It’s a shame most fans of the “Avatar” franchise won’t have the chance to see its first animated feature on the big screen. (M. Night Shyamalan’s risible 2010 live-action film will be acknowledged here and here only.) “Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender” is the first official release from Avatar Studios, the shingle set up half a decade ago — animation takes time! — to expand the cult hit animated show and its sequel series “The Legend of Korra” into a broader franchise. “Avatar Aang” does so with gorgeous visuals and thoughtful worldbuilding that would surely benefit from the theatrical distribution the movie was originally slated to receive. Instead, the movie will be available on the big screen only for a limited, awards-qualifying run in New York and L.A. Everyone else will have to settle for streaming it on Paramount+, though even a scaled-down viewing experience still delivers on both excitement and nostalgia.
“Avatar Aang” takes place more than a decade after the events of the original series, meaning fans who were the title character’s age when “The Last Airbender” introduced him to the Nickelodeon demo as a 12-year-old chosen one in 2005 will find the protagonist has aged with them. (I’m one of those: my cat is named after the antihero Prince Zuko, originally voiced by Dante Basco. I had to stop myself from doing a double take every time someone addresses the character in “Avatar Aang.”) It’s a time of peace: Aang and his friends successfully brought an end to a century of conflict between Zuko’s Fire Nation, the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribe that left his own Air Nomad culture extinct. Republic City, the future setting of “The Legend of Korra,” is newly established, complete with a Unity Tower to celebrate this new, fragile state of harmony.
To quickly recap the cosmology established by series creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, now the co-chief creative officers of Avatar Studios and producers of “Avatar Aang”: each classical element has both an associated culture and “benders” who wield their powers like martial artists. (DiMartino and Konietzko were initially involved with the Netflix live-action series, which recently aired its second season, but departed during development to focus on Avatar Studios. A new, original “Avatar” series co-created by the duo, “Seven Havens,” will premiere on Paramount+ this fall.) Water benders can freeze ice or raise currents at will; earth benders can move rock or even, in some cases, manipulate metal. Only the Avatar, a spiritual figure reincarnated with each subsequent generation, can bend all four elements at once. Per the title, Aang is the last surviving airbender after his pacifist brethren were slaughtered by a belligerent, expansionist Fire Nation. Only after 100 years of hibernation did Aang emerge from hiding and work to restore balance.
“Avatar Aang,” which was directed by Lauren Montgomery and written by Tim Hedrick and Chrisopher Yost, bears down on that formative loss. (DiMartino and Konietzko share story credit with Hedrick and Kenneth Lin.) With the quest of the initial three seasons’ worth of story completed, Aang (now voiced by Eric Nam of K-Pop and “The Traitors” fame) has more time to ruminate on his existential loneliness. Without a mentor to guide him, Aang spends his spare time hunting for Air Nomad relics in an attempt to connect with his ancestry. On one such expedition, he runs into a violent sect of non-benders who call themselves the Denied, sending Aang on a race to recover a sacred airbender artifact before the Denied can use it for their own ends.
Nam isn’t the only prominent new voice actor to signal both the aging of the “Avatar” leads and the increasing popularity of the franchise, now prominent enough in its third decade to attract talent like Oscar nominee Steven Yeun, stepping in as the adult version of Zuko. Wrestler-turned-actor Dave Bautista joins the cast as Tagah, an airbender Aang discovers preserved in ice (as he once was) who promises to teach Aang more Air Nomad ways; Freida Pinto voices Sonam, a mysterious former Avatar Aang communes with for help. But well-known additions don’t overshadow the core “Avatar” crew — even as they, too, sound different now: Aang’s love interest Katara (Jessica Matten), her brother Sokka (Román Zaragoza) and blind earthbender Toph (Dionne Quan) all reunite to help with the new mission.
As heartwarming as it is to follow these figures into adulthood, “Avatar” has always distinguished itself first and foremost with its style, an inventive mix of Chinese mythology, Japanese-inflected animation style and eclectic influences like the Water Tribe’s Inuit-adjacent fur robes. “Avatar Aang” ups the aesthetic ante with a succession of centerpieces: flashbacks to the Air Nomads at the peak of their powers, flooding the sky in droves against a majestic mountain backdrop; combat scenes that show a mature Aang able to bend every element with ease, or sparring against Tagah in an airbender-on-airbender matchup we’ve never seen before; dramatic, colorful journeys through a supernatural storm or into the spirit world, where Aang encounters a tusked, many-eyed creature voiced by Taika Waititi.
The “Avatar” franchise has not progressed forward — as opposed to creatively moribund live-action remakes, with which audiences have grown increasingly disenchanted over time — since “The Legend of Korra” ended its run in 2014. “Avatar Aang” brings that dozen-year dry spell to an end. Yes, there’s the retro appeal of reopening a closed story to bring back some familiar faces. But in telling a more mature tale about the long-term effects of Aang losing everything at such a young age, a trauma that’s left him hungry for connection to the point of ignoring Tagah’s many red flags, “Avatar” shows it’s developed alongside its fanbase. (There are also searching questions about how to heal the wounds of war that have wider resonance beyond a universe with floating buffalo.) And in delivering more stunning imagery than ever before, “Avatar Aang” extends that development across multiple fronts. It’s an evolution I’d love to see continue, even if I can’t in a theater.
“Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender” is now showing in select theaters and will be available to stream on Paramount+ on July 25.
Leave a Reply