So, that awkward conversation was just kind of left in with no acknowledgement or conclusion.Ā
While Aang, Katara, and Tagah are one-note characters with goals and motivations, we also see Toph, Sokka, and Zuko tag along and become, just... one-note characters. Okay- an ensemble cast in a film is hard! You can't just dedicate 21 minutes to exploring them and then move on. I've seen complaints about excluding Iroh or Suki, and it would've been nice to see those characters, what would they have done? Rob Aang's three friends of the few lines they already have?
I don't love how Sokka and Toph are written. Toph gets off... okay. She's just a more a straightforward character, she's from day 1 confident and blunt. Here, she gets a few almost-funny lines and she gets to be horny about Tagah, nothing especially offensive. Sokka, on the other hand, is surprisingly nuanced and I rarely see him fully pinned down outside of the original, and never replicated. Like, paired beside Aang and Katara he's deeply cynical, but he's also comic relief. But he's also legitimately funny to his friends, but he's also a grouch. He's empathetic compared to Toph and sometimes even compared to Katara. He's very intelligent, but sometimes acts like a doofus. He wants to be a leader but he might be the most insecure of our protagonists.... You get what I'm saying!? Reducing Sokka to a background character, he can't be put in the "funny guy" box like Toph, nor the "straight man" (comedic role) like Zuko. Since Aang and Katara aren't allowed to be silly or in this film, that burden has been placed on Sokka.Ā And God he just gets the worst, corniest lines.
Zuko, I think much like Katara there's wasted potential here in terms of his relationship with Aang, reflecting on his own past misjudgments and mistakes. Aaron Ehaz (former writer for ATLA) had conceptualized Zuko as continuing to follow in his Uncle's footsteps as a therapeutic presence for his friends, like we see shades of during the tail end of ATLA. Zuko wouldn't really /need/ a dramatic arc if this were the case in the same way Iroh didn't need an arc in ATLA: their epiphanies happened before the start of the show. Like Katara, Zuko's arc in ATLA is a mirror of Aang's, how cool would it be to see Aang at his lowest, and Zuko at his most peaceful, the one extending the helping hand like his uncle once did? As is, Zuko is.... fine. He doesn't do much, but I'll admit his lines got a chuckle out of me. I think the lines they shoved into Sokka and Toph's mouths kind of felt like being yapped at by a small dog, but Zuko can't really be that same zany comic relief guy(tm) so they're forced to write him with SOME restraint, so he ended up basically as that one quiet kid who's secretly hilarious.Ā
I want to wrap back around to Aang, who in spite of being the protagonists, suffers from just not really having much personality. Sure, it's natural Aang isn't a goofy kid anymore, but I wish we got to see him mature into a kind, considerate, if still imperfect and grieving adult. Obviously we wouldn't have much of a movie if he never made mistakes, but his actions past the first act just feel arbitrary. He trusts Tagah because the plot, he endangers his friends because plot, he gets angry because plot. Aang has two core conflicts in the film. One, is he's struggling to balance a longing for the past with a hope for the future. Fitting given where he is in life. His secondary conflict, is thisā¦ lone wolf thing going on, where he has to learn to trust his friends? I /think/ they're trying to draw from his "I have to face the firelord alone" line from the ATLA finale, or maybe the time he briefly considered visiting Roku's island alone on the solsticeā¦? The film opens with us learning Aang's gotten into the habit of running off from his wife and friends to go look for Airbending artifacts solo. Later still, he trusts Tagah over caring that he's endangered his friends: I think the conflict they're going for here is that Aang needs to realize he has a life outside of Air Nomadhood. Andā¦ Aang already knew that before the start of ATLA. Katara, Sokka, and Toph had never left their respective nations, but Aang literally had friends all over a peaceful world none of the rest of the cast ever got to know. He doesn't just mourn the Air Nomads, he mourns what all four nations used to mean to him. WHY would he need to learn "there's more to being an Air Nomad than just bending"? Or "trust your friends even if they're not Air Nomads"????? He ALREADY knew all that. Then, his conflict is expanded on when he's forced to choose between the safety of his friends and following Tagah. You're really telling me the boy who gave up all the cosmic power in the universe for a girl he liked, who nearly sacrificed his sacred ideals to never take a life in rage while grieving over the loss of his bison, would willingly endanger his cherished friends because a guy he met two days ago told him to? ATLA's Aang was just never selfish in that way: just the opposite, his "loner" moments were because he cared about his loved ones, not because he was careless. We never see why that would change as he matures. The resolution isn't much more than Aang going, Oh better say hi to Zuko, Oh better ask Sokka if my plan was okay, not that either of these people can say anything that would get in the way of the plot. It's like ticking off a box. Okay, Aang sought reassurance, we're justified in making him do something stupid again. I want to care about this person I grew up with, I want to see how he's changed and how he's still the kid we know and love, I want to see how his bond with his friends deepened in the decade after the war. And he's the protagonist of the movie, by far has the most lines, why doesn't he get to beā¦ Like, a person?
