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mickboettge
Reviews
Avatar: The Last Airbender: Aang (2024)
Mess from start to finish
Certain scenes are downright morbid and unnecessary. They're included merely for shock value. The plot is at points repetitive with the same story beats being reiterated via flashbacks. Dialogue is generally inauthentic and incredibly exposition heavy. It's "tell, don't show" at it's worst. A case study for incompetent story writing. The plot lacks focus, changes to the source material mistreat characters, change their flaws, fears, personality. It rushes through character introductions, omits iconic moments, It's poorly shot, especially the low light scenes that are reminiscent of the infamous battle scenes in Game of Thrones season 8. Many performances are questionable to put it mildly, although this might be in part to the terrible writing and/or poor direction.
The only redeeming qualities are the sets, costumes and quite decent VFX as far as the bending goes.
Avatar: The Last Airbender: Warriors (2024)
Competent storytelling at last
This episode is well paced, with a clear theme, beginning, middle, end, no endless exposition and some pretty good performances. It's well shot and the climax of this particular chapter is arguably as good if not better than in the source material. However, there are many very strange, uncomfortable and jarring moments that paint some characters in a pretty one dimensional light. It feels like a different show compared to the first episode, one that has focus and directions and doesn't treat it's audience like children (which is quite ironic given the indented appeal to a more mature audience than the original). Still, it is a far cry from the charming, honest and authentic storytelling of the source material and serves as little more than a showcase for beautiful set design and costuming.
Avatar: The Last Airbender: Omashu (2024)
Incoherent mess void of any and all charm
A case study of truly terrible tv writing.
In the reasonable attempt to condense the plots of several 20 minutes episodes into one setting, they fail to weave the story beads into a comprehensive arc.
It also means that all the nuance and detail found in the source material falls through the cracks.
And since they have to rush through everything, including tons of character introduction, there's no room to breath, no room for character development, or relationship development.
Action scenes are as always hectic and hard to read die to questionable editing.
The icing on the cake are many terrible deliveries that any capable director, of not the actors themselves could have avoided. At times it's reminiscent of poorly directed video games where the voice actors obviously never recorded in the same booth.