Yes, I am watching the avatar series. For those who don't know, this is what
Avatar the Last Airbender is about;
The world is divided into four elemental nations: The Northern and Southern Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads. The Avatar upholds the balance between the nations, but everything changed when the Fire Nation invaded. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, can stop them. But when the world needs him most, he vanishes. A hundred years later Katara and Sokka discover the new Avatar, an Airbender named Aang. Together they must help Aang master the elements and save the world.
So, if your were like me before seeing this show, you probably are thinking, "Why should I see this? it looks so stupid, and dumb." Yes, I'll admit, when first going into it I was thinking to myself, "I need such a life, and I can't believe I'm doing this, I'm so silly." But I was pleasantly surprised. The cartoon is fun and silly. It has good plots and even though the first season was rather ridiculous, as it continues it gets very good. The main three characters are Aang, Sokka and Katara.
Aang is introduced as a dorky, cute, funny little kid who is always getting himself into trouble. He is the embodiment of a good boy who just does stupid things all the time. Sokka on the other hand is the comic relief. He has a whole bunch of funny lines in the show, and is one of the few who can still hold his ground in a fight, even though he can't bend.
Katara is the sensible one in the group. She is motherly compassionate, and always has good advice to give. But she is still a kid and does do some very childish things. They are able to go about there adventures with Appa, a flying bison who helps them get to their locations. They also befriend a small bat like lemur named Momo who takes a liking to Appa.
The whole premise is quite good. The character development is amazing, while the stories are also good. The main villain, fire lord Ozai, is a mean, abusive jerk who is built up big time. Since his face isn't seen until season 3 I'll keep his appearance a secret. But rest assure that he is the worst father to have ever fathered. Here I shall talk about the fire lord's children. There's Zuko and Azula.
Since the fire lord can't be everywhere at once it is up to Zuko and Azula to become the main villains. And when I say villains I really mean that Azula is terrible and Zuko is just.. sad. For some reason Azula can do no wrong in her father's eyes and is probably the worst sister to ever have sistered, while Zuko is a disgrace in his father's eyes and knows it.
When he is banished from his kingdom, he and his tea loving Uncle Iroh begin searching for Aang, the Avatar, as it is Zuko's only way to ever return home again. He is always telling his Uncle that he needs his honour and will stop at nothing until the avatar is found. But really, all the poor kid is looking for is his father's love and approval. I will keep his back story a secret as it does spoil why a lot of people feel so bad for him, and makes him one of the best characters on the show.
Now that I have told you something about the Tv show let me tell you about the worst adaption of a movie to have ever been adapted. And I am not kidding. If there was a contest between Percy Jackson, Alex Rider, and The Last Airbender movies, Percy Jackson and Alex Rider's movies would pass with 10 stars. This adaption is so insulting to all fans that it easily became the one thing we could all agree sucked.
I'll start with Aang's pets since they shouldn't really be that bad..... I mean, how can you mess up Appa. With terrible C.G.I. The movie version of Appa is nightmare fuel.
Wow, just no
Since he has is just an animal, I wont harp on how badly they animated him, or the fact that he kinda looks like that flying dog in neverending story. The only character they managed to sort of get was Momo. But even he looks kind of odd.
Now I will talk about
character and
race.
Remember what I said about Aang? How he was funny and dorky. In the movie he isn't funny and isn't dorky. Even though he is the same colour, I kinda thought he looked more Asian. But I could get over the racial difference if he was a good actor. He. Is.
Not. He is one of the worst actors to ever have been filmed. Seriously why would anyone cast him.
Then there was Sokka. He was one of the worst sticks in the mud the movie offered. He was always bored cranky and never joked around. And if there is one character who acted worse than the one who played Aang it would have to be this guy. Seriously. They couldn't have gotten his character more wrong.
You can't just ask people why they're white.
