Movies based on cartoon series .. especially ones I love always make me a little skeptical. The trailer looked good and having followed the series (or at least trying to) on nickelodeon .. I just HAD to watch the damned thing.. So on Saturday night, my beloved man took me out to go watch the movie (I honestly wasn't feeling up to going out at all but he managed to drag me out the door and once I was out, I was feeling much better)..
Feeling like I needed a drink (so long since I had one.. gah).. we went to a nearby restaurant/cafe place to get a couple of cocktails after we bought the tickets seeing that we had more than 30 mins to kill. 10 mins of waiting later, we finally got our cocktails. Sometimes seeing bad service really really pushes me up the wall, especially since I'm working in the hospitality industry myself.
Anyway, back to the movie.
For those who do not know about the cartoon series, let me go a little into depth about what it actually is.
Avatar (as we called it before the movie "Avatar" came out) is an Asian-influenced cartoon series set in a fictional world where chinese martial arts and elemental manipulation is present. The world is divided into four different nations: Air nomads, Water tribes, Earth kingdom and the Fire nation (note the four elements in the nation).
A map of the four nations. The characters at the top, 群雄四分, mean "the heroes divide [the world or the country or the land] in four." The characters of the four lands are 水善 (Water Peaceful), 土強 (Earth Strong), 火烈 (Fire Fierce), and 气和 (Air Harmony). The phrase at the bottom, 天下一匡, reads "correct all things under heaven" [please note that this map is copyright to Nickelodeon and I am reusing this to help improve the reader's understanding to my blog, I do not claim at all that this image is mine and credit the entire image to Nickelodeon]
Each nation has its own element on which their society is then based on. The people who are able to manipulate their "birth elements" (i.e. the element that takes precedence in the nation they are born in) are called benders. They "bend"/manipulate the element through a series of physical motions which are based on forms of martial arts. The show’s creators based each Bending style on a style of real-world martial art, leading to visual differences in the techniques used by Waterbenders (tai chi chuan), Earthbenders (Hung Ga kung fu, for the most part), Firebenders (Northern Shaolin kung fu) and Airbenders (baguazhang). It is not stated explicitly but the benders can only manipulate the element of the nation they were born in.
Which brings us to the concept of the Avatar. At any given time, there will only be one Avatar in the world and only the Avatar alone can master and bend the four elements. He/she can be assumed to be the spirit of the world manifested in human form. When an Avatar dies, the spirit is then reincarnated into the next nation, in order of the Avatar cycle, following the seasons. Spring for Earth, Summer for Fire, Autumn for Air and Winter for Water. The Avatar also has to master the four elements in turn, first the birth element and then the elements that come after it, one by one. The Avatar also has the power to reach the "Avatar state" where he/she goes into a deep trance and enters the spirit world. It is also in this state that the Avatar will gain knowledge and power from all the past reincarnations and be able to use this ability while still in the state. All the power that comes with being the Avatar is aimed at helping him/her maintain harmony between the four nations.
Back onto the movie, the special effects of the entire movie was EXCELLENT. It was well executed and all the martial arts movements were great as well. Even to an untrained eye (such as mine), I could tell (slightly) the difference between the movements and can see why each form of martial art was chosen for the element.
I am very glad that the makers of the movie did not try to fit all three seasons into one movie (that would have been quite horrible) as even in this one (book one:water), the 20 or so episodes of the series was fitted into the movie and did make it jump around a little which didn't really help the flow of the story.
I loved the fact that the actors chosen relatively matched the characters of the cartoon (as in features) and also how the "race" of the nations were chosen according to where the nation was situated in relation to the map of our world (give or take). It was great.
All in all, a great adaptation and a great movie. Sadly, it is very hard for one to actually fit all 20 episodes and flow it into one single movie without it going for more than 2 hours and therefore I have to give kudos to the director for trying. Other than that, I would rate this movie about 3 and a half to 4 stars according to MY PERSONAL rating. Something that I could see myself watching again, but for one to fully understand the story, I would recommend watching the cartoon series as well.
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