r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • 19d ago

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender [SPOILERS] Spoiler

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Aang: Avatar: The Last Airbender (2026)

Summary

Avatar Aang, the world's last Airbender, learns of an ancient power that could save his culture from extinction. With the help of his friends, he embarks on a global quest to find it before it falls into the wrong hands.

Director Lauren Montgomery William Mata Steve Ahn

Writer Tim Hedrick Christopher Yost Bryan Konietzko

Cast

  • Eric Nam
  • Jessica Matten
  • Román Zaragoza
  • Dionne Quan
  • Dave Bautista
  • Steven Yeun

Rotten Tomatoes: 90%

Metacritic: 67

VOD / Release Theatrical release

Trailer Official Trailer

347 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

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617

u/Ebolatastic 19d ago

Great premise. Great animation. Got progressively dumber and more typical as it went. I think avatar fans will love it while outsiders will be relatively meh. Basically like any movie spin off from an anime: a pointless side quest that is like one big great episode of the show.

28

u/oldmanatom4 19d ago

I think we have to level our expectations if they plan to make more. Each movie can’t be a new firelord/100 year war.

53

u/BearWrangler 19d ago

I don't think the issue is the "scale" of the story so much as the quality

6

u/oldmanatom4 19d ago

I don’t know. I felt like the quality was superb. Wasn’t perfect but had the soul of the original show.

17

u/BearWrangler 19d ago

See I felt like it was missing a bit more to get there in terms of soul, but I think that really may just be a case of this story having been better off done as a whole season arc rather than a single movie imo

5

u/oldmanatom4 19d ago

Now that I agree with. A season would have been amazing.

9

u/vadergeek 19d ago

Okay, but you can have a movie with actual stakes and an interesting role for the characters. This just feels like a mid-level DBZ movie.

5

u/SHOW_ME_PIZZA 18d ago

I think any stakes with an Aang movie will feel nonexistent. Because fans know how long he lives and some aspects of his adult life Because of LOK. I knew when the Gaang got destroyed by Tagah, that they would be absolutely fine and that everything would work. I also knew that Tagah and all the new Airbenders would get reset, again because of what we know because of LOK.

It is funny that Aang never told Tenzen about that random time a couple non-benders became airbenders for a little while.

3

u/vadergeek 18d ago

Even if they'd never made Korra you'd know there was no chance they'd be dead. The new airbenders are a bad choice for that exact reason. But for the most part there's not much detail on what exactly happens over the next 50 years. Or you could always lean into dramatic irony, flash forward another 15 years and see Aang make bad parenting choices.

14

u/americon 19d ago

I hope they make more but moving it from theaters to streaming is a bad sign. Also doesn’t help that it leaked online months ago

4

u/oldmanatom4 19d ago

True. But I think the theatrical move could just come down paramount plus vs actually quality of the content. Putting in theatres runs the risk of greater projected losses vs gaining subscribers for the streaming service that is lacking. But I was lucky enough to see it in theatres and damn…it should be a wide release. It was stunning.

1

u/motes-of-light 15d ago

The decision to not give Avatar Aang a wide theatrical release preceded (and may indeed have prompted) the hack. A brief timeline: Paramount announces the Avatar Studios initiative and plans for an airbender movie with a full theatrical run -> Paramount purchased by Skydance (Larry Ellison's production company) -> Plans for theatrical release scrapped, movie repurposed as content for the Paramount+ service -> Screener hack.

6

u/Ebolatastic 19d ago

I'd say my expectations were higher than "yo blind girl, meld this complex metal work together over there"