"That... wasn't a good movie." [TLA bullet-point review]
Sokka and Aang's reactions to the movie.
The short: If you want an abbreviated version of the Last Airbender story, watch the third season episode "The Ember Island Players" instead. The characters and mythology are more recognizable there than in this movie, which - if you've seen the episode - should tell you plenty.
And to assure everyone: No, I did not spend a single penny to watch this. No way am I potentially funding a second installment of... whatever this was.
The Good:
-- Some of the visuals. The externals of the Northern Air Temple, the design of the Northern Water Tribe, Aang's tattoos lighting up.
-- Yue was much less weepy and "Oh Sokka! We can't be together!" than in the series, but that may be due to the cardboard affliction that seems to permeate most of the characters.
-- I appreciated the beginning with the bending silhouettes, like in the series.
-- Iroh may have looked nothing like he did in the series, but I at least bought that he had a good heart and genuinely cared for Zuko.
Now, the much less good.
-- It's bad enough you whitewashed Katara and Sokka (and their grandma), but to make them the only Caucasians in the entire Southern Water Tribe? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
-- The characters' personalities/development are all gone. No childlike, impish Aang, no mothering but spunky Katara; no frustratedly hilarious Sokka. Hell, the only reason Appa and Momo are there is basically so people who watched the show can point and go "Look! Appa and Momo!" The only ones who remotely resemble themselves are Iroh and Zuko, and Iroh is sadly without his tea. You don't give a crap whether the Fire Nation wipes out everyone, the so called Avatar included.
-- I didn't feel one glimmer of emotional resonance between the protagonists. Not between siblings Sokka and Katara, no bond of friendship between the three mains, not the glimmer of a puppy crush between Aang and Katara, and the development of Sokka and Yue's romance is literally boiled down to one line: "Sokka and the princess became friends quickly." (There may have been one slight chuckle at this point.)
-- Most of the main characters are simply useless. Katara's waterbending serves no purpose, even her one big speech gets co-opted by Aang; Sokka is just there to look glum. Much is made in dialogue about how Aang "needs" Katara and Sokka to help him reach the North Pole, but in the end, all Aang really needed to do was just hop on Appa and point it north for all the help the Wonder Siblings were. The only other character you might call crucial to his journey was Zuko, for rescuing Aang from Zhao.
--It's not just Sokka: the humor is gone. I remember one distinct laugh, when Katara accidentally freezes Sokka with her waterbending, but I'm not sure the laugh was the sort the filmmakers intended.
-- There's no cohesion, no context to the scenes we see: the first half of the movie is little more than a speeded-up, jumbled montage burning ground so we can get the main characters to the Northern Water Tribe. We barely know where we're going and why, and we certainly don't care.
-- At first I was pissed that there were no Kyoshi Warriors/Suki, but after seeing how everyone else got butchered, I'm glad Suki was spared.
-- Zuko's scar wasn't nearly pronounced enough. Half the time I couldn't even see it.
-- The pronunciations. WHAT. You make the argument of changing the pronunciations under the guise of "authenticity," but it's authentic to have an entire tribe of color except three white main characters? Yeah, whatever.
-- The dialogue. Way too much exposition and not enough else.
-- Acting. With the exception of Iroh and a few moments from Zuko, it seemed like most of the actors could care less whether they were there. The main three were flat and lifeless; the Fire Lord and Zhao had no menace whatsoever; Zhao himself was hammy. Stick to the Daily Show, Mandvi.
-- We never really get why the Fire Nation is supposed to be so evil, aside from that, unlike the pretty sparkly water tribes, they do nothing but travel around in ships that belch ash, and occasionally kill helpless spirit fish.
-- Where the hell was Roku? We got what I assume was supposed to be his animal guide, but not him.
-- Bending. Too many fancy-dance moves before anything actually happened. Like your enemies are really going to stand around ten whole seconds and wait for you to conjure up a tornado?
-- The outright rewriting/botching of the mythology. Why is it that firebending is suddenly such a rare trait? If Avatars don't have families, how do you explain Zuko's ancestry? If Avatars aren't allowed to kill, how do you explain Aang's entire spirit journey in the series finale? And no, Aang was NOT reticent about waterbending.
-- Which leads to: no Aang merging with the Ocean spirit to take out the Fire Nation navy. The finale is nothing more than Aang dancing around a little with his staff, then at the last minute summoning some big-ass waves.
-- The whole thing was just very dull, not even lulzy in the sense that Eclipse occasionally was.
The movie didn't ruin my enjoyment of the series, or anything like that. It just stunk.
One good thing to come from this: I see the entire TV series is now among the top-selling DVDs on Amazon. Yes! :)