Cut to the freed villagers opening a closet containing various scrolls. The lemur-bat, which seems to follow them around for no apparent reason, knocks over a scroll that apparently has waterbending moves on it. Katara seems quite pleased to see it. Um OK.
Cut to Aang with the village leader who shows him a statue of one of his previous lives: Avatar Kyoshi. Apparently, Kyoshi "loved games," a sentiment that Aang can stand behind. Really, M. Night? Why even put this reference that matters not at all to anything that happens in the film? And quite frankly, Kyoshi never struck me as the game-loving type.
After wasting a good 20 seconds of screen time that could have been used accomplishing something, we cut to our trio talking to one another. Sokka starts talking about the nearby villages that were taken by the Fire Nation; he suggests doing a little liberating.
Aang then says that he ran off before learning the other three forms of bending. So all he knows is airbending. When Katara asks why he ran away, Aang says that being the Avatar meant that he could not have a family. That it would (somehow) get in the way of his duties as the Avatar. And Katara asks the obvious question: why? Aang says that he was told that it's a sacrifice the Avatar has to make.
Well... that's stupid. In the show, Aang left because he was being separated from Gyatso, since Gyatso felt that the Avatar needed to live a normal life before taking on his Avatar duties. The other monks disagreed with this, so Aang ran off. It's not the best of reasons, but Aang's a kid, so you can kind of understand. And if Destiny hadn't struck, he would probably have come back after a few days.
For this movie, I similarly could see a kid freaking out about how he couldn't have a family or whatever. Except that, by not explaining why the Avatar can't have a family, all it does is make you wonder why other Avatars didn't just saw "screw that" and take residence with whomever they wanted. After all, who's going to stop them; they're the Avatar.
Oh and no, I don't care that this means that Zuko can't be a descendant of Roku. That was a dumb idea in the show, and I consider its excision from the film-verse to be an improvement.
Sokka steers the conversation back into more productive territory. He asks which element Aang has to learn next... for some reason. Was it ever established that there is some ordering of these things? It's from the show. Of course it is. That still doesn't explain why he seems to know that there is an order, but not what the order is. Nor does he know why there is an order.
More importantly, it would have made narrative, thematic, and logical sense to learn earthbending now. He just rescued a bunch of earthbenders. They are literally right there. Just ask for some lessons. This would also pair up well with that "changing hearts" theme they set up. But that would mean not rigidly following the show's plot. And we can't have that in our adaptation, now can we? Besides, if the movie-verse follows the Avatar-verse's Rule of Destiny, then Aang would get his shit wrecked in some way for trying to learn the elements out of order. Really? That was a part of the show? Pretty much.
Anyway, Aang then runs down the ordering: air, water, earth, fire. Sokka delivers some expositionary vomit about the Northern Water Tribe, which is apparently led by a princess, since her father died. Sure why not. Aang says that they can get there on Appa, and Sokka suggests that they stop at some villages along the way to help them out. Katara smiles in the background, having contributed virtually nothing to this conversation.
This is an awkwardly shot scene, where the three are huddled together in some location for some reasons. The dialog is needlessly rapid fire and very unnatural from most everyone. The camera is extremely close, particularly on Aang. It also seems strange that they would be discussing this out in the open anyway; why not take it inside somewhere. And of course, there's the fail-acting.
The awkwardness of this shot makes me feel like this information was all going to be imparted in some other way originally. But since it got left on the cutting room floor, I'm guessing they had to film this glue scene in pickups to make the plot work.
M. Night is so cute; he still thinks this film can be salvaged.
Indeed, these three scenes don't feel at all smooth or connected. You could imagine them going in any order and everything would pretty much work the same.
Cut to a short montage of villages being rescued. They even apparently stop in an African tribal village to help them out. Because... ? Hey don't look at me; this is their BS.
Cut to the village that Aang left. Someone, I'm guessing Zuko, looks over the wreckage.
