Ported from a dead account Star Wars meets A Touch of Zen There are bad movies, and then there are movies that demand from the audience a level of cultural and spiritual development. The inability to appreciate such movies says more about the person than about the movie. I once saw a video that was a retort to the people who call Avatar: The Last Airbender a kid show. The video was a compilation of scenes from the show that featured either partial nudity or gruesome deaths. This should really tell you everything you need to know about the fanbase of the show, which consists almost entirely of manchildren, who are conditioned to perceive stories in only one, digested and conformed format. Personally, I've never been a fan of the show. Not because it's bad (it seems alright for a kid show), but because it's orientalist. It fetishizes aspects of Eastern cultures, without meaningfully engaging with their substance. This movie is kinda doing the opposite. Shyamalan understands the ideas Avatar is based on better than the show and chooses to engage directly with them, instead of simply copying the show (because doing otherwise would be pointless). While limited by the constraints of the show's plot, he elevates the source material by using techniques pioneered by George Lucas and King Hu to enrich the visual storytelling. Like the aforementioned directors, he engages with archetypes, environment and choreography, using them symbolically to convey more than the primitive plot of the show could allow. Yet there are a few crucial changes to the story that further add complexity to it. I've never really watched the show (except for occasionally catching an episode here and there on TV), but I've seen a lot of reviews on youtube, which only rival each other in dim-witted shallow comparisons. It seems like comparing the superficial elements of the story is all they can do. To give you an example, I saw one YouTuber make a point that the earthbending villagers always had the power to revolt against the Fire Nation, implying that this is some kinda plothole and that the Avatar's arrival there is pointless. Failing to understand that the whole point of the scene is that the people are shackled by their own fear and the scene is about the liberation from that fear. A topic later revisited in detail in After Earth. Shyamalan intentionally chooses to engage with the theme central to Daoism and Chan Buddhism, which is far more interesting than whatever the implied alternative is. In fact, this type of criticism makes me think some people are incapable of even understanding the reality they live in, let alone a fictional world. Imagine watching Schindler's List and going "why don't the Jews just revolt when they outnumber the Nazis in the camp?" The movie regularly operates in tenderness, surrender, moderation and humility as opposed to traditionally Western concepts of bravery, brute force and struggle. The forces of nature are presented as terrifyingly powerful, but they mirror the inner worlds of the characters (like in A Touch of Zen). Aang cannot easily learn waterbending, not because he's incapable to, but because his internal conflict (grief) is making it impossible to control the destructive power of water. And this is conveyed purely with the visual language. Only after he lets go, the Dao manifests through him and restores the universal balance. But what I find interesting is that Aang is not even the protagonist. This must be inspired by the similar concept in Star Wars (where the droids, not Luke, were the protagonists), which in turn was inspired by Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. It is no wonder that the film occasionally resembles a Zhang Yimou movie to me, as Shyamalan and Zhang clearly had similar influences. The story is driven forward mainly by other characters, while Aang ends up just kinda going along. The only time he shows agency (his escape to a temple) not enforced by the conditions imposed upon him, it doesn't achieve any result. Instead the movie is much more concerned with the powerless and the vulnerable, such as Zuko, perfectly played by Dev Patel. Sokka is also a lovable character without being reduced to a cartoony buffoon like in the show. And his chemistry with the princess is pure, innocent and heartwarming. The action scenes are some of the greatest you'll ever see in a Western movie. Perhaps second only to the Star Wars prequels. The way the cinematography, the environment and the soundtrack sync with the choreography shows a great understanding of the Chinese masters of the Wuxia genre in the last 40 years of the 20th century. Makes me wish we'd see more martial arts movies from Shyamalan, he's a natural. Finally, I want to kinda acknowledge the elephant in the room. Yes, the movie is far from perfect. It does have some structural problems, it appears kinda rushed, the casting is a hit or miss and racially problematic. I have a lot to say on these topics and could write an entire essay about just that, but these problems do not really concern the essence of this movie. Yes, another 40 minutes of runtime would help flesh out the characters more and reduce some exposition. That would definitely make it a better film, but it wouldn't really change the actual quality of the filmmaking on display here. So I chose to make this review about the actual heart of the movie, rather than the form or the outer surface. In fact, when I first saw this movie, I found it kinda boring. That was in 2013. The next time I watched it, I didn't pay that much attention to the story because I didn't expect it to be very good. As I stopped listening to the words, that's when the movie opened up to me. That was three years ago, in 2021. Now that I intentionally decided to focus on the visual aspects, by the middle of the movie I actually found myself very invested in the story. Because, like Star Wars, this movie prioritizes visuals and they're paramount to the understanding of the archetypal storytelling here.