The Last Airbender: Do Your Homework!

Director M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender, a live-action adaptation of Nickelodeon's popular cartoon series Avatar: The Last Airbender, has finally hit the screens of multiplexes across the United States. Chances are, if you have a pre-teen, especially a boy, you will be hit up to go the the theater to see it.

If you have not been keeping up with Avatar: The Last Airbender on television (currently in reruns on Nickelodeon TOONS), here is a little homework refresher to help you not only follow what is going on but also impress your young Last Airbender fan, because The Last Airbender has a back-story or myth as rich as that of The Lord of the Rings.

Why did the title change?

Avatar: The Last Airbender premiered on Nickelodeon in February 2005 and ran for three seasons. In the lingo of the series, each season is called a Book and each episode a Chapter. So, the first season is "Book One: Water." The second season is "Book Two: Earth," and the third season is "Book Three: Fire." Since Shyamalan has announced that The Last Airbender is the first of a trilogy, assumedly the three films will correspond to the three Books of the television series.

While Shyamalian worked on his film, a problem with the name came up. The fine old Hindu word Avatar became the title of James Cameron's 2009 release. To avoid confusion (although, apparently, there would not have been a problem with copyright), Shyamalian dropped the word Avatar from the title. Frankly, if I were releasing a film, I would like nothing more than to have it confused with Cameron's money machine.

Where and when does The Last Airbender take place?

The Last Airbender takes place in a world divided among four different groups, eash associated with an element and a season: Air Nomads (autumn), Water Tribes (winter), Earth Kingdom (spring), and Fire Nation (summer). Each group has some members who can "bend" or manipulate its name element; so, there are Waterbenders, Earthbenders, Firebenders, and one last Airbender.

About a hundred years before the action in the film and the series, a young Airbender named Aang had been told that not only was he an Airbender, but also he was the Avatar. The Avatar - there is only one at a time - is a person who has the ability to learn to "bend" all four of the elements. Part of the narrative drive of Avatar: The Last Airbender is that Aang must travel to learn the different "bending" skills, each of which is associated with a martial art drawing on the characteristics of the element.

Together with Appa, his flying six-legged bison (you read it here first), Aang was frozen in an iceberg for about a century. During that time, the members of the Fire Nation (a nasty, totalitarian bunch) kill the other Airbenders, because they knew that an Airbender was the current Avatar, who could stand in the way of their planned domination of their world. The true and last Avatar, of course, escaped destruction, in his iceberg.

Now, the story begins. Katara, a young Waterbender, and Sokka, her older brother, discover Aang and Appa and release them from their icy prison, and...

Will the movie The Last Airbender be as popular as the series Avatar: The Last Airbender?

Of course, how much liberty Shyamalan takes in The Last Airbender remains to be seen. One liberty that has attracted a good bit of controversy is his use of white actors for Asian characters, although he himself is Asian. There is even a website named Racebending.com ("advocating just and equal opportunity in film and television") devoted to an ongoing discussion of the ethical and artistic problems of such casting.

M. Night Shyamalan, director of The Last Airbender, first came to the attention of the public with his third film, The Sixth Sense (1999), which even got acclaim from this reviewer (here). Since then, there have been dreary days for Night Shyamalan. Village Voice blogger Tony Ortega notes (here) that the scores for Shyamalan's movies on Metacritic.com (here) have dropped consistently from 65 for The Sixth Sense to 25 for The Last Airbender.

Would I recommend The Last Airbender?

This is not a review of The Last Airbender, which I have not seen and most likely will not see, but as I read the reviews, I find some consistent complaints. For one, the film's rather primitive 3-D makes it look drab, something that could not be said about the brilliant colors and sparkling landscapes of the television series. Also, the dialogue is criticized as pompous, stuffy, while one complaint I have with the television series Avatar: The Last Airbender is that the dialogue of its young heroes is too flip, sarcastic, with a jarring reliance on current expressions; for instance, Sokka tells his sister that she takes him out of his "comfort zone."

Apparently, M. Night Shyamalan has taken a bright, funny, even exciting series that celebrates personal responsibility and friendship (the three youngsters - although, of course, Aang is over a hundred years old - describe their friendship as family, and turned it into a dreary mess.

Do some more homework (extra credit?) and you will discover the six-DVD set of Book One (remember, the first season) of Avatar: The Last Airbender for about the price of a family outing to the movies, especially if you throw in the price of a bag of popcorn. Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the few television series that I could imagine wanting to own on DVD, but it has the feel of a classic. I could imagine children (and at least one adult) returning to favorite episodes, oops, Chapters, as one might return to a favorite book.

Are all these people here to see The Last Airbender?

Probably not. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is opening this week.

Sources/More information

Avatar Wiki
Avatar Spirit.net
Avatar: The Last Airbender (Unofficial fansite)
Distant Horizon, an Avatar: The Last Airbender fansite
(Distant Horizon is an amazingly informative and well-designed fansite)
IMDB entry for The Last Airbender (film)
Wikipedia article for Avatar: The Last Airbender