Avatar: The Last Airbender Movie Review

For those of you who don’t want to read the entire review, it was beyond an epic fail. Terrible movie.

Transfer from tv show to movie:
Obviously trying to stuff 10 hours of content into a not even 2 hour movie has its struggles. I expected them to change some storyline in order to make that transfer. The only problem is that the dialogue was so terrible and choppy and the transitions were abrupt and rough. It jumped around too much and too fast. It would have been pretty difficult for a non-fan to follow I think.

Dialogue:
No character is exempt from the terrible dialogue in this show. I understand that they had to speed through the story, but much of the dialogue from the show could have been salvaged and used in the movie in many scenes.

Character Development:
None of the characters were developed enough and some barely at all. Zuko and Iroh probably had the most development in the movie. Sokka, of the main characters, probably had the least.

Bending:
The bending was not very quick. In the time it took Aang to airbend or Zuko to firebend I could have run up and punched them in the face. The bending looked okay except for the airbending, which I felt was very plain and not impressive.

Anti-climaxes:
I’m not sure there was really even a climax in the movie but there were definitely several anti-climactic moments. The largest one that I can think of right now is when Aang bends the ocean around the North Pole to scare off the Fire Nation ships. He doesn’t throw the water at them though, they just turn around and he lets the water go.

The Firelord and his family:
The Firelord should not have had a presence in the movie because he wasn’t really in the first season. He did not come across as an ultimate scary bad guy, just another soldier. Luckily M. Night only had about five minutes to ruin Azula so I can’t really be mad about that yet, but I don’t like the casting. Zuko was fine most of the time but I think the scar should have been more extensive. Iroh should have been fat. That wasn’t such a big deal but I missed it. He was really channeling the Iroh characters in a few scenes but most of the time he didn’t really seem like he was playing the fatherly, knowledgeable, badass Iroh we all know and love.

Mispronunciation:
The thing that pissed me off more than anything was the mispronunciation, especially because the tv show lays out a template for pronunciation. My only conclusion is that M. Night purposely wanted the actors to mispronounce the word Avatar, Sokka, and Aang.

Katara and Aang:
I hated the casting of Katara from the trailers but having seen the movie, she was one of the best. I was more pleased with her more than any other character. The same thing happened with Aang. I hated him before the movie but now I think he did a great job.

This movie was so bad that I have decided to put it on my list of movies I never want to see again. Now I have four: Transformers 2, Eragon, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp version), and Avatar: The Last Airbender.