BONUS: The Last Airbender
In case you’re finding this post just by browsing the tags I’ve used for this post, this is the Watchathon, a blog where I’m hoping to watch an episode of a show (or in this case, a movie) every one-to-two days, with a short blog post where I give my thoughts on what I’ve just seen. Each new point starts with a hyphen and a bolded first word.
- Like so.
But today, I’m subjecting myself to the notorious live-action film The Last Airbender, to... Well, to “celebrate” its tenth anniversary. I initially planned on doing it either after Book 1, or after Book 3, but for whatever reason, I have decided to do this now.
Fair warning, this is going to be one of my rare posts where I’ll be mostly negative.
So much for “gushing about things I like”...
Also, so much for “the rare occasion I cover movies”, but that I don’t mind so much. The Lilo & Stitch post was a ton of fun to make.
- So, first things first, I don’t tend to be a fan of live-action movies based on animated properties in general. But it’s not like I don’t give them a chance.
Sometimes I even like them better than the original. I could never get through The Jungle Book in one sitting as a kid, but the 2016 live-action remake? I adored it!
Even the worst ones I tend to be “meh” about rather than flat-out disliking. But The Last Airbender? I hated it when I watched it as a kid... Emphasis on the past tense. I could well change my tune because of this, though I can’t imagine I’ll end up liking it.
- They recreate the “Water, earth, fire, air” part of the intro but without narration. Which, to be frank, just makes it look pretty silly.
- “The four nations. Water, Earth, Fire, and Air Nomads.” Sooo are they all nomads?
- Awvatar? Pronouncing Aang as Awng, I could sorta get, but... Awvatar? Really?!
- It feels oh-so-weird to see a white Katara and Sokka, when they, and all the people of the Water Tribes, had the darkest skin in the show.
- Something that really strikes me about this movie already is that it’s so... humorless. Sokka described himself once in the show as “the meat and sarcasm guy” if I’m remembering right, and not even five minutes in I can already tell we’re missing half of that description.
- Not only is this movie humorless, it can seem strangely... smaller, than the cartoon. In the cartoon, Katara got Aang out of the iceberg by accidentally using powerful Waterbending.
But here, Sokka causes the ice to crack by accident, revealing the iceberg with Aang inside. Then Katara grabs Sokka’s boomerang and whacks the iceberg twice with it.
- More about the lack of humor: There’s not even a mention of penguin sledding once Aang is out either.
- And not only are our most prominent Waterbenders white, the Fire Nation (who had light skin in the cartoon) have the darkest skin of the whole main cast. Juuust great...
- Aang’s heroic moment from the cartoon is taken away from him. In the cartoon, Aang was on his way out of the Southern Water Tribe when he saw the Fire Nation approaching, at which point he turned around and helped them.
Here? Aang sits in a tent until one of the Fire Nation soldiers sees his tattoos and drags him out.
- “We found that boy, he’s our responsibility!” Katara sounds like she’s talking about a stray puppy they found. “I’ll feed him, and bathe him, and teach him!”
- It crosses the line into unintentional hilarity when, as Katara and Sokka are discussing Aang, there’s just Appa noises in the background, entirely unremarked upon. The only take a glance in that direction once they’re done talking, ironically after Appa’s quietened down somewhat.
- Nobody gets out of this movie without major changes, but if it weren’t for Iroh referring to Zuko as his nephew, I’d have never guessed it was him. Also, Eeroh. Frankly, I’ll be surprised if Zuko isn’t pronounced Zucko.
- Katara and Sokka’s grandmother pronounces Avatar correctly. Why don’t Katara and Sokka? Or, heck, why doesn’t she pronounce it “Awvatar”? It’d be better if they stuck to one rather than the inconsistent pronunciation.
- I’ll give them props: The idea of testing if Aang is the Avatar by setting four objects representing the elements in front of him is pretty cool. Does become kinda silly, though, when the rock just... wobbles and goes upright. They could have had it, like, cracking, but instead, wobbly rock.
- I might be misremembering, but it felt like Aang’s escape from Zuko’s ship was a lot... more, in the cartoon. I know, time constraints of fitting a twenty-episode season into a two-hour movie. But I have to tilt my head at just how much shorter (and milder) this particular scene is than its animated counterpart.
- It’s weird how Katara’s narration calls Aang by name, then like a minute later (at most) we see her ask him for his name.
- Wow, is it weird to see Aasif Mandvi playing Zhao when I watched The Daily Show as a teenager.