How would we fix this? It's hard for a film to develop an entire ensemble. An entirely different plot where the central focus wasn't the relationship between Aang and a new baddie could've allotted more time for the people we already know, but I do want to try and meet the movie where it's at. A lot of things could be cut. Do we really need Taiki Watiti's improv? Every movie needs a slow moment to breathe, have a slower moment that advances character, atmosohere, something simple, outside the bare bones of the plot. There isn't a shortage of good, contemporary children/teen adventure films that succeed in pacing themselves with a big cast of memorable characters, even if not all of them play a major role. Into the spiderverse, Kpop demon hunters, encanto, how to train your dragon, so on, I don't even personally love/like every one of those examples, but I remember the characters... The credits art of the Gaang having fun made me more emotional than like... pretty much anything else.Ā
I think ultimately, I just wish the dialogue was... good? Like.... it's just not good! You can get away with a lot of OOC stuff and arbitrary motivations and plot holes if the characters talk like themselves. Like get better at writing I dunno???? Have more conversations? Read the lines out loud after you write them???? I'm not an english teacher.
In general I'm in favor of a liiiiiittle less worldbuilding, especially in fantasy, and letting the audience fill in the gaps. That's what fanfiction is for. I loathed the good/evil conflict of S2 LoK, it actively undermined a lot of the Eastern Philosophy that the original series espoused. I don't think this movie is QUITE as bad, more just... unnecessary.Ā
Tagah's backstory ate up a lot of time. Ok, Aang's not special for being in a bubble. There's a staff that can give or take bending. There was some other war ten thousand years ago. cool. Nothing interesting, nothing of consequence is added to Avatar's world. And there's powerscaling. (Lok issue too) Bending's being given and taken away willy-nilly like Dr. Suess's starbelly sneeches. I know ATLA had energybending, but still, that was kind of a freak thing. Writer Aaron Ehaz mentioned in a world where we got S4 of ATLA, Aang would have to deal with the effects of absolving Ozai's dark energy. It's not just something you can just pick up your wand and do to that guy you don't like on a Tuesday morning.Ā Did I mention Katara brings people back from the dead? I guess they were on a spirit island, still I feel like that should've been a bigger deal than it was. Tagah uses energybending to turn into some kind of big bodybuilder hulk guy, so does Aang, it's so goofy not much else to say.
I don't hate the idea of Airbenders being "converted." If Airbending is analogous to Buddhism, it's an open religion and philosophy, from what I've read it doesn't necessarily require fully rejecting preexisting beliefs and spirituality. Obviously, any major world religion is going to have a lot of people helped by it, hurt by it, a million different sects, misinterpreting it, interpreting it to push a certain agenda, whatever, but in the context of Avatar I can see Airbending changing and evolving as it opens itself to members from all over the world.
Which if Airbending was an open culture, why's Tagah so racist towards Water/Firebenders?? I get Earthbenders bc war, but like are nonbenders the only ones who can be converted????
I'm... confused at the decision to bring plot point up repeatedly. Not that it isn't an interesting concept, but the fact that neither the characters nor the writers really know what to do with it.
In ATLA, oppression reflects real world conflicts straightforwardly: misogyny, colonialism, classism, ableism, etc, with the exception of bending. Bending is combat, but it's so much more: it's a stand-in for its respective culture at large: a distillation of unique art, philosophy, spirituality, way of life, etc. I think this works really well! We can see how lost Katara is without having a master to help her connect to her culture, we see Aang struggle as a victim of genocide, the fire nations concentrated efforts to subjugate nations by targeting their benders. Even though not everyone is a bender, much of their philosophy and heritage draws from bending, in the same way not every person in real life fills the role of spiritual leader/knowledge keeper. On a surface level, kids can see why bending is special, on a deeper level, it's easy to read these other meanings, which makes it a great plot device.
