one of the best shows I've ever seen.
My new favorite show made a whole series of videos discussing it
as I watched through it for the first time recently.
As much as you guys hyped "Avatar: The Last Airbender" for me
and told me how great it was,
you could not have prepared me for how much I would truly love this show.
Similarly, the amount that you guys warned me away from the movie,
you could not have prepared me for that.
I just-- I have no words.
I don't know how to process.
It just made me sad.
I watched the Avatar movie with Daniel Greene and Tim from "Hello, Future Me."
I watched it over on Tim's channel.
The three of us watched it live and had live reactions to the entire movie.
I will link it in the description if it's still up on Tim's channel
when this video goes up if you want two hours of non-stop ranting.
You can actually see all three of us die
a very slow death during that stream.
I'm not done talking about it. I'm not done ranting.
Two hours wasn't enough.
It was more than enough for the movie.
It wasn't enough. My frustrations aren't out,
so let's have a more condensed discussion about what happened here.
Honestly, there are no words.
I didn't expect it to be that bad.
Future Merphy popping in to say two things.
One, as an apology to you
for reminding you that this movie exists,
my next video on Thursday
is going to be an Avatar tear-ranking video
for the characters of the original series.
That'll be a really fun one. I've actually already filmed it
and I had so much fun doing it.
The second thing I wanted to say is that Daniel Greene
is also posting an Avatar movie review video today
and he gets a little less heated, so I recommend checking that out as well.
Tim and Daniel will both be linked in the description of this video.
Onto the rant.
In this review, we're going to start by discussing the characters
because, in my opinion, it's the worst of the worst.
It's the worst thing that this movie did,
the biggest thing that this movie got wrong, and the thing that bothered me
the most of all of the things.
First and foremost,
these characters were lifeless.
One of the biggest things about this show
that makes this show so incredible is the depth of the character work,
the incredible personalities and struggles and flaws,
fears, and insecurities as well as incredible inner strength.
There's so much depth to these characters.
I understand that if you're trying to cram
an entire season or book into one movie,
we're going to lose some of that depth.
I accept that, but it's like they didn't even try.
Sokka is a hilarious, goofy,
funny, very, very driven character.
He wants to be their leader, but he's not great at it in season one.
He's devoted. He comes up with plans and solutions when they get into hard times.
He's the dorkiest kind of funny.
He's the best.
In this movie, I don't even know who he was.
He had no humor to him, no leadership.
He was nothing. He barely had any lines.
He was a shell of a character. He had no personality whatsoever.
Cue Katara. Same.
I've never been Katara's biggest fan. She's not my favorite character in the show,
but again, she was nothing in this movie.
No personality to her, no depth whatsoever.
There was even a scene where they combined multiple scenes in the show,
but it was essentially the prison camp in the Fire Nation
where Katara went to save the Earthbenders.
She was rallying them all and giving this impassioned speech.
They gave that to Aang.
They offered Katara nothing.
Even her arc that she was supposed to have in the Northern Water Tribe
where she stood up and fought for her ability to learn waterbending
when she was being oppressed, when she was being set aside,
she didn't get that arc. She just trained alongside Aang.
I understand that you have to cut some things,
but you can't cut entire characters
while still leaving them on the screen and that's what happened.
The characters were still there, but they were completely cut from the movie.
Iroh didn't look anything like Iroh,
didn't act anything like Iroh. He had no carefree nature.
He had no fatherly mentorship for Zuko.
They even cut his line where he was telling Zuko
that he loved him like a son and Zuko says, "I know."
They meshed it with him just giving him advice and Zuko saying, "I know,"
and it was such an unsatisfied-- such an unsatisfying attempt.
Zuko as well was-- his entire character was this.
He just had really intense stares throughout the entire movie.
That's pretty much all he offered.
Even his scar, which is Zuko's greatest insecurity
and a huge reminder of his past, of his failures,
and of what's driving him, is barely there.
It's so subtle that when we were first introduced to Zuko in the movie,
I was waiting for Zuko to show up.
I didn't know that was him. I was waiting for him to come off
of the battleship until he shouted,
"I am Zuko," and then I thought, "Oh no."
They kept closing in on the scar trying to make it look prominent,
but it wasn't prominent. It was barely there.
We have to talk about Aang
because this is one of the only characters that they actually
tried to give some depth to, but they totally missed the mark on it.
Aang's number one characteristic,
the two number one characteristics
are his childlike joy and innocence
and the fact that he is a peacemaker.
Both of these things were stripped from him in this movie.
He was intense and scared and confrontational or weak.
He was one of the other, but not the balance that Aang is.
Aang always had something to say.
He was always fighting,
but he also knew when to stop for the greater good.
