Avatar: The Last Air Bender – Skip the Movie, Watch the Cartoon

Nickolodeon has produced some great cartoons like Rocko’s Modern Life, Ren & Stimpy, Doug, and Rugrats, but Avatar: The Last Airbender stands a cut above the rest.  If for no other reason than because of the shows continuity.  It is much closer in spirit to anime cartoons like Dragon Ball Z, except it is only 3 seasons long, and the characters are much more palatable.  To my knowledge, it is also the only Nick cartoon to be made into a full-length, live-action feature film (Spongebob, Rugrats, and Wild Thornberries were animated).

Given the race-bending controversy (however over-exaggerated), and the paltry 8% rating on rotten tomatoes, it would be easy to attack M. Knight Shyamalan’s film adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender.  But I’m not going to do that, for several reasons.

First: adaptations, covers, and remakes are almost always bad, if not downright awful.  The odds of the adaptation being better than the source are about 0%.  The easiest place to find a good example of a reproduction outshining its source material is music, since it is a lot easier to cover a song than it is to remake or reboot a movie or TV show.  And even then, there aren’t a lot of great examples.  Only a handful spring to mind: Joe Cocker’s take on The Beatles’ With a Little Help From My Friends, Cake’s cover of I Will Survive, Jolene by The White Stripes, and maybe The Reverend Horton Heat’s version of Folsom Prison Blues.  Now throw in the fact that we are talking about not only trying to reinvent another person’s work, but changing mediums, and the job gets a lot tougher.

Of all of the TV shows I’ve watched, movies I’ve seen, and books I’ve read, I could only think of two examples of an adaptation being better than the source when the copy and the source aren’t in the same medium.  1) How the Grinch Stole Christmas (The animated special narrated by Boris Karloff – NOT the Jim Carrey catastrophe) 2) Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Only Joss Whedon could take a flick about a teenage vampire hunter and turn it into a cult-hit TV show.

Second: Hollywood lost interest in genuinely interesting, captivating, quality, or just plain good movies a long time ago.  And why wouldn’t they?  From a movie fanatic’s point of view, the following makes me cringe, but from a devil’s advocate / economic point of view, it only makes sense.  Why would a movie studio take a risk on an unknown story, when they can take just about any source material, and no matter how God-awful the result, end up with a box office hit?  Much like those slimy, shady, too-perfect-to-be-real televangelists, movies studios are worried about one thing: butts in seats.  Most people who hear about a story they found compelling being put up on the silver screen have decided before they ever see a preview, let alone a review, that they are going to buy a ticket to see that movie.  And what’s more, most of them will probably eat it up anyway.  And even if they don’t, it is rare for people to ask for their money back.

My friends can attest that I am the most cantankerous 25 year old you are likely to meet, yet in all my years of movie-going, I have only ever asked for my money back once.  Even then, it had nothing to do with the quality of the film, but with the gaggle of teenaged girls having a shouting match outside the entrance to the theater when I saw No Country For Old Men. But I digress.

My point is this: if you make a movie with a story people already know, you will sell tickets – even if it is terrible.  Even if a movie is the greatest thing since Citizen Kane, far fewer people are willing to take a chance on a movie they know nothing about, than will pay to see a crappy movie based on a crappy cartoon, which is in turn based on a toy line from 30 years ago.  (For the record, that was intended to be a shot at Transformers, but it could have just as easily been about Thundercats, GI Joe, or Masters of the Universe.)

Third: I haven’t seen the movie.

I have seen the cartoon, however.  And it is great.  I originally found out about Avatar: The Last Airbender when reviewing the TV.com list of Top 100 TV shows, which I often do when looking for a new show to watch.  (For the record, I started watching the show before the Totally Rad Show guys said it was cool.)  Given that it was a cartoon, it originally aired on Nickelodeon, and it was created in the States but had an Eastern feel, I was hesitant.  Since it made the list, and the premise seemed interesting enough, I took a chance.  And I’m glad I did.

Avatar takes place in a world with four ‘races,’ for lack of a better term.  Each race’s culture, at its core, represents one of the four elements: Earth, Water, Fire, and Air (no Heart here, Captain Planet chumps).

Within each of these cultures, there are ‘benders’ who have the ability to control the element their race represents.  An earthbender, for example, can flatten a mountain, or open a hole in a stone wall sans drill.  The Avatar, sort of like the Dalai Lama, is reincarnated into a new born of one of the four races.  Not all people can bend an element, and of the people who can, only the Avatar has the ability to bend all of them.

