takgoti

Thanks to an internet favorite of mine, the Totally Rad Show, I have watched a number of things for which I probably never would have thought to hit play. One of those things was the breathtakingly joyful animated TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Avatar is something I love for countless reasons: the writing, the characters, the unabashed goofiness, the action sequences, the creativity, I could go on and on. I find myself constantly defending my devotion to the show because it is widely known as being a “kids’ cartoon,” but to bill the series as simply that is truly a disservice.

I think that part of why I appreciate Avatar so much is because it is what I always thought the shows I watched as a kid could be like if they were treated in the same way that really good adult-geared shows are done: with lots of thought and respect for the audience. Even watching shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Captain Planet as a young person, I knew that they were layered in cheese. The story lines typically had this after school special type of a feel to them, and the writing left almost everything to be desired. Characters never seemed to have to work for the level of power they possessed and the stakes in Saturday morning cartoons rarely ever felt earned or real. When you’re little, these kinds of things can be easily forgotten with enough flash and dazzle or a well-placed fart joke.

Avatar, however, seams together the best of being a kid with the grounded quality of writing required for realism. They aren’t afraid to go for the cheesy kid joke or the over-the-top animation every once in a while [the show is meant for a younger audience, after all], but they take the time to make sure the characters are following an overall arc. The typical “throwaway” episodes - the monster of the week type of fare - remain enjoyable because they’re still working toward the overall journey of the season and they allow the players to become familiar to the audience.

Antagonists shift and change. The world of the show is bathed in shades of grey and because the people involved in making the series refused to completely gloss over some of the darker aspects of the plot, the show maintains a sense of gravity without being cruel. Voice actors are truly what they should be - actors. These characters they create, they aren’t washed in stereotypical archetypes; they are nuanced and, perhaps most importantly, allowed to retain the correct amount of maturity for their ages. It is a huge pet peeve of mine when people take child characters and make them act like adults [unless the reasons for the hardened maturity are realistically explained]. Avatar is such a show that might have been able to do that and barely get away with it; there are some pretty rough things that happen to those kids. Luckily, however, it has such a respect for the lighthearted goofy quality that underpins childhood that it allows it to course through the entire series to great effect. It not only allows the show to practically radiate joy, but it makes the more emotional moments feel all the more important and real [a trick that a guy named Joss Whedon uses quite well].

And this leads me to the latest chapter in the Airbender saga - the place where so many workers in entertainment hope to reach - the movie franchise.

Oh, this could have been so good. It could have been magical. With the kind of technology that we are capable of today, the special effects needed to recreate a show like Airbender were not only possible, but it could have taken to another level. Unfortunately, the special effects were quite possibly the only good part of this movie, and we all know that special effects do not a good movie make. Especially when all other aspects of the movie fail spectacularly.

Let us begin with the fact that this movie took it self WAY too seriously. If you’re going to make a film that tries to feel like Lord of the Rings, but you have child actors touting about as much acting experience as that kid who starred in one of the Airbud sequels, it should put up some red flags. Young actors are such a crapshoot. It’s not that I don’t think young people aren’t capable of doing some pretty amazing things, but it is absolutely clear to me that the only reason some of these people were hired were because they could kick really high and kind of looked like their respective characters.

The person they cast in the role of Katara was an absolute mess. Her narratives were flat and dull coated with an incredibly fake sense of importance, and unfortunately they were used throughout the entirety of the movie. Her emotional range consisted of what seemed like two states - normal, and quietly on the verge of tears. It was a cringeworthy performance at best, and when you compare it with the strong, dynamic performance of Mae Whitman on the TV show, the dishonor brought to the character of Katara is near infuriating.

Aang and Sokka were nearly as bad, though so much of why I felt their characters were ruined had so much to do with the writing and direction that I can’t really fault their acting abilities. The giddy happiness that so defines the character of Aang? Gone. The klutzy, sarcastic, egotistical, over-the-top goofball that Sokka is? Gone. All sense of character development in any of the four main characters [Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Zuko]? Gone. Forget all of that. Let’s make them all static and flat, give them some really terrible lines, cover all aspects of growth with fantastic voice-over exposition like “they became fast friends” and hope that the special effects and sweeping landscape shots throw enough glitter in everyone’s eyes so that they don’t notice.

The thing is that when your writing and acting is piss-poor, it makes everything else so noticeably, hideously obnoxious. Because this entry is already incredibly long, I am going to simply list some of the main points that made me grow angrier and angrier as the film droned on.

1. The 3D was terrible. Stupidly flat when it could have been spectacular. Not worth it, don’t do it.

2. What was up with all the weird pronunciations? All of a sudden, all of the vowels became long. It was a bizarre choice, and became gratingly annoying.