Well, that was time well spent, so cut to Aang with his waterbending scroll doing stuff near a river. Katara narrates that the scroll was useful. She says that Aang was practicing but having trouble with waterbending. So... how was the scroll useful? Oh, that's just Katara. It's useful to her, therefore it's useful. The fact that it's not helping Aang learn waterbending is really irrelevant to her.
Also, we see Aang doing moves on the water, but no water actually moves with him. We then see Katara doing some moves and... no water moves with her either. So... what's going on here? If they're practicing waterbending, shouldn't the water, you know, bend? And failure to see water bend would be construed as failure at waterbending? Or is this yet another obviously missing effects shot?
Katara narrates that Sokka was concerned that they were being followed. And we see Sokka looking up past the treetops as a plume of black smoke is behind them.
Cut to Aasif's ship. We see Aasif looking over a map with toy pieces on it; one of his people comes in and whispers something in his ear. Aasif looks up, then we cut to something else.
Cut to the Fire Nation, where Aasif is meeting with... Indian Caligula? Oh my God, what the hell is this? This is apparently the ruler of the Fire Nation, since Aasif calls him "sire." And like everyone else, he won't be afforded a name for a while; we're supposed to remember that one line from Zuko back at the beginning of the film about this being Firelord Ozai, his father. But since he's dressed like some kind of Roman Emperor, I'm calling him Caligula.
Aasif delivers some expositionary vomit about how he raided a library that many didn't think existed. He says that scrolls he stole may reveal the location of the Ocean and Moon Spirits, and with that knowledge, they could bring down the Northern Water Tribe.
Caligula asks about "the rumors". Aasif tells him that a boy claiming to be the Avatar was found. He suggests using various Earth Kingdom confederates to capture the boy. Caligula asks after his son, and Aasif says that he had his chance. Caligula points out that if Zuko finds him, he'll return home a hero and become Aasif's superior, so Aasif declares that the race is on.
This scene is incredibly sloppy. From infodumping to stating the blindingly obvious. Outside of exposition vomit, all we learn here is that the Fire Nation is planting traps for Aang.
I'm guessing people are expecting me to rant on us seeing Ozai's face. In the show, we didn't see Firelord Ozai's face until season 3. And while the in-story reason for that was that we were always seeing through Zuko's eyes, the out-of-story effect was to make him more menacing.
But really, the problem here isn't that we see Ozai's face. The problem is that he looks like Caligula! That, combined with the blocking of this scene, removes all sense of threat from him. Ozai doesn't meet Aasif from a position of power, elevated on his throne. Aasif doesn't even kneel before the great and powerful Firelord Ozai. They just have a little chat, like they were best buddies or something. You don't need someone to be faceless to make them menacing, but M. Night expended precisely zero effort to try to make him seem more of a threat.
On the plus side, it is nice to see that Ozai in this version seems to want to see his son succeed in his quest. We never see what the show's version of Ozai thinks about Zuko's quest at all.
Cut to a place in the "Northern Earth Kingdom" that is called "Fire Nation Colony Fifteen". After a few shots of the villagers doing villager stuff, we see Zuko in a hood with Iroh. Zuko informs us that they're catching up with Aang. Iroh suddenly starts suggesting that Zuko find a girl to settle down with and start a family. That he could have a "blessed life."
Wow, an actual correction. In the series, Iroh was pretty much all for capturing the Avatar in season 1, then suddenly turn against it in season 2 for no adequately explained reason. Here, he's against it from the start.
Zuko then decides to show him why they have to keep going. He calls to a little boy nearby; I don't like what the juxtaposition of this means for Zuko. Oh, he just asks the boy if he knows the tale of the banished Prince. The boy and Zuko then take turns explaining Zuko's backstory.
Zuko spoke out against a general, who was apparently going to sacrifice some of his friends in a battle. STOP! What the hell is this, M. Night? Why did they have to be Zuko's friends? The whole point of the scene in the show was to say that Zuko cared about his people, whether he knew them or not. He cared about the soldiers fighting the war, whether they happened to be his friends or not. This single phrase dilutes the entire point of that moment.
