Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender Review - ATLA Sequel Movie Fails To Live Up To Its Grand Legacy

In the trailer for Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, the new movie from the original creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender, Paramount+ includes praise for the 2000s animated series. With quotes like "One of the greatest shows of all time" and "One of the most anticipated films of the year," it's clearly playing up the legacy of the original show in order to entice fans of all ages back to the world of the Avatar. But what exactly are we coming back to?

To explain where I'm coming from, I've been a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender since its early days as a Nickelodeon cartoon. I watched the entire series over and over again when one of Nickelodeon's cable channels played it on repeat ahead of the theatrical release of the first live-action adaptation, 2010's The Last Airbender (which I saw at a midnight screening). I watched its spinoff, The Legend of Korra, in the lounge of my college dorm. I can't tell you how many times I've watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, because I've lost count throughout two decades of its existence.

All of this is to say, I'm exactly the target audience Paramount+ hoped to reach with its trailer for Avatar Aang. I do consider the original series to be one of the greatest TV shows of all time, and I was hoping the new movie would capture at least some of that magic. While there are some glimmers of what made the original series so much fun to watch, Avatar Aang is a merely middling return to the universe, with a blend of new and old that's, frankly, jarring to watch.

Even though Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender comes from the minds of original creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, the movie still feels like a bastardization of the original cartoon. A clichéd storyline unpacking themes that were already well-trod within the Avatar universe is paired with a completely new animation style and almost entirely new cast. It all comes together to make Avatar Aang more than a little bit of a letdown, failing to even hope to reach the heights of the original series.

Avatar Aang's Story Is A Predictable Retread That Doesn't Play To The Universe's Strengths

With a script by Tim Hendrick (who worked on the original series) and Christopher Yost (Thor: Ragnarok), and a story by Konietzko, DiMartino, Hendrick, and Kenneth Lin (Warrior), Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender picks up about a decade after the end of the original series, with the characters living their adult lives. Since there's peace and little need for the Avatar, Aang (Eric Nam) spends his time searching for old airbender artifacts, until one day he's attacked by a group called the Denied – non-benders who resent the powers granted to benders.

While attempting to get in front of the Denied, who are looking for a powerful staff with ties to the Spirit World, Aang discovers an ancient airbender who, similarly to him, was trapped in ice. Tagah (Dave Bautista) promises to help Aang find the staff, which was wielded by a past airbender Avatar named Sonam (Freida Pinto), and together with the rest of Aang's team – Katara (Jessica Matten), Sokka (Román Zaragoza), Toph (Dionne Quan) and Zuko (Steven Yeun) – they set off on the journey.

The two main driving elements of Avatar Aang's story have been done before, and done better, by past series in this universe. Aang's guilt over abandoning the airbenders and their eventual destruction at the hands of the Fire Nation,was a theme explored at great length in the original series. It had been resolved; Aang had seemingly made peace with it. While trauma like that never fully goes away, it still very much feels like the work he'd done to heal was undone simply for a plot contrivance.

Similarly, the Denied are essentially a retread of the Equalists story from The Legend of Korra, the group of radicals who sought equality through ridding the world of benders. With the nations at peace after Aang ended the Hundred Year War, it seems like the only conflict the creators can come up with is between benders and non-benders. There is some historical international conflict in Avatar Aang that's woven into the story, but with only a 98-minute runtime, it's not very well-developed or resolved.

Perhaps the most egregious issue with these storylines, though, is how they sideline the majority of ATLA's main characters. What made the original series so special was the wide variety of stories it told through characters like Katara, Sokka, Zuko, and Toph. However, these characters are relegated to adding levity, or in the case of Katara, are used to hand-wave away any semblance of stakes. The movie is Aang's story alone. The rest of the characters are along for the ride, but essentially useless.

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender's Animation Is Beautiful

In the new film, director Lauren Montgomery (who did some storyboard work on the original series) trades in the show's 2D animation for a mixture of 2D and 3D anime-inspired animation that sometimes captures the look of the original show, but largely establishes a unique visual style. This style works best in the movie's fight sequences, though there are times when it becomes hard to follow the action. Still, the choreography of the fights matches the intricacies of the original series and elevates it to a whole new level.

Where the style falls apart a bit, though, is in the characters themselves. It's jarring enough that the Avatar Aang: the Last Airbender voice cast is almost entirely different – only Dee Bradley Baker returns to provide the voice work of Appa and Momo – but it's understandable that the filmmakers would want to bring in Asian American voices to play these characters. However, the new style renders them almost unrecognizable, even taking into account the movie aging them up by 10 years. It gives the film a surreal feel, as if you're watching a fan-created continuation of the animated show rather than a sequel movie made by the original creators.

Ultimately, I went into Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender hoping for an all-new adventure with my favorite characters; what I got was a beautiful, but overwrought retread of Aang's biggest themes, and some new worldbuilding about a past Avatar and the Spirit World that was too thin to make me care about it much. There are brief moments of greatness, especially when the whole Gaang gets together, but Avatar Aang doesn't live up to the accolades showered upon the original series. Maybe that was never really an option.

From one ATLA fan to another, I'd recommend going into this movie with your expectations low, and remembering that being able to fully honor the legacy of "one of the greatest shows of all time" was too high a bar to begin with. Still, there is enjoyment to be found in Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, even if it's, on the whole, a little disappointing.

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender releases Saturday, July 25 on Paramount+.