In the introduction in the movie of Zuko,
Zuko says, "I'm going to do something bad here,"
instead of actually displaying his actions,
and then Aang just immediately gives up and says,
"Okay. You can take me." In the show,
he challenges Zuko. He tries to fight him off and defend the water nation.
When he sees that there--
or the Southern Water Tribe. When he sees that they're scared
and when he sees that he's causing more damage this way, then he says,
"You can take me," on his terms.
In the movie, there's a vague threat Aang immediately gives in
and then the water tribe starts playing with Appa
as if their tribe hasn't just been threatened
and some of their people taken away.
There's even this scene that I was really looking forward to
because I was expecting it to give depth to both Aang and Zuko.
That's the one after Zuko captures Aang as the Blue Spirit
and Aang realizes that it's Zuko.
He takes him away and he starts talking to Zuko and says,
"We could have been friends, you know," and then Zuko shoots a fireball at him.
This was cut and, instead, it was pasted at the end of the movie
where Aang just randomly throws over his shoulder,
"We could have been friends, you know."
Aang's trust in humanity and his desire
to find the goodness in everyone,
his childlike love and goodness is stripped from this character.
Instead, we get throwaway lines and a lot of fear and a lot of resistance.
I hated it so much.
Most of the characters, they didn't even try
to look like the characters that we love so deeply.
The characters that they did try, they completely missed the mark.
It makes me think if you had continued this movie series,
if it had gotten the deals to continue on with movies two and three,
how could they have even tried
to replicate the arcs of some of these characters
when you're not even trying to build any kind of personality into them?
I know we're probably about 10 minutes into the video at this point
and I still haven't brought up the mispronunciations.
Here it is. They mispronounced so many names.
Aang became Ung. Sokka became Soca.
Iroh became Eero. Avatar became Ahvatar and that wasn't even consistent.
Some people said "Ahvatar" and some people said "Avatar."
Now, I know that the director actually said,
"I did this intentionally. I did it to honor the culture
and to say it the way that they would have said it,"
but this rings hollow to me and there's a lot of reasons why.
The main reason is because most of the characters that this writer and director
changed the names for to honor the culture,
he cast it as White.
That's an odd way to honor a culture, to change the name,
to honor them, but then not even cast them appropriately.
On top of that,
the ways that the writers of the original show did honor the culture,
he stripped of the movie.
In the show, they studied fighting techniques of the culture
and then modeled the bending
based off of those fighting techniques.
The movie changed that completely,
and then they just waved their arms awkwardly for a while,
and then bending happened.
The culture that was already there was stripped through the casting
and through the way they did the bending.
Speaking of bending, that'll be the next thing that we talk about.
Let's spend some time talking about the bending in this movie.
Not only is the way they chose to show the bending
almost comical with the motions that they chose to give them.
When the bending actually happens,
it's this slow, awkward movement.
My favorite scene in the movie, the one scene that I actually, genuinely enjoyed
because it was so bad that it was so funny
was that big fight scene in the place that was basically the prison camp in the show.
These Earthbenders do this funny stomp-the-yard routine
and then this little, bitty rock slowly moves past them
and all the actors stand around and wait until the director shouts,
"Now," and then all the actors
spring into action and react to what they assume will be CGI'd in later.
We'll talk more about that,
how often people just stood around in action scenes,
but I want to harp on the bending a little bit more
because they broke the mythos.
In the show, firebending comes from the sun, right?
They had this really big thing in season three about the eclipse
and that completely halting the ability to firebend.
The movie decided we don't need that.
We're going to make the firebenders need a source,
so you're going to have to build a campfire in order to bend.
There are so many problems with this.
One, that completely weakens the Fire Nation.
They now have this huge hindrance where they're not able to bend
under certain circumstances,
which not only weakens the villain but it weakens the world.
If they're so weak now, why is the world conquered by them?
Now, you have the issue that the movie changed the mythos
and then broke their own magic system.
Multiple times, the characters firebend without a source.
One really obvious one is when Zuko goes into the Arctic water
and then he's stuck inside the ice
and so he firebends in order to break the ice and come up on the surface.
There was no source there, but this happens over and over again.
He's able to bend without a source
even though the movie changed the magic
so that you have to have a source. At least do consistency.
Can you not at least do that?
Now, I want to talk about pacing
because this is another thing that just went so wrong.
Half of the movie was almost the entire season
and then the other half of the movie was the final two episodes.
I liked it that they spent a little bit more time on the final two episodes
because I would have loved for the show to have spent more time
in the Northern Water Tribe,
showing us the arc of Aang and Katara
learning more waterbending.
It felt so weird. The first half of the movie felt so odd
because we were just getting these little snapshots,
just these little moments of each episode kind of stitched together.
It's like they tried to recreate a scene
within the world, within the episode,
but then they created another scene
and another and another and then just tried to make it work together
but without any context for each scene,
without anything built around each scene.
