LIHU‘E — Packed with enough fantasy for any sci-fi enthusiast — water tribes, a fire nation, air nomads — “Avatar: The Last Airbender” is a child-friendly escape from the everyday world. Featuring all the bells and whistles of an M.
LIHU‘E — Packed with enough fantasy for any sci-fi enthusiast — water tribes, a fire nation, air nomads — “Avatar: The Last Airbender” is a child-friendly escape from the everyday world.
Featuring all the bells and whistles of an M. Night Shyamalan film — without the fear-factor salient of films like “Lady in the Water” or “The Happening”— Airbender sets forth an impressive tale that relies more on powerful special effects than dialogue, and is chock-full of visual impact and fantasy.
Based on the animated Nickelodeon TV series, the film has successfully taken anime characters and translated them into young heroes, some with surrealistic traits, such as the water Princess Yue (Seychelle Gabriel) who has white hair from being dipped in the sacred, balanced water that absorbed the essence of the moon.
For those who aren’t familiar with the series, it is based on the idea of powers derived from four, element-like areas: air, water, earth and fire, captured distinctively by tribes across the fictional world. Those who have the powers in one of the four areas are called “benders” and can manipulate the element to yield to their will.
In the movie plotline, brother-and-sister water-bending heroes Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) find Aang (Noah Ringer), the chosen one, or “avatar,” frozen in their icy world. Aang has been frozen for nearly 100 years, and is the last of his people, who were all destroyed. The Fire Nation destroyed the monks who raised Aang in an effort to destroy the avatar, known to them as a spiritual child capable of bending all four elements (other leaders can only bend one).
During the time in which Aang has been frozen, the Fire Nation has forbidden the other element tribes from the practice of bending, and has either killed the benders of air, earth and water or has remanded them to lives in prison-like camps.
One exception to this holds true of the water benders of the would-be South Pole, who have lived just outside the reach of the Fire Nation and therefore have the potential to train Aang to strengthen his bending skills.
It is the bending skills of the children that offer levity to this movie, hearkening back with nostalgia to films such as “The Neverending Story” where child heroes overcome adversity listening to the truth found within their hearts, replete with flying animal companions to boot. For “Neverending Story” it was Falkor the Luck Dragon. For “Airbender” it’s Appa, the only known living Sky Bison, a race of animals that can naturally fly.
Also fun is that in “Airbender” the children work together, on the run, and refine their bending skills to an artform that is on-par with any number of martial-art greats. The children bond and learn about their inner strength while preparing to fight the villainous Fire Nation, a quest led by the direction of its monarch of sorts, Fire Lord Ozai, played by Cliff Curtis.
Ozai has Commander Zhao (Aasif Mandvi of “The Daily Show”) and his son, Prince Zuko (Dev Patel of “Slumdog Millionaire”) working in competition to capture Aang.
Though the film has received criticism for switching up the ethnicities of the tribes from what is set forth in the TV series (the water benders are Caucasian, as is Aang, while in the previous version they are Asian) it works well for the movie, as it still unifies the tribes visually (eg the Fire Nation leaders, for example, are all of Indian descent) while avoiding the presupposition that a fictional hero such as Aang practicing martial arts must be Asian.
Though the movie so far has received mediocre reviews, much of the packed audience in the Kukui Grove Cinema in Lihu‘e seemed pleased with it — some keiki even ran up and down the aisle imitating the tae-kwon do-like moves of Aang.
As far as offering an escape from the reality of the everyday world and the heat of summer on Kaua‘i, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” offers enough visually-pleasing and stimulating scenarios to pass the time, with an ending to set up a possible part two and three for passing time in summers to come.
