This show's okay, but I did feel like it had too few white people? You know how that is, when you're watching some mainstream Hollywood entertainment and you're just like, "Damn. So many people of color." It's not that big a deal, but if they were to adapt this into a movie, my one recommendation would be "more white people." If I were permitted to elaborate, my recommendation would be "more white people except make the Fire Nation genero-brown. A sort of South Asian/Middle Eastern/Latino group. I would find those racial politics more palatable--and current!" That would be my recommendation.
Just kidding, everybody! I am simply making a timely (nope) joke about The Last Airbender, a movie so nice that it has a lower RottenTomatoes score than Jonah Hex. Terrible though the movie may be (going off of conventional wisdom here; I haven't seen it), the Nickelodeon cartoon on which it's based, Avatar: the Last Airbender, is really good.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is about a kid named Aang (Zach Tyler Eisen) who's supposed to save the world. His world is made up of four countries: the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, the Fire Nation, and the Air Nomads. (I question the structure of these nation-states: while the Earth and Fire countries are contiguous, the Water and Air territories are far-flung, at opposite ends of the map and separated by Fire and Earth lands. How, exactly, did the widespread Water and Air cultures develop similarly? Did they start in one area, then colonize the others? Also, while the Earth Kingdom is multiethnic, the other three populations seem to be homogenous. Maybe?) ANYWAY: a small minority of each country's populations are "benders"--people who can "bend" one element to their will, using Chinese martial arts. The Avatar is the one person who can learn to bend all four elements.
At the beginning of the series, Aang has been frozen for 100 years (along with his giant six-legged flying bison Appa) in a huge ball o' ice at the South Pole. He's discovered by Katara (Mae Whitman) and Sokka (Jack DeSena), two teenage members of the Southern Water Tribe. Katara is a Waterbender. Sokka is a Xander--sometimes heroic, but lacking in superpowers and typically used for comic relief. The 100 years that Aang missed were pretty important, on account of the Fire Nation went genocidal and exterminated his Air diaspora peoples. The Fire Nation has also been waging war on the Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom for a century, but the Water and Earth people aren't as bad off as the Air people (i.e. they still exist).
The show follows Aang's quest to master all four bending disciplines and defeat the evil Fire Lord. He is accompanied by Katara and Sokka and pursued by the Javert-ian Prince Zuko (Dante Basco), heir to the Fire Nation throne. Zuko has been banished by his dick Fire Lord father, and he can only regain his honor and return home if he captures the Avatar.
This is a really fun show, and the second half of the season is especially impressive. I tried to make a list of my favorite episodes of the season but quickly realized that my favorites were pretty much "episode 10 through 18," which is too many favorites. Oddly, some of my favorite episodes are allegorical: "The Great Divide" explores conflict and subjectivity; it follows two feuding tribes as they are forced to cross a treacherous canyon together. That kind of story (especially in kids' TV) usually feels heavy-handed to me, but this one is thoughtful and interesting. Likewise "Jet" and "Bato of the Water Tribe"--two episodes that examine trust from different angles. These episodes could easily have descended into preachiness but don't. Avatar is notable for its strong plots and lack of condescension.
This show also has badass gadgets! In "The Northern Air Temple," the Fire Nation has these tanks where if you flip them over, the center bit where the humans hang out flips over, too. I'm explaining this poorly, but the way this goes down is the good guys manage to flip over a tank, and they're like YES but then the middle of the tank flips itself, the tracks keep on rolling, and the good guys are like OH SHIT. It is very cool! That whole episode is replete with steampunk insanity and delightful designs.
The one other thing I want to talk about in Avatar: the Last Airbender is FEMINISM. (Sorry this is so haphazard, by the way, but it is pretty hard to review a whole season at once, especially when you are not putting in the time and effort to write something well [see: me, right now].) FEMINISM is important in this cartoon, as exemplified by episode 18, which I think is called "The Waterbending Master," but I'm not going to double-check, and I don't know for sure because while I wrote down other episode titles in my notes, here I only wrote "118 - fuck you patriarchy."
The main conflict in "The Waterbending Master" is that Aang and Katara have traveled no joke across the fucking EARTH to study with this dude named Master Paku, but when they get to the Northern Water Tribe (which, incidentally, is Polar Venice--bridges and canals carved out of ice; it's great), Paku says he'll only teach Aang. "In my culture ladies are not allowed to learn to water-fight. Go learn how to water-heal, you vagina." Katara and Aang's shared position on this is "are you a fucking joke," which makes sense, because they traveled the entire distance of the world for this purpose and now sexism what the shit.
Katara gets mad, Aang says that he's not going to study with an asshole who won't teach ladies, and Katara says, "wait, no, that's a bad idea because the world will end if you don't learn waterbending." She resigns herself to not learning for all of 6 hours or something, but then she and Aang decide that, every night, he'll just teach her what he learned that day. Master Paku catches them immediately, gets super angry, and kicks Aang out of his class. Katara and Aang go before a tribunal or some shit to appeal this, and the chief says that maybe Paku would take Aang back if "you [i.e. Katara] swallow your pride and apologize." Through his shit-eating grin, Paku says, "I'm waiting, little girl." And a vein bursts in Katara's temple and instead of "I'm sorry," she is more like "FUCK YOU; P.S. PISTOLS AT DAWN." So then she fights this incredible master, right, even though she only knows a little waterbending. And she does such a good job! He still hands her her ass, but first she bends like she's never bent before.
The fight doesn't convince Paku that he's an ass, but his discovery that Katara's grandmother is his long-lost betrothed what ran away to the Southern Water Tribe does convince him because Katara seizes on the opportunity to say, "CLEARLY SHE LEFT YOU BECAUSE OF PATRIARCHY." Harsh? Yes, but Paku immediately shapes the fuck up and teaches her waterbending. Result! Now, what's interesting about all this is that before fighting Paku, Katara is a less capable waterbender than Aang. She starts the series knowing more, but his learning curve is much steeper. Post-Paku-conflict, Katara becomes the bomb. She is better at waterbending than Aang. She is the best. One could interpret this as an inconsistency, but I see it this way instead: her "come to Jesus" moment ("come to Jesus" = "feminist epiphany") has opened the floodgates and revealed her amazing latent power. POTENT METAPHOR YOU GUYS.
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