Katara was a joke as well. She was a terrible actor who never displays any emotion. She was just annoying. She was never motherly, and wasn't tough. In the cartoon she was able to stand her ground against threats, and even holds her own against Zuko.
In the movie she just whined in monotone while ignoring everything people told her. She barely did any waterbending , and when she did, it took forever. (And she lost.) And yes, just like her monotone brother, she is deathly white.
Where are her hair loopies?
This wouldn't bug me so much if the rest of the tribe wasn't Asian. Only Katara and Sokka where American. What happened there? How can a whole village of Asian people give birth to these very American looking kids??
Also I'm gonna point out, in the show Katara and Sokka's skin colour was actually darker then the villains. The Villains where more of a Japanese look while Katara and Sokka where much like Eskimos.
Dark Eskimos.
In the movie it is reversed. The Villains lean more towards that of Indian and have darker skin than are heroes who are very white.
Its perplexing.
To be fair, the only good actors in the movie were Zuko, and Iroh. But that doesn't mean that they were like the characters in the Tv show.
Where is Zuko's scar? It is definitely defined in the cartoon, but here??? It looks like he has a small scab under his eye or something. It would also have been nice if he did more firebending in the movie. He only does it three times. It made me nervous when he fought Aang with just karate. I was like "Stop fist fighting and bend some fire, you unburned idiot!" Also, it would have been nice if Iroh had made a few tea jokes, like he did in the show.
.
You do see only a glimpse of Azula at the end of the movie. And that's fine as she isn't actually seen in the show until the last five minutes of the season one final. But what you did see of her made me shiver.
At least there was only a few seconds of her. Seriously, just no. I think the worst casting choice out of all of them had to be the fire lord. As I said before you never saw his face until season 3. It made him intimidating and gave curiosity to how he would actually look when seen.
In the movie they show him off in all of his Muppet glory.
Why is that Ozai?! He looks like a pizza guy dressed up at Halloween. He's not scary and definitely not in shadow. In the cartoon he looks Japanese (as do Azula and Zuko). He had a long beard and hair, while constantly surrounded by fire. And again his face wasn't seen until season three. He was always shadowed in darkness. Yet, here he is, not even half way through the movie and he looks so unthreatening. Also, what really confused me was in the movie, Zuko has a picture of his entire family looking Japanese...
So why is this guy Indian?
It literally makes no sense.
Now I'll talk about
pronunciations.
In the show the names are said a lot. I mean there are three seasons of it. And apparently the idiot who directed this was a hug fan of the show. So
why where the names mispronounced? It was so infuriating.
In the show the firebenders have will have a fire duel. It was called an Agni Kai.
Agni Kai's are a popular (and violent) way of settling arguments in the Fire Nation. One person challenges another and they both face off in a fire-bending battle.
It is an odd word. But a solid fan would know that Kai rhymes with hi. But not this solid fan. No, instead let's make it an Agni Key dual. Maybe if M. Night Shyamalan hadn't gloated about being a big fan I could let this one go, but alas for him, he told the whole word that he was a hardcore Avatar Geek. Sure you are.
Everyone knows how to pronounce Avatar, am I right. I guess I'm not. Almost that entire cast said "Ovatar", and it really got one my nerves.
Sokka was Soaka. And I was just like..."Literally? It's Sock-a. Not Soak-a." It was really weird and sounded dumb coming out of Katara's mouth. Then there was Uncle Ear-o. WHY? it's Iroh. Was it too hard to pronounce or something?
Aang was Ong
What? why? What was wrong with Aang? Why did you change it? Seriously stop it. You're going to make me have an aneurism. (Apparently Shyamalan had an interview and said, and I quote,
"I changed the names because I wanted to stay true to the source material...." What? so is there some other source material we're missing here?)
Stupid people
There are so many incompetent people in this movie. There's a fight between Katara and Zuko...
There are two fireballs coming at you. Can you not see the other one? Do you not have peripheral vision? It's a huge, blazing, loud, giant fireball. It's coming right at you. How can you be so dumb not to know it's there?
