Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender is out now on Paramount

My kids, now in the late teens, grew up with Airbender. According to them, all they ever wanted was a continuation of the original series to bridge the gap between that and Korra. They were pumped to watch the movie.
They were extremely disappointed.
Here were their Complaints.
1. It's set 10 years after the original series concerning the 100 years war. That puts the core group in their mid-to-late 20s. Shouldn't they be MORE powerful, polished and poised and not less? Shouldn't they have 20 year olds problems?
2. Toph Metal bends, but no lightning bending from Zuko? Blood bending from Kitara? Kitara says at one point, "there's no water", when she learns to pull from water vapor in TOS.
3. The problem could have been solved instantly had Aang took the bad guys bending away like he did the fire lord. Somehow it never occurred to him to do that.
4. No Suki.
5. No mention of Azula or her crew, or Zuko's people.
6. Dave Bautista's voice acting for the main villian was distracting. All they kept hearing was Drax.

Final thoughts, the animation was great, but the story was poorly executed. The kids were disappointed, rating it a 5/10, and wished it had been a series instead of a movie.

I definitely agree it would have been better as a series but I loved it nonetheless.

I do wish we got more of their relationships and things too...a lot of story to flesh out...I'm all for an adult series with this animation style and would love for them to remaster the original with it.

quote:

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Eh Zuko never could bend lightning he could only redirect it. Only Azula, Iroh, and Ozai were shown to be able to generate lighting. And Katara can only blood bend under a full moon while her bending her sweat could hardly break a wooden fence not enough to fight a whole team of airbenders

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Those are all valid points. Still, I would have liked to have seen more character growth in Katara and Zuko. And a few more dots connected between the original series and Korra.

Apparently there are some official sequel graphic novels that are considered canon and detail some of these things.

Valid points here. I would say a lot of this would've been solved if it was a series instead of a movie. Everything was pretty rushed.

1. I thought they were still pretty powerful. Katara was definitely a little less, and Zuko seemed a bit restrained.

Togh seemed more powerful IMO, but her students got pretty good at metal bending being that it was invented a short time ago.

I noticed in Kora, bending seemed pretty watered down compared to the OG series. This movie was somewhere in between.

It was odd the 4 of Zuko, Togh, Katara, and Soka were pretty easily bested by Thaga, not to mention Aang shortly after. You have to consider that Thaga also learned airbending later in life, so he was probably a far less experienced bender than the rest of them.

I would've preferred if he wasn't one that was given airbending.

2. Zuko only redirected and Katara could only blood bend during a full moon (unless she did it to Azula in the finale). Katara was mostly unimpactful.

3. True, only Aang would've had to beat him to submission first. Aang also wanted to give this guy the benefit of the doubt.

Overall, I think a lot was crammed into too limited of a time lot.

I thought the voices could've been better.

It was odd that the denied knew more about an ancient airbender/ avatar than Aang and past avatars.

There were some pretty emotional moments with Aang and the other airbenders he knew, especially at the end when Giatso told him he had to let them go and they'd always live inside of him.