At the same time, nonbenders in ATLA aren't portrayed as lesser. (Makes sense. Blasting fire is cool, sword fights are also cool.) Early we meet the Kyoshi warriors. Followed by the Yuyan archers, Jet's gang, the bounty hunter, Azula's lackeys, Sokka's master, etc, they're never treated as anything less than a serious threat. The only time we see lack of bending as a weakness is, 1. When a bender who doesn't have an alternative fighting style gets their bending disabled, 2. Toph playfully ribbing on Sokka, and 3. Sokka's insecurities, which are resolved in finding a master, not becoming something he's not. On the flip side, Toph's parents treat her like a delicate flower in spite of Earthbending, Zuko spends the much of the series as a mediocre Firebender but highly competent in other weaponry. Bending is a great asset, but it's a skill that needs to be learned, nonbenders just pick up other skills. Us as viewers aren't given reason to believe they're systemically marginalized in the text of ATLA.
Season 1 of Korra changes bending as a narrative device. With more of a "mixed" culture, bending isn't quite a stand-in for that anymore. The physical act of bending hasn't changed much, and I like how new styles have arisen to fit with the times in both professional sports and to aid in new career paths. But narrative-wise, it starts to feel more like a superpower that a minority are born with that gives them advantage over the nonbending majority. This kind of removes clean analogy, there isn't a real-world equivalent to some people having superpowers. It doesn't really work as a disability metaphor, it doesn't really work as a class metaphor, it's not really a metaphor for savants, it's purely a "what if." That's not inherently bad. You can have a less-grounded fantasy conflict that's thoughtful and compelling, and you can have a conflict grounded in real-world issues that's distasteful and awkward. The tricky thing is, the moral answers to previously-explored issues like colonialism and misogyny are fairly straightforward: they're not good. The nuance arises when we ask why do characters who live in this world stand by these principles, and how do we change that? Nonbender oppression doesn't really have a clear moral answer. It's not a socially constructed caste system that needs to be dismantled, it's a tangible difference that gives some a real advantage. And how do we fix nonbender oppression? Me writing this, I dunno, according to Korra and Aang, just beat the crap out of them until they give up.
LoK is a messy series compared to ATLA but Amon was a memorable character. If you squint we can write anti-benders as one freak cult of personality with a charismatic leader who has to be taken down. Korra as a character isn't known for tact, she ultimately beats the shit out of him and reveals his lies in the process. Amon was a liar, who's to say he couldn't have planted some kind of false paranoia in his followers?
Now, we take this conflict and learn it wasn't just one nefarious guy. It's been going on since Aang was Korra's age, literally the majority of his lifetime. And calm, pacifistic Aang's solution is... beat the shit out of them.
Aang beating the shit out of them didn't solve this issue. The nonbenders in the Aang movie seem fully separate from Amon's movement, it seems like both rose up organically from a systemic inequality. If nonbender oppression is real, and an abstracted stand-in for ableism or misogyny or whatever, fine, but we're falling into that unpleasant trope of "extremists that had a few good points.... but they were VIOLENT :(", and the only solution is to beat the shit out of them. Very Marvel. Plus this failure takes Aang, our beloved boy Aang, and makes him both apathetic to the nonbenders' plight, and ineffectual as a peacekeeper.
And like... do we want to keep this as a conflict?
I could spitball ways a bender/nonbender conflict could be handled better, but I cannot emphasize this enough how unrelated to the main plot it's crazy how much I've written about it. Amon's a fun one-off villain, but we're not still contemplating nonbender rights. These baddies are extremely generic and forgettable in an already generic and forgettable cast. I have the opposite complaint with them as I do with Tagah: their confused moral conflict doesn't add nuance, doesn't build on Tagah or Aang's arcs, why does Tagah even need lackeys? I thought he was like a xenophobic lone wolf or something who turns into a huge hulk man. What do they even do.Ā
A lot of time and technical skill went into the visuals. I won't deny that. The beauty of ATLA, though, even as a kid who didn't know nothing about martial arts, each style felt unique. Fire doesn't move the same way as air. Ice doesn't move like earth. The martial arts themselves- you can tell the difference between bending styles reflected in how they portray real-world arts. This expectation is played with in neat ways, like a minor earthbending character who mimics firebending for show, and Iroh borrowing from waterbending to redirect lightening- and you can tell! The martial arts come first and inform the way characters and elements move. Credit to ATLA's Martial Arts consultant, Sifu Kisu.