The boy says that Zuko was forced to fight an Agni Kee duel. ... I don't even get that mispronunciation. All of the incorrect pronunciations are ostensibly the way they would be pronounced in Chinese. Or Japanese. Or some Asian language; I'm sure M. Night doesn't know the difference. But Kai is pronounced the same way. Nobody calls it "Kee". So what was the point of that?
The boy then says that Zuko's opponent was none other than Caligula himself, who he did not want to fight. We even see a flashback of the fight, where Caligula steps forward. Zuko narrates that Caligula told him that he should bring out his sister to beat him. And we see a shot of a young girl stepping forward while laughing.
Is that supposed to be an insult? Is Zuko supposed to beat his sister because she's a little girl? Is that what Caligula's implying here? It's Azula; she's made of badass. But somehow, Caligula uses this as an emasculating insult against his son, which simultaneously insults his supposed favorite daughter, and is sexist as all hell.
The boy narrates that Caligula burned Zuko, which we see only in a discretion shot of Iroh looking on. And thus Zuko was banished. Zuko, back in the present, sends the boy away, then says that they'll catch the Avatar soon.
OK, what the hell was the point of that? Has this film addled my mind, or did we just have an exposition scene in which everyone present already knew what was being exposited? Oh no, that's right; this is the second time that's happened, also around Zuko's backstory. And why does Zuko need to explain it to Iroh to show why he needs to keep chasing the Avatar? Iroh was there! This is incredibly sloppy writing.
Oh, and M. Night, if that was supposed to be impactful, you really failed. The scene was very rushed. There was far too much narration and far too little flashback. It only took up a minute, for a sequence that deserved at least three times that much. You're revealing the very motivation for a main character; this needs to take time in order to give it the proper weight.
Also, by not having the Agni Kai between Zuko and Zhao earlier, as they did in the show, it means that the audience has no idea what an "Agni Kee" duel even is, so the name drop is meaningless. The audience gets no impact of how serious such combat is taken and coupled with the exceedingly fast pacing of the scene, it really damages all hope of this making an impact.
On the Nature of Bending
So, let's talk a bit about bending in this film. It is the essential magic of the film, what makes this film unique. It's even part of the title.
And yet it sucks.
Visually, it's all over the place. Some bending moves require elaborate dances, while others (mostly Aang's airbending) takes only one or two moves and stuff happens. There is no rhyme or reason to it. It's not that better benders take less time to do things, as we sometimes see grunt-level benders doing quick bending moves. It isn't that the longer moves are more powerful, as we see plenty of powerful quick-bending moves.
One of the problems with the more elaborate bending moves is that they simply look stupid. The actual element to be bent doesn't react to anything but the last part of the move. Until then, they're just gyrating and gesticulating wildly, to seemingly no effect.
Another problem with it is that the slow pace of bending means that fights look like something out of high-level Street Fighter battles
. Sure, for the average n00b, you spend time learning to throw fireballs, and you do that as much and as often as possible. But for high-level competitive play, special moves are special. You don't just whip them out, because most of them can be punished if they are used incautiously. No, you spend most of your time positioning and throwing out pokes at your opponent.
So really, bending isn't bending. You close to melee range with your opponent, martial-arts them for a while, and occasionally you might throw out a bending move or something. But only once you know it's safe to do your stupid dance. It makes bending something like artillery; to be used at long range or when one has an advantage. This makes it hard to see bending as something really important to this world.
In general, what I see is really someone trying to do bending on a budget. You have this cool idea, but you don't have the money (even with $130 million. I know he didn't spend it on the actors) to pull it off. So you do it half-assed, so that the bending is restricted to the occasional artillery shot.
Bending in the show was much better. Most of the time, bending required a single movement. The element usually followed the body's posture as it moved around. And anytime someone did some kind of delayed bending move, it was always a much more powerful attack than normal.
