After the goosebumps settled on my arms and my ears stopped feeling hot, the first thing I said aloud when the credits rolled on Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender ended was “sensational.” If the Nickelodeon animated series, which served as a seminal part of a generation of millennials’ childhoods, rewired your brain, you will find Flying Bark Productions’ animated film takes Aang’s contagious spark and refashions it into a fully realized avatar worth basking in on the silver screen.
When you get down to the heart of it, Avatar Aang is not so much an extended prologue to Brian Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino’s animated series as it is the restoration of a feeling that its wondrous world has more stories worth telling in ways only animation can realize. And Flying Bark takes what is already a Western animation goldmine of a tale, spoken in the same sentence as the anime that inspired it, to meteoric heights.
It’s bound to leave even the most savvy animation connoisseur struggling to articulate a description of the sheer breadth of artistry their eyes witnessed in the tight 90-minute animated feature. (And feel sore that it was bumped down to a streaming release, with only a handful of theatrical screenings scheduled thus far.)
The film begins with the most warranted reminder of the 2005 animated series’ opening narration, this time spoken aloud by the titular “Gaang,” all grown up, alongside the audience who were once kids with them and can recite the opening by heart. There were once four nations, each capable of bending the four elements of fire, water, earth, and air. To keep things in balance, the avatar, a mystical being with mastery of all four elements, acts as the peacekeeper between the human and spirit worlds, maintaining this balance through a line of reincarnation.
While the movie contains a generous sprinkling of fan service, memes, and familiar series callbacks to celebrate the film’s victory lap of existing, it doesn’t get too navel-gazey or nostalgic for long. In his mission to recover lost air nomad artifacts, Avatar Aang (Eric Nam), the last of the air benders, uncovers a long-lost power that could bring his genocided nation back. The Gaang has gone their own ways, but the proverbial group chat—via messenger birds—shared by Sokka (Román Zaragoza), Toph (Dionne Quan), and Katara (Jessica Matten), Aang’s sweetheart, is still active.
Together, the Gaang waste no time assembling Team Avatar to embark on one more adventure to find the power Aang seeks. They also hope to prevent it from landing in the hands of those wishing to upend the peace they spent the better part of three seasons fighting tooth and nail to achieve.
Avatar Aang running just 90 minutes comes with the caveat that its story moves a bit fast, leaving a bit more to be desired from the character motivations of the film’s antagonists. Key among these is Tagal, an imposing, idealistic foe tied to Aang’s past played to thunderous acclaim by Dave Bautista. Avatar is famously a work that leaves viewers still thinking about its world long after its tale ends, and Avatar Aang pops the lid on a bevy of intriguing, lore-expanding revelations and tricky political discourse within its own universe that don’t get much play beyond the film’s mere acknowledgment.
Still, given how much Avatar Aang derives from its voice cast’s performances and Flying Bark’s crafting of imagery that borders on the sublime—the likes of which cinema hasn’t seen since 2002’s Treasure Planet—the plot’s shakier moments are a molehill compared to the film’s larger achievements.
Be it the bending of Katara, Aang, Zuko, or the world’s greatest earthbender and Avatar Aang‘s scene-stealer, Toph, bending has never looked better than it does in Avatar Aang. What Flying Bark Productions accomplishes, both in the weight and gravity of its action sequences and the serenity it brings in the mystical charms of its background art and larger-than-life creatures, feels as much a testament to the power of human-made artistry that’ll be celebrated for generations to come.
Avatar Aang is a triumph, offering a reminder of how sacrosanct the series’ place remains in the pantheon of animated works all these years later. It’s also a testament to the magic of human artistry, bending lines to craft stories that move in ways only animation can.
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender hits theaters for a limited time (and capacity) from July 24 to 30, with a special screening at San Diego Comic-Con on July 24, and premieres on Paramount+ on July 25.
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Source: Gizmodo