Near the beginning Katara and "Soak-a" are walking on an ice wasteland. They see a bright light underneath the ground and what does Soak-a do? He starts whacking the ice with his boomerang. Then acts all surprised when the ice starts to break.
"Wait, I didn't know that was going to happen. I thought the ice would stay in tact. Just back it up, just back up, that's right. Nice and slow." What did you think would happen?
In the show there was an episode with a bunch of earthbenders who had been imprisoned by the fire nation. They were imprisoned on a hug metal ship where earthbending wasn't possible.
This breaks the spirits of the earthbenders after being enslaved for years without being able to do a thing about it.
In the movie the Earthbender prison is laughable.
Why is no one fighting back? They are literally surrounded by earth. There is nothing stopping them. There is absolutely no reason for them to be broken up about this situation. Just earthbend yourselves out. How stupid are these people that they would just sit here when they could literally take on the whole fleet of fire nation holding them here? It makes no sense, and it also makes them seem weak and stupid.
In the cartoon Katara and Sokka find out Aang's name in the first few minutes after meeting him. In the movie it takes her meeting Ong, waiting for him to wake up, not asking when he is awake, waiting till after he's been captured by fire nation, then escaping with him to his air temple, and finding out he is a monk for her to bring the matter up. In movie time it takes her about half an hour to discover Ong's identity. Why? cause she's stupid. No one waits that long to ask someone their name.
Why can't Zuko see Aang. In the cartoon he was an expert on tracking Aang. Here, you understand why he hasn't caught him yet. This whole scene made me nervous. First there was this scene and then neither of the bent the elements until the end of their fight. People hardly ever bend and it's stupid.
Also all the guards are incompetent. There are many scenes where they could easily have captured Aang but just stood around not attacking.
Stop staring at him and attack! Do something. There's one of him and a hundred of you. It takes him an eternity to bend. Why are you just standing there? This could be so easy.
Bending-the taking of an element and bending it to your will.
Since I keep brining up bending I'm gonna talk about it... In the movie they did bend the elements. I can't deny that. They didn't do it too often and this annoyed me.... and when they did bend it took forever. Seriously. Just look at the difference in bending in the movie and tv show.
What is that guard even doing?
He was a bird in another life
How is that sphere of water retaining it shape?
Why does it take six guys dancing to move a rock from point A to point B
Missing people and Things
I will say that I'm glad that some of these characters weren't in this movie because they probably would have been ruined, But imagine watching a Lord of the rings movie without Aragorn, or watching a Star wars movie without Han Solo. It wouldn't be the same.
Lol :-) Okay, so missing in the movie is; Suki, Avatar Roku, Jet, Boomie, the Kyoshi Warriors, the Face Stealer, the Pirates, and those are only the important characters. Missing also is Katara's hair loopies, Zuko's scar, Iroh's infatuation with tea, Sokka's sense of humor, Katara's motherly nature and sense of courage, Zuko's master of stealth, Aang's tattoos lighting up when he goes into the spirit world, any fun or enjoy ability that the show was able to give out and the whole ending of the first season.
Yup, the completely changed the ending in the movie. This was a bad call, because if they had done the ending right it might have saved the movie. But they changed it. I don't want to spoil anyone but the season final of avatar was so epic and so memorable that changing it just destroyed all hope in this mess. I will say that in the show Aang gets mad and goes into the "Avatar State."
He does some truly B.A. things while in this states and is able to defeat the fire nation all by himself. In the movie he literally holds a wave over the fire nation ships, then puts it down. Then the fleet of a hundred ships flees....
Okay, we're outta here.
I know this movie came out a while ago, and I really shouldn't be opening this old scar again, but it had been years since I had last seen it, and I wasn't a fan of the TV series back then. I re-watched it just to see how really bad it was. It was awful. Anyway, I shall leave you, now that I have had my rant.