Now, one of the more talked about changes with bending for the movie is firebending. In the show, firebenders generated fire; they were the only benders who actually generated their element. In the movie, firebenders need fire to function, just like everyone else.
While I was personally never bothered by the inconsistency, it's hard to say that the inconsistency did not exist. So similarly, I'm not bothered by the change... necessarily. The biggest argument against the change is simple practicality: it makes firebenders weaker. They become almost elementally weak to waterbenders, as they can always just put out your fire source. Which is why, as we will see, they never think to do this. Can't have characters exploiting adaptation-induced plot holes.
It's also part of the reason why bending is understated. Most of the fighting takes place with melee weapons. You see some bending here and there, but it's mostly guys with swords and spears against other guys with swords and spears.
One problem with weakening firebenders is that they would already be made weaker by virtue of a live-action film. In the show, earthbenders bent "soft earth." We saw that the stone they used was more like wet mud than actual rocks, as people could easily shake off being hit in the gut by a fast-moving torso-sized "stone". You can get away with that in a cartoon, but once you go live-action, it's not happening.
Similarly, fire "undoing stone" the way it often happened in the show wasn't going to work either. Not without some kind of explanation of how that's possible. I'm surprised to see fireballs pushing people around in the movie, as that is pretty cartoonish as is.
So by making firebenders rely on a source of fire, it makes them doubly weak. There is some sense that they compensate via "machines," but we almost never see any outside of ships. And because we never really see that advantage, firebenders and the Fire Nation in general seem fairly weak.
But let's be fair: live-action allows for the possibility of things you couldn't or wouldn't do on a cartoon. Like setting people on fire. Or setting buildings on fire and making that fire spread rapidly. I imagine a firebending army could easily and quickly consume any town they could reach. Of course, again, I have to imagine this, because the film never uses any of these possibilities.
To me, the real problem with the change is the lack of thought behind it. Avatar: The Last Airbender was very well thought out in terms of world building. The reason the Fire Nation is the machine empire is because, well, that's what happens when you get a bunch of people who can literally make fire. That is what you do to maximize the utility of making fire. They learn how to work with metals. Fire fuels steam engines, which can power machines. And so forth.
The moment you give a cool power some limitation, you have to think through the consequences of it. Humans will find ways around limitations; that's pretty much how civilization works. Katara's water bottle is a perfect example. It's here in this movie only because it was in the show; as I said, I'm certain M. Night would never have thought of it if it wasn't given to him. Waterbenders need water to be awesome. So Katara carries water with her, the way a swordsman carries a sword.
So why is it that firebenders in this movie, who need fire to bend, don't have some way to create fire on demand? Now, the precise nature of firebending is never detailed. Firebenders seem to be able to make fire larger, so can they bend from a single spark? If so, then they should have flint and steel with them at all times, possibly in some kind of cool wrist-sheathe. Perhaps even with some mechanism, where a flick of the wrist creates a shower of sparks for them to bend.
If they need more than a few sparks to get started, then again, they should find ways to carry fire besides cumbersome torches. Maybe some kind of back banner with a flame on the top of it, that allows them to keep their hands free. Maybe they have the sparking wrist sheathes but combined with flash paper; their paper supply becomes like ammunition. They should also have firebending techniques that allow them to hold onto some of the fire, so that they're not throwing all of it in one attack.
Or to put it another way, if you're going to make firebenders into Pyro from X-Men, at least put as much thought into it as they did. Matches; why has the Fire Nation not invented matches?
Now, you might say that these would mostly negate the impact of the change. They would allow firebenders to be stronger, which is what this change is intended to avoid. Which is exactly the point: the change itself is only made meaningful because of poor worldbuilding and the fact that everyone is stupid. This change only weakens firebenders because the writers want them to be weaker.
The change itself isn't the problem; it's the thinking behind the change that is the real issue.
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