We're just left feeling really awkward
throughout the entire first half of the movie.
I do think that the second half of the movie was much stronger
because we actually spent time building things up, learning things.
Even then, I don't understand.
I don't understand the choice to change
massive elements of the ending of this season
with how you did the end of the movie,
yet wanting to stay so incredibly true in other ways.
Now, I want to move on to the action of this movie
because it was so bad.
I cannot tell you how much standing around there was during the fight scene.
I don't think I can exaggerate this enough
to hit the mark of what it actually looked like.
Every single action scene were surrounded by Fire Nation foes
who should be threatening, who just do this shuffle,
"Wait for my cue," for so long.
There are so many instances of,
"Okay. Now, you do this and then you do that
and then you do that and this is your cue."
You could almost hear the director in the background saying,
"Now, you, go,"
and everybody is just standing there waiting for their cue, awkward pause.
She runs and hits him,
then awkward pause and uses his airbending
or a circle of Fire Nation foes standing around Aang and Zuko
when Zuko is being the Blue Spirit.
They're all just standing there watching
while three men come forward to fight them.
There are so many instances where it could have been such an easy battle
where our protagonist lose,
except that they're so bad at being antagonist.
There's also a lot of standing around for our protagonist.
There are so many times where Aang just stands there and stares awkwardly
and then the Fire Nation people just stand there
and stare awkwardly too and then Aang moves,
and then a couple of Fire Nation people move, but everybody else stands around.
It's truly--
[sighs]
I've never seen it done so poorly.
I have no words.
I could rant for a long time about what they did with the fish,
what they did with Yue, what they did with Iroh,
just watching the whole thing go down and not even attempting to stop it.
What they changed with Yue and how that whole thing went down,
there's a lot we could rant about.
I'm actually just going to jump straight to Aang
because this is the thing that bothered me way more.
That's when Aang has a moment of,
"Oh, this is bad. I'm overwhelmed," and then he's like,
"Wait a second. Tidal wave-threatening genocide."
I don't even know what they were trying to do with Aang's Avatar State in this movie.
I still can't wrap my head around what they were attempting here
because there really was no Avatar State.
There wasn't any spirit world.
There were no previous Avatars.
They lumped all the previous Avatars into this dragon,
which didn't make sense with the mythos of what was already created within the series.
They should have just made Avatar Roku represent all the previous Avatars.
It would have made more sense, but Avatar repeatedly being pulled
into some sort of mixture of
the Avatar form and the spirit realm.
I hated it so much.
Back to the scene that I just interrupted myself discussing
after Aang does that thing again, just somehow for some reason,
goes away to talk to a dragon.
He then comes back with ultimate cosmic power. Here's my problem.
It was so powerful in the show when Aang had that moment of just
being completely overwhelmed and saying,
"I can't do this. I'm just one kid."
Again, his depth and his layers are stripped from him.
It said he just looks slightly insecure for a minute
and then has all the power in the world,
threatens to kill everybody.
They decide, "We should probably just leave,"
and then everybody bows to the Avatar,
including Zuko and Katara.
One of the things that makes their dynamic so great
is that Aang constantly needs them.
He's not just this ultimate, powerful,
"I had a little bit of training. Now, I can bend this massive tidal wave
to threaten everybody and scare them to leave."
No. He's scared and insecure and he's very, very talented,
but it takes so much work to get there.
He leans on his friends so much while he's trying to get there.
Instead, he has all the power in the world and they bow down to him.
Honestly, at this point, I'm just so thankful
that they didn't have a chance to ruin Toph.
I'm trying to keep this short.
I'm bouncing around a lot and I'm skipping over major things.
The reason is because we literally have a two-hour scene-by-scene rant
over on Tim's channel. I'm just trying to make this
a condensed version for people who don't want it.
If you want more ranting, if you want more specific breakdown
of why every scene sucks, you should really watch that video.
This is my very condensed review of the Avatar movie
and all the things that it did so very wrong.
At the end of that two-hour video, Daniel asked us.
He challenged us, "What's your favorite thing about the movie
and your least favorite thing about the movie?"
My favorite scene by far was that
rock-throwing scene, stomp the yard,
slow pebble moving that way
because it was so horrendously bad that it made me so happy.
My least favorite is so easily, the absolute butchering of the characterization.
These characters were either shells and nothing like themselves
or they genuinely tried to put characterization into them
but missed the mark so badly.
It can't have been this bad.
I still don't understand.
Once again, that full video is going to be linked in the description
if it's still available,
but those are my condensed thoughts of this monstrosity.
I really thought that you guys were overselling how terrible it was.
I should have trusted you at this point more than anything.
That movie just made me sad.
I would love to continue to discuss it with you in the comments though.
Be sure to chat with me about what your
favorite and least favorite part of this movie was.
I post videos every Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
See you guys again soon. Bye.
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