3. If you’re going to pay homage to something like Avatar, you should know that there will be hell to pay if you get rid of iconic aspects of the show, like Katara’s hair loopies. Or just how important Appa is to Aang. And where were our damn “Yip Yip”s?! I think I heard it once?

4. Why did they make Appa look so weird?

5. The fight sequences were stilted and awkward. When you watch the cartoon [and granted, I know that making things happen in a cartoon can be much easier than doing it in real life] the fighting is kinetic and fluid and energized and dynamic. In the film it was a series of move, pause. Move, pause. Move, pause. It played like a chess game and with only a few exceptions felt very poorly choreographed. I can almost see what they were trying to do [and it was likely much cheaper not to have the bending going through the entire sequence of forms], but it was poorly executed indeed. A shame, too, when someone like Noah Ringer has a talent that could have shone so brightly.

6. So. Much. Caucasian.

7. Uncle Iroh. Not that he isn’t a good actor or that the character wasn’t handled as well as he could have been given the clumsy-at-best script, but ugh. This movie is filled with odd casting choices, and yes, Uncle Iroh probably would have been one of the hardest people to cast, but this felt like a cop out.

8. Commander Zhao felt like a B Movie villain.

9. The score. It’s not that the score was bad, per se, but it felt like too much of a departure from the awesome, awesome music used on the actual show. Avatar already had such a distinctive, solid base of themes and music to pull from, and it really pains me that they didn’t build on that and use it in the movie. The score in this film felt generic, and because of how bad everything else was, at times overdramatic.

10. The mythology and cannon of the show felt warped and weird. I understand that there has to be some shaping and cutting and honing for whole season of a TV show to fit into the span of a movie, but, for example, the transitions into the spirit world were strange and seemed to come out of nowhere.

11. Why in the name of Zeus would anyone allow M. Night Shayamalan write the script for this movie? THE SCRIPT MIGHT HAVE BEEN THE THING THAT COULD HAVE SAVED THIS MOVIE. I don’t pretend to have any real concept as to how Hollywood operates, but I seriously demand to know how and why someone who has proven to helm such a crappy string of movies like M. Night was given permission to pen this one.

Things that I enjoyed.

1. Momo. They got rid of his character quirks almost entirely, but I liked the way he looked on the film so at least that was something.

2. Dev Patel as Prince Zuko. Probably the only main player, besides the Shaun Toub who I couldn’t get completely on board with because of aesthetics, who tried to get into character, even if the script really didn’t allow for any deviation from Angry Zuko. If there is a second movie [and I really hope that there is and that they get rid of M. Night] I’ll be interested to see where he takes things.

3. Damon Gupton as Monk Gyatso was probably the brightest, happiest character in the film and, for me, the person who most embodied the essence of any of the characters from the TV show. The flashbacks were, by far, the most emotionally moving scenes for me.

That’s just about all I’ve got. I’m still trying to rid my mouth of the bitter taste I get whenever I think about just how angry this movie made me. I’ve since read a few reviews of it, and from what I’ve read almost everyone who’s writing hasn’t actually seen the TV show. I can’t say that I’m terribly surprised, but it makes me really sad. Maybe the movie would have been a lot more enjoyable if I didn’t know how good it could have been. Most reviews seem to apathetically state that this is another crappy M. Night film but at least it was mildly entertaining and the action sequences were good, but I can’t even take that stance because the show was seriously THAT much better.

When Harry Potter was just getting started, the acting left a little bit to be desired but the books were so beloved that they took a lot of trouble to make sure that the overall atmosphere of the films felt true to what was created in JK Rowling’s world. There was no way that they were going to be able to bring in everything that everyone loved from the books, and they knew it, but the FEELING was there. The HEART was there. I always used to make fun of the Heart ring in Captain Planet because it felt like such a lame power [and, being honest, it still kinda was on that show], but it’s so incredibly important. The Avatar series has so much heart, and it shone through everyone involved. The creators, Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, speak about it with such passion and an undeniable sense of love, achingly similar to that indefinable quality that surrounds John Lasseter’s work. It’s no small surprise that that kind of dedication filtered down and inspired the awesome work brought forth by everyone else, from the animators to the sound designer to the voice actors and the score writer. It was a labor of love, and it made the show such an incredible thing to enjoy and experience. To see something so great brought to such ruin on the screen was, as overdramatic and silly as this going to sound, nothing short of heart-wrenching.

If the sheer length of this post alone hasn’t clearly demonstrated the amount of affection I have for Avatar, I’m not sure how else I can convey it. I can’t recommend that you go see the movie, but please, if you want to be whisked to a world that is, simply put, incredibly special then do yourself a favor and check out the TV show. It might start out a smidge slow, but trust me when I say you’re in for an absolute delight.

Yip yip!

[All three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender are available for Instant Watch or Disc Shipping on Netflix. You can also find episodes for download on iTunes. DVDs are sold at most electronic retailers.]