Was anyone else confused when the movie Avatar was announced, and then when it came out and it WASN’T the Nickelodeon anime version? I certainly was. I guess James Cameron has better people working for him then M. Night Shyamalan.
← A couple of weeks ago, a patron recommended that I watch this movie. I finally did last week. If you look on any movie rating site, you’ll see that it got HORRIBLE reviews. Well, I didn’t read any reviews before I watched it. And before I give my two cents, I’d like to give you some background as to why I decided to.
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Last fall, I read these books, 
The Lost Scrolls →
They’re supplementary to the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender. I had never watched an episode of the series when I picked these books up, but I still enjoyed them. Each book is an overview of one of the four nations of the earth – Water, Earth, Fire, and Air and they also have some short episodic stories in them. As an anthropology minor, I found it really interesting how these books were written like ethnographies. So having enjoyed these books, I decided to give the movie a try when it came with a recommendation.
Basic breakdown of the plot: the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender is broken up into 3 books and lasted 3 seasons. The movie The Last Airbender encompasses Book 1: Water. The avatar is supposed to be a powerful element bender who keeps all of the nations in balance. But the last one disappeared for 100 years and the Fire Nation is trying to conquer the world. Two Water Nation siblings, Katara and Sokka discover the avatar, Aang frozen in an iceberg near their home. But he’s not all-powerful yet. He’s only 12 (well, technically 112), and he needs to master all of the elements before defeating the Fire Nation.
The movie was terribly written. The horribly unnatural dialog made Orlando Bloom’s performance in Pirates of the Caribbean look Oscar-worthy. But just like the Pirates phenomenon, I found this movie highly entertaining. 
Once I read that, unfortunately all I could think of was George Michael Bluth from Arrested Development. But unlike Michael Cera, this kid has got some serious skills when it comes to combat.
A lot of the fan criticisms about this movie deal with divergences from the TV show. I totally understand where they are coming from. As a Narnia-phile, I refuse to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader because of how much they’ve changed and manipulated the story. BUT knowing that the original is almost always better than the remake, I’ve started watching the series to see what couldn’t be put into a 2 hour movie. I began watching them on Sunday… and now on Tuesday, I’m halfway through book/season 2. Yeah, it’s a great story.
Images gleaned with the help of Google.
