Reviewing - Avatar: The Last Airbender
Literally the only reason I ever gave this show a shot was to get Dave Turowec off my back.
Dave’s a great guy, don’t get me wrong. He’s very funny, very smart, and always willing to help. Love the guy. But when it comes to film and television, he has some outrageous ideas. He once told me that Toy Story 2 was the weakest film in the trilogy. As though flour is the weakest element in waffles.
“Dude – you’ve gotta watch Avatar,” he told me, like, every other day. “It’s so good.”
“Such a satisfying finish.”
“The writers were genius.”
“Man, there’s like no filler once you get past episode twelve.”
“Blah blah blah.”
I tuned the guy out for as long as I possibly could, but somewhere along the line I got roped into a deal that was really one-sided. I agreed to watch the first twelve episodes in exchange for him watching the extended version of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. As if that’s a fair trade. What self-respecting film aficionado hasn’t watched all three Lord of the Rings films in their extended forms?! And of all the films to watch – why the SECOND one? I don’t even know if he ever actually did it.
But lo and behold, I sat through the first twelve episodes of Avatar. And then, months and months later, I got through the rest of Season One.
Season One
Season One was definitely not bad. The animation style wasn’t what I was used to – it’s not anime, but it definitely leans more into that style than anything else I’d grown up with. For what it’s worth, though, there were some pretty cool shots here and there. The fight sequences in particular were really fun to look at. And I really liked the creature design. There are some weird and wonderful beasts in this world, and I’m all for that.
The first few episodes felt pretty childish in scope and focus, but I knew that the direction the show was heading was definitely going to be able to retain the interest of older audiences – or at the very least, Dave Turowec. By the time I got to episode twelve, the full understanding of the show’s path was becoming apparent. Aang is the ‘savior’ of the universe that’s still figuring out his true potential. Katara and Sokka are his sidekicks who each bring something of value to the table. Then there’s Zuko, who turns out to be more of an antihero in this season than a full-on bad guy. Zuko’s uncle Iroh is a lot of fun as a character – kind of like a Yoda figure for Darth Vader, if you get me.
This Zuko kid felt very much like a one-trick pony, akin to Marvel’s Netflix nightmare “Iron Fist” or The Force Awakens’ Kylo Ren. His single-minded determination is more laughable than laudable. Iroh kept him grounded, although I thought Iroh and Sokka would have made a better pair with their constant preoccupation with eating, drinking, and generally doing anything but furthering the plot.
Anyway, by the time I got to the end of Season One, I figured Season Two was worth a go. I’m no quitter, in any case.
Season Two
Season Two introduced us to Toph and Azula, who rounded out the cast excellently. Toph was like a kid version of Daredevil who didn’t much care for the other members of the team, and Azula was the pure-evil villain that Zuko hadn’t quite yet managed to be. While Zuko certainly looked the part and had the classic ‘blinded-by-his-own-rage’ characteristics that many great villains have, his motivation of restoring his honour was just noble enough to keep him from going fully diabolical. Azula’s way more power-hungry, and her snide arrogance makes her the kind of villain you love to hate. She was great this season.
That’s not to say that she replaced Zuko, because he got a whole lot more interesting this season. This season was a tumultuous one for the Avatar-hunter. I actually laughed out loud during the episode where Iroh called out Zuko’s internal turmoil directly, to which Zuko angrily replied,
“WHAT TURMOIL?!”
Man, that was great. His back-and-forth struggle with “the light side” or whatever you want to call it was really engaging – particularly in the season finale when he made a firm decision that shocked me. I didn’t expect surprises like that in a show like this, so kudos to the writers for that.
The action continued to evolve, as did the growing number of fantastical creatures. Seriously, a big chunk of my enjoyment from this show came from the creative little hybrids they came up with. The turtle ducks, lion mooses, ostrich horses, rhino beetles – loved all of those. They weren’t like the complex aliens and oddities we see in science fiction – they were often so simply depicted that I thought to myself, “Aw, man, why don’t we have those?”