- Exposition is always fun when it’s delivered in the form of a roast.
- “But we will let [Zuko] wear [the Fire Nation uniform] today, like a child wearing a costume.” And nobody even smiles at Zhao’s sick burn.
- Hey, at least they have Iroh drinking tea. But cartoon Iroh probably wouldn’t do that so casually while his nephew is fighting Zhao’s soldiers. And cartoon Iroh would probably smile. At some point in time.
- And movie Katara and Sokka have apparently gone all the way to the Earth Kingdom without learning that Aang is the Avatar.
- “He was bending tiny stones at us from behind a tree! It really hurt!” I gotta be honest, that’s not a bad joke. It does feel kinda out of place with the general tone of the movie thus far, but whatever. I’ll take the lighthearted fun moments where I can get them.
- I can sort of understand why they would want the Earthbenders imprisoned by the Fire Nation to have some sort of earth to bend without the Gaang going to all that trouble to get the coal. But putting them in a quarry is more than a bit overboard.
- Aang gets a big Katara moment from the cartoon. And the thing is, Katara doesn’t really get that much time to shine in this movie. She could have used a moment like this one. Heck, Aang could’ve joined in to confirm that the Avatar has returned.
But no... In this scene, Katara just shoves a Fire Nation soldier who’s being rude to Aang.
- Ah, the infamous pebble dance. And the thing is, in the cartoon, this would’ve been a joke.
Aang would go through this huge, over-the-top dance just to make a relatively small rock float slowly towards a Fire Nation soldier. At which point, Toph would make the rock move much faster before teasing Aang about what he just did.
- Ohhh, gosh, I’m half an hour into this hour-and-a-half movie, and the post already looks like... this.
- “Teachers to teach you bending.” A lot of attention gets given to another repetitive line later on in the movie, but we shouldn’t ignore this beauty.
- Weird to see Ozai in plain view. Especially considering how, later on, he will be framed in shadow.
- Agni Key... What is it with this movie and changing pronunciations? I wouldn’t even care if that was the only problem, but with how it is, it’s one of several things that make this movie feel like “Avatar but wrong”.
- “Yip yip.” Gosh, does it feel weird to hear those words in a movie that tries to be more serious than the cartoon.
- I had to stop and continue this in the morning since it was late, so I might be forgetting something... But was it established before the Blue Spirit that Zuko knew Zhao would be hunting the Avatar?
- Hard to take it seriously when Zhao looks at his soldiers, chained by their hands to the ceiling, and simply mutters “fools.”
- “You think my son is this person the soldiers are calling ‘Blue Spirit’?” *pause of at least four seconds* “...Yes.”
- “My brother and the princess became friends right away.” First off, that’s really underplaying it. But second, Sokka’s face is so blank as Katara says this that I can’t buy even that.
- Zhao really becomes a much less threatening force when it’s Ozai who tells him to kill the spirits, when it’s Ozai who starts talking about their destiny.
- “HOOOOOOOOO” lives in a pineapple under the sea?!
- Everything in the Spirit World is compressed into this one dragon. Which makes it seem a lot less like a Spirit World than just the home of this dragon.
- I would say that the whole bit of Aang trying to avoid Zuko even though he’s right behind him is more like something from the cartoon... But, the dramatic music really makes it seem like this is supposed to be a serious moment. And it just doesn’t work as one.
- Iroh’s trying to stop Zhao is nowhere near as good as it was in the cartoon.
- “He’s making fire out of nothing!” I don’t understand why they made the change that this is uncommon. The Fire Nation are the villains, they should be stronger than other benders.
- “It’s time we show the Fire Nation that we believe in our beliefs as much as they believe in theirs.” I don’t understand how anyone thought this could work as a serious line.
- Back to the whole thing of this being smaller than the cartoon, Aang doesn’t turn into Aangzilla here. He accomplishes a very impressive feat of Waterbending, but when I just watched the cartoon version last week, it feels lesser in comparison.
- I imagine this is supposed to be Aang bowing in response, since he didn’t with the monks. But it doesn’t look like bowing. It just looks like an elegant dance move.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Yeah, I still don’t like it much. But I’ll say this: Now that I’ve watched it again, I appreciate the cartoon so much more.
I appreciate the characters. I appreciate the tone, I appreciate the pacing. And I appreciate all the things that are lacking from this movie.
I can only hope that the new live-action adaptation will be better, even if I know the cartoon will still be my preferred way of experiencing the story.