The film, there's a lot going on, I can only describe it as very... Promare (2019 anime film). I didn't care for Promare. Nothing against it, if you like it that's cool. I think Studio Trigger's done great dynamic animation in past projects, always pushing it further, bigger. Promare gets a little too big. Once the fight builds up, there's nothing grounding you. Who knows who's doing what. It doesn't feel visceral, there's not a lot of logic or cohesiveness as to how the powers work, dunno who's doing what, you stop being at the edge of your seat and kind of have to stop thinking and go along with the ride. This film feels very Promare- pretty, psychedelic visuals, lots of movement but just... not much impact.
Other visual notes: PERSONAL TASTE I'm eh on the more saturated color palette and fantastical locations. Feels like it was introduced in the second season of Korra in the more "spirity" scenes of the series and it never went away. I miss earth tones and realistic landscapes. Written language in the original series was based on Chinese calligraphy, it has been changed to vaguely-Asian looking gibberish. New character designs: not much to say on costume design, everyone became hot in a clinical sanitized way, most disappointing the characters' facial features became a lot more generic. I suppose ATLA was a product of its time, looking back you can see a lot of design choices taken from contemporaries like Teen Titans, but it is sad to see a lot of the characters' features bluffed out into generic Animestyle ones.
Combining the departure from real world martial arts, set locations, language, and even physical traits, it is kinda sad to see a departure from real world inspirations. A big part of why ATLA stands out compared to its spiritual successors (she-ra, the dragon prince, even Korra), is that it's not a cartoon based on a cartoon, it's a cartoon that draws inspiration from a respect and understanding of diverse sources.
Credit where credit is due, I like that they drew Toph with muscle mass.
TBH I don't have strong opinions on the voice acting. Maybe as someone who grew up with 4kids dubs. I appreciate a great voice actor, I'm frustrated at how VAs aren't taken seriously in animated films in lieu of celebrities, it's just... Especially for a less prominent anime-esque movie like this, VA doesn't make or break it. And if it's distracting, there's always dubs (Bye bye Chris Pratt Mario, hello Italian Language Mario.) Not going to say much on casting changes other than the fact that I'm confused why Dante Basco wasn't reprised, Zuko's voice is so distinctive. (Surely it's not because Basco's Filipino? Like, the Fire Nation is inspired by Southeast Asia as much as it is on China/Japan, right??? Ah, maybe it was a logistics thing, or they wanted Zuko to sound more grown-up.)
I do want to shoutout Sokka's VA: Roman Zaragoza. His reads were by and far the best, even the actual dialogue he was speaking made me cringe. Tone & cadence was spot on. Toph is fine. Aang and Katara's deliveries were as flat as their characters. I can't blame the actors, the dialogue didn't really give much to work with, and it's hard for even the best actors to shine with bad direction. Bautista (VA'd the villain) IS an established actor. I've never had any issue with past performances, but he didn't capture my heart here, so i doubt it's the other VA's faults.
Ragging on this movie a little bit. It is hard not to be tough on this movie- Korra wasn't exempt from comparisons but at least it had a nearly-new cast of characters, with new personalities and conflicts and some legitimately cool additions. This film explicitly focuses on the protagonist of ATLA, and it's just such a major miss. I don't care for the plot, the writing's horrendous, the visuals are Fine. I wish there was something, anything I could cling to in this film. Hell, I liked the second It movie even though it was shit, just because I thought Bill Hader's character was charming. I LOVE Soul Eater for its characters and aesthetics but can't stand 75% of the worldbuilding and plot. This film just feels so... hollow, and it's sad to see characters that I know and love have the life sucked out of them. If you liked the film, that's cool, it's actually legal to enjoy things that I don't and I'll be the first person to admit I have a low tolerance for crappy self-serious fantasy films (but a high tolerance for crappy horror and crappy workplace sitcoms). And of course, it's abysmal how Paramount treated this film. To me, ATLA is where it starts and ends. Oh, and the Kyoshi novels. If you're hungering for a more mature look at Avatar that develops the world in a neat way, please check out the Kyoshi novels by F.C. Yee. I've heard the Yancheng novels are also pretty good.Ā
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