I truly love the idea that Nickelodeon took a chance at Asian culture, anime, and a serious fandom and struck gold with it. Amid the SpongeBob legacy and Danny Phantom, Avatar sticks out like a golden thumb of excellence. Now, Avatar has its first animated feature-length film. Despite the scandal surrounding its early release on Twitter, the movie has been generally well-received.
Aang takes us back to the beginning, where he feels guilt for not being there when his airbenders were destroyed by the Fire Nation. Despite the peace between nations, Aang still mourns the loss of his people. When he learns that Sonam, an ancient avatar, made a staff that can convert anyone into an airbender, he sets out to find it. He finds Tagah, voiced by Dave Bautista, another airbender frozen in ice. Tagah helps Aang find the staff, but then we learn that his motives are to get revenge on the world.
As a visually appealing masterpiece, Aang hits every bell for beautiful 2D animation, almost hitting Studio Ghibli levels of fluidity and color. Battle animation is impressively smooth, catching the eye.
For 80% of the movie, I would tell you that the story makes sense and moves at an excellent pace. But the last 20% adds conflict that isn’t fully explained and stakes that aren’t fleshed out. This makes the final battle less than stellar, as I could not feel the fabricated urgency the movie created. The plot does a great job of explaining itself, but there are many callbacks to the series that only true fans will enjoy.
Tonally, the movie is all over the hemisphere. The focus will stay on something serious and cinematically moving and then jump cut to the silliest anime conversation in history. During the epic battle with armageddon stakes, the movie switches to Ken Jeong’s character screaming, “My Cabbages!” The studio hoped the meme community would at least pick that up. Taika Waititi, the king of not reading the room, makes a cameo appearance in a scene that disrupts serious stakes with his silly character chewing the scenery. His scene is so quick and out of the movie’s flow; it felt like an ad break. I don’t think kids or serious Avatar fans will mind those intrusions, but I doubt film critics and outsiders will give them a pass.
Voice acting ranges from tropey anime exchanges between the heroes to heartbreaking interactions that would give Naruto a run for its money. The motivations for Aang and Tagah are spot-on, giving the audience reasons to care about them. Many guest voices, like Key Huy Quan, Steven Yuen, and Freida Pinto, make only a small impact on the story and exit with little investment.
Overall, the movie had to choose between pleasing a wide audience and appealing to fans. I would say the studio favored the fans, but the wider audience would not be completely lost.
3.5 out of 5