A turkey: Netflix’s Avatar – The Last Airbender reviewed

Blimey, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a load of tripe. And I really didn’t want it to be. There’s nothing I like more than trawling the networks for exciting new cultural phenomena from the burgeoning, weird oriental TV market – such as Squid Game and One Piece – and bringing it to your attention. Perhaps it fails because, while based on a hugely popular echt Japanese anime series, this is made by Americans. Whatever the case this much-heralded fantasy offering (no relation of the James Cameron Dances With Smurfs movies) is a turkey.

The premise is enticing. It’s set in a world divided into competing tribes – Earth, Air, Fire and Water – who co-habited in strained harmony till the aggressive Fire Nation got out of hand, wiped out most of their rivals and took control. But the goodie they failed to kill was a boy, Avatar Aang, who, after being frozen in ice for a century, has fortuitously defrosted and must now use his multitudinous element-bending skills to restore peace to the troubled land.

Unfortunately the characterisation is all a bit cheesy, twee and obvious, which is not an uncommon problem with anime. Aang, for example, is so basic he makes all his rival fictive archetypes (Luke Skywalker, Neo, Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins, etc.) look positively Tolstoyian in their richness and
psychological complexity. Basically, he’s just a lovely little kid who has these incredible powers which he has somehow acquired with zero effort.

Perhaps it could have been saved with a halfway decent script or some credible performances. But it has neither. When Aang awakes to discover that his mentor, his family, his friends, his entire village, have been burned to a cinder and that all he has left is his beloved flying bison, he responds with all the emotional intensity you’d exhibit if, say, your dog had licked one of your last chocolate buttons.