JacobsonCinemas

For those who don’t know Avatar the Last Airbender is my favorite Nickelodeon show (Blue’s Clues being a close 2^nd). It has amazing animation, awesome action scenes, fantastic worldbuilding, well written and likable characters, and a well thought out and epic overarching story that was very rare for a cartoon to have back then. Without this show we probably wouldn’t have had other cartoons with overarching stories like Gravity Falls or Steven Universe. The new film Avatar Aang the Last Airbender takes place 13 years after Team Avatar defeated the Fire Lord and stopped the 100-year war. The current Avatar Aang has grown concerned about being the “last airbender” but that changes when the team comes across another frozen airbender named Tagah who joins the group in finding a magical staff that could bring back the airbenders.

It feels so great to see the original Team Avatar together again after 18 years on a new adventure. While the original voice actors sadly didn’t return, the new ones do a good job capturing the same charm and heart these characters had in the original show. I also loved their older designs. Avatar Aang: the Last Airbender is very similar to another animated film based on an animated series, Steven Universe the Movie. Both are films that take place a few years after the end of the series and has the main group facing off a new villain that has been “waiting/frozen” throughout the original show’s runtime. SPOILER WARNING: I thought Tagah played wonderfully by Dave Bautista was a very effective villain and worked very well as a perfect dark version of Aang. I will admit the Denied were kind of weak villains and just felt more like an obstacle than actual fleshed out characters.

The best thing about the film is the gorgeous animation wonderfully done by the always amazing Flying Bark Productions. Avatar Aang has in my opinion the best animation of any animated film that has released this year so far (until Wildwood releases). The animators apparently used Deep Canvas which combines 2d characters with CGI environments as inspiration for the film’s style and both the 2d and CGI animation here blend together flawlessly. This is the same technology Disney used for Tarzan (my favorite Disney movie) and Treasure Planet and those are some of the best-looking Disney films. The beautiful animation also gives us some absolutely amazing and epic action scenes and the show already had wonderfully animated action scenes but I think this film topped the original show. It really is a huge shame that Paramount decided to cancel the theatrical release of this because this film would’ve looked absolutely grand and epic on the big screen.

Avatar Aang: the Last Airbender really was a film that has suffered a lot from its cancelled theatrical release and the film being leaked. Still, this is an absolutely fantastic follow up to an absolutely fantastic show and better than that god awful live action “Last Airbender” film from M. Night Shyamalan in absolutely every single way. It has everything that reminds us why the original show was and still is one of if not the most beloved animated show of all time. Now it is time for me to watch the new Avatar show “Seven Havens”.

Verdict:

+Tagah

+Team Avatar

+The action

+The gorgeous animation

-The Denied

-Paramount’s treatment

Score: A