The trailer for the upcoming live-action movie from the team behind Avatar: The Last Airbender highlights how beloved the original animated series was. It uses phrases like “One of the greatest shows of all time” and “One of the most anticipated films of the year” to remind viewers of the show’s popularity and draw them into this new adaptation. This raises the question: what exactly will fans experience when they return to the world of Avatar?
I’ve been a huge fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender ever since it first aired on Nickelodeon. I used to watch the series constantly – Nickelodeon played reruns for months before the live-action movie, The Last Airbender, came out in 2010 (and I even saw that at midnight!). Later, while in college, I watched its sequel, The Legend of Korra. Over the past twenty years, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve rewatched Avatar: The Last Airbender – it’s been countless.
Basically, I’m exactly who Paramount+ was trying to reach with the trailer for Avatar Aang. I’m a huge fan of the original series – I think it’s one of the best TV shows ever – and I really wanted the new movie to feel as special. While it has a few moments that remind you of the original, Avatar Aang is just an okay return to that world. The mix of new and old elements feels a bit awkward and doesn’t quite work.
Despite being created by the original series’ creators, Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, the Avatar Aang movie doesn’t quite live up to the beloved cartoon. It relies on overused plot points and themes already explored in the Avatar world, and features a completely different visual style and almost an entirely new set of actors. The result is a disappointing movie that doesn’t even come close to matching the quality of the original series.
Avatar Aang’s Story Is A Predictable Retread That Doesn’t Play To The Universe’s Strengths
The new series, Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, takes place roughly ten years after the original show ended, showing what happened to the characters as adults. The story, written by Tim Hendrick (who also worked on the first series) and Christopher Yost (Thor: Ragnarok), with a story by Konietzko, DiMartino, Hendrick, and Kenneth Lin (Warrior), follows Aang (voiced by Eric Nam) as he searches for lost airbending relics. This peaceful life is disrupted when he’s attacked by a group called the Denied – people who don’t have bending abilities and are jealous of those who do.
Aang is trying to stay one step ahead of the Denied, a group searching for a powerful staff connected to the Spirit World. During his efforts, he finds an old airbender who was also frozen in ice for years. This airbender, Tagah (Dave Bautista), offers to help Aang locate the staff – once held by Avatar Sonam (Freida Pinto) from the past. Joining them on this quest are Aang’s friends: Katara (Jessica Matten), Sokka (Román Zaragoza), Toph (Dionne Quan), and Zuko (Steven Yeun).
The core struggles in Aang’s story – his guilt about the airbenders and the Fire Nation’s destruction of them – have been covered more effectively in previous series. This issue was already addressed and resolved in the original show, with Aang finding a degree of peace. It feels disappointing that his previous healing process was essentially reversed just to create conflict in the plot.
The Denied storyline feels quite similar to the Equalists from The Legend of Korra – another group who believed the only way to achieve fairness was by eliminating those with bending abilities. Now that the world is at peace after Aang’s victory in the Hundred Year War, the show seems stuck focusing on conflicts between benders and non-benders. While Avatar Aang does touch upon some past international disputes, they aren’t explored deeply due to the movie’s short 98-minute length.
The biggest problem with these stories is that they leave most of the main characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender feeling unimportant. What fans loved about the original series was how it explored different perspectives through characters like Katara, Sokka, Zuko, and Toph. But in this movie, those characters are mostly there for comic relief, or – as with Katara – to quickly resolve conflicts without real consequences. It feels like Aang’s story is happening to them, not with them; they don’t have much impact on the plot.
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender’s Animation Is Beautiful
Director Lauren Montgomery, previously involved with the original series’ storyboarding, has updated the animation for this new film. Instead of the classic 2D style, she uses a blend of 2D and 3D anime visuals. While it occasionally evokes the look of the original show, it mostly creates a fresh and distinct aesthetic. This visual approach is particularly effective during action scenes, although the fast-paced choreography can sometimes be difficult to follow. Despite this, the fight sequences are impressively detailed – building on the complexity of the original series and taking it even further.
The biggest weakness of the film lies with its characters. While it’s good the filmmakers chose Asian American actors, the new voice performances are surprisingly different from the original Avatar: The Last Airbender series – only Dee Bradley Baker returned as Appa and Momo. This change, combined with aging the characters up by a decade, makes them almost unrecognizable. It creates a strange viewing experience, feeling more like a fan-made extension of the show than an official sequel created by the original team.
I really went into Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender excited to see Aang and the gang in a brand new story. What I got, though, was a pretty, but ultimately familiar, revisiting of themes we’ve already seen. They tried to build out the world with a story about a past Avatar and the Spirit World, but it didn’t quite grab me. There are definitely some awesome moments, especially when the whole team is together, but honestly, it just didn’t reach the same heights as the original series. Maybe that was just too much to ask, though.
As one Avatar fan to another, I’d suggest not expecting too much from this movie. It’s tough to live up to a show as beloved as Avatar: The Last Airbender, and honestly, the bar was set pretty high. Even though it’s a bit underwhelming overall, there’s still some fun to be had with it.
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender releases Saturday, July 25 on Paramount+.
2026-07-20 17:59