In the beginning of the first episode, Aang, a boy of about 12, an airbender, and the avatar, is traveling near the north pole.  He is caught in a storm, and ends up getting trapped in a frozen bubble of air.  A century later, Sokka and his waterbending sister Katara, like Sean Astin and Pauly Shore to Aang’s Brendan Fraser (yes, that was an Encino Man reference – you’re welcome), find Aang thawing.  In the time Aang has been frozen, the Fire Nation has taken over the planet, the Air race has completely died out, and everyone has lost faith in the Avatar.  Since he was cryogenically frozen, but didn’t die, the Avatar was never re-incarnated into another form.  No one knows this, and assumes the Avatar has been on the lam.  Already an accomplished airbender, Aang then begins his journey to learn how to bend the other elements, topple the rule of the Fire Nation, and restore the world’s faith in him – The Avatar.

There is a lot to love about Avatar, and if you can understand that it was intended to be a kids cartoon, it is easy to look past some of its weaker points.  The universe alone is fascinating.  Each race learned to bend from observing animals.  For example, by observing dragons, ancient citizens of the Fire Nation learned to bend fire.  The creators of the show managed to create an origin story and culture for each race that is unique, yet seems consistent with the other races, and plausible in the world in which the characters exist.  These stories and philosophies feel both new and eastern-themed at the same time, which couldn’t have been easy to develop.

While the world as a whole is very consistent, what makes them the most interesting are the races’ differences.  The airbenders were very much like Tibetan monks, while the Fire Nation is much more industrial and military.  What I think I found most interesting was that when mastered at the highest level, each races benders can learn to bend things slightly outside their wheelhouse.  Firebenders can bend lighting, waterbenders blood, and earthbenders metal.  The creators of the show set up this wonderful world, and watching the writers take all of this and run with it is fascinating.

The individual characters are surprisingly well developed, too.  Raised in a monastery, and known to be the Avatar from an early age, Aang is a carefree kid.  When he wakes up in a world that was tossed on its head, he realizes quickly that he needs to become the Avatar – the leader of the world – as fast as possible.  It shows many times throughout the show the toll this kind of responsibility takes on Aang, but his lighthearted attitude seems to always win out.  Katara is a waterbender in a village where there simply are no more water benders.  She struggles with her skills, as she has to learn them on her own, without official training.  Sokka is Katara’s brother, who overcompensates for his lack of bending skill and absent father by trying to be the greatest warrior of his tribe.  He spends much of the series coming to terms with the fact that he is just too young to fight against the Fire Nation alongside his father and the rest of the actual warriors of his tribe.  Zuko, son and former heir apparent of the emperor of the Fire Nation, is the Avatar’s arch-enemy.  Having been shamed by his father, and exiled from his home, his only way to earn his rightful place as the next ruler is to capture the Avatar.  My favorite character is Toph, a tough as nails, blind earthbender, who – similar to Dare Devil – uses earth bending to ‘see’ people through the vibrations of the earth.

Each of the show’s three seasons is primarily themed on one of the three remaining races: water, earth, and fire, in that order.  The majority of the episodes in each season takes place in the home of the respective race, and introduces characters of that race.  Aang’s training also follows this theme, learning to bend each of the corresponding elements.  The show manages to blend well episodes which contribute to the over-all story with episodes that could just as easily stand on their own.

One of my favorite episodes involves Sokka trying to catch a sort of midget moose thing in order to eat it.  Another great episode that comes to mind involves an inventor who lives in a former airbender monastery, and the efforts of the Avatar, his friends, and the inventor, to fight of an invading platoon of Fire Nation soldiers.  As I recall, these episodes didn’t have much to do with the overall story, yet they are just as memorable, if not more so, than the episodes that drive the overarching plot.

Avatar: The Last Airbender manages to be both a kid’s cartoon and a show adults can easily enjoy, anime-like but easily digestible by non-anime watchers, and funny – even silly at times – while having intense action, and dealing with issues most kids shows wouldn’t touch with a 10 foot pole.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.  The odds are, if you were going to see the movie adaptation, you have already done so.  If you have seen the movie but not the cartoon, don’t let the movie turn you off.  The world is worth exploring.  If you haven’t seen the movie, I suggest skipping it.

If you have Netflix, watching the show is effectively free, so save your money and watch the show instead.  I believe it is available Watch Instantly, too, so you can start as soon as you finish reading this review.  Personally, I would recommend buying the DVDs, if you are remotely inclined to do so.  I have only seen the show once, but it is definitely on my list to watch again.  The show is currently not available in a box set – only season by season.  They just started releasing special editions of each of the seasons, too.  My guess is that they are waiting to issue the series in a single collection to correspond with the movie’s DVD release.  If you are the box set collecting type, you may want to wait to buy, but by all means, don’t wait to watch.

• Avatar The Last Airbender – The Complete Book 1 Collection
• Avatar The Last Airbender – The Complete Book 2 Collection
• Avatar The Last Airbender – The Complete Book 3 Collection