Getting back to the season finale, the entire final chunk of this season was really great. Everything that happened in Ba-Sing-Se was a lot of fun – from the drill battle to the secret underground lair. On that note, I was very concerned about Jet in the episode where he took what looked like a fatal hit from a bad guy. It seemed clear that Jet was going to succumb to his wounds, and everyone except his closest friends seemed to be moving on to let him die in peace. But then one of his friends drew a bow even though there was no one else around. For a second I seriously wondered if his friends were planning on mercy killing him – which would have been a seriously dark turn for a kid’s show. Dave Turowec seems to think that the friend was just guarding everyone, but I didn’t see anybody nearby that would’ve triggered such alarm. I think Jet got iced by his pal.
Season Three
I flew through Season Three – partly because I watched some of it at work while filing. Most of the time, I found myself worrying about the inevitable final battle between Aang and the Fire Lord. Usually when the prime protagonist and the prime antagonist do their big final battle, there are deeply emotional or dramatic stakes. Think about Batman and the Joker, Luke and Darth Vader, Harry Potter and Voldemort, and so on. By the time these guys are facing off, it’s not just business. It’s personal. I worried that this wouldn’t be the case for Aang, because we’re in the final season and Aang still hasn’t so much as spoken to the Fire Lord. To Aang, the Fire Lord is merely a political obstacle to restoring balance. He’s not an arch-nemesis the way that Thanos, Davy Jones, or the White Witch are to their respective heroes. There’s no personal relationship or prior meet-ups to heighten the intensity of the fight.
In a sense, my concern was valid. When Aang and the Fire Lord have their fight (and boy, is it a cool fight), they don’t really know each other any more than they did back in the first episode. Because of that, we know that Aang is going to defeat the Fire Lord – it’s the final episode, after all. We also know that the Fire Lord is going to subsequently become irrelevant. Whether he dies or not doesn’t really matter – he might go the classic villain route and end up accidentally getting himself killed in a flurry of rage like Scar, Sam Raimi’s Green Goblin, or practically any bad guy from Indiana Jones. He might also just get locked up for life, which is what happens to the Fire Lord in this case. Either way, Aang has to win, so the Fire Lord has to lose. When we compare this to Darth Vader, for example, the final fight has a lot more potency. We all knew Luke would defeat the Galactic Empire – what we didn’t know was whether or not Anakin would return. That’s what made that finale so effective. And if this series finale was ONLY about Aang and Fire Lord, it might have actually felt a little anti-climactic.
Thankfully, there’s one other fight in the finale that gives us that dramatic weight we’re looking for. It’s Azula versus Zuko, and it’s definitely a nail-biter for the simple reason that anything could happen. Zuko’s a good guy now, but he certainly doesn’t NEED to survive. Azula will probably end up defeated because she’s bad, but Zuko’s life is a big question mark walking into this episode. It’s that kind of tension that makes his battle a thrill to watch.
That said, the final episodes are a visual spectacle in and of themselves. There’s fire everywhere and explosions and kick-butt martial artistry, and I can just imagine the original millions of kids staring wide-eyed and wide-jawed at their TV screens when this first aired. This ending was BIG, and that’s great. And not just the finale. The assault on the Fire Nation was great too, and the Boiling Rock episodes were a lot of fun. Bloodbending was introduced this season, and it both haunted and intrigued me. The episode where Azula and the other villains were on the beach was kind of weird, but it did give us the bizarrely wonderful moment where Azula kissed a boy she’d just met and then screamed,
Together, you and I will be the strongest couple in the entire world! We will dominate the Earth!
On the whole, I’m glad I watched this show. It lived up to the hype of having a completely thought out beginning, middle, and end – a trait that so few television shows have. The animation was great and the characters were a lot of fun. It pains me to say that Dave was right.
Then again, the guy hasn’t seen the extended editions of Lord of the Rings. Hey, King Bumi was mostly crazy but occasionally made sense too.
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