Avatar: The Last Straw

So I just got back from seeing Avatar (Sister: You mean the one with the blue people? Me: NO. Leave my nerdiness alone!) and it was pretty much either the best or the worst thing ever. You know when movies are so bad, they’re kind of cute? Well, this one was so bad, it surpassed ‘cute’ and went into the ‘I’ve-seen-the-series-so-I-can-barely-follow-along-and-even-though-they-butchered-these-characters-I’ll-laugh-along-at-all-two-of-the-parts-that-were-supposed-to-be-funny-because-I’m-a-friggin’-WATERBENDING WARRIOR-dammit’ stage. It was almost embarrassing. I was in the (mostly empty) theatre with one couple (or maybe they were brother and sister. Who knows. It was almost like Katara and Sokka in the movie---they could have been dating, they could have been bro and sis, but who knows since any relationship they had had about the passion of a dead fish.), some silent Asians (who were probably shamed) and this guy who might have been my grandmother, Paul McCartney, or Spock dressed in a too-small The Who shirt. This was a sign that things were getting out of hand, but no, I ate my dinner of M&Ms (paid for by my Avatar-groupie friend who went with me) bravely and settled in for the ride.

The first scene was promising. It was like the opening of the real show, only faker. After that, we learn that Sokka doesn’t actually have a sense of humour and that Katara is a lot stupider than her series counterpart. THUSLY.

SOKKA: There’s a mysterious glowy thing under the ice we’re standing on.
KATARA: (silly grin) LOL HAHA LET’S HAMMER THRU IT SINCE WE’RE STANDING ON IT
SOKKA: Okay, but only if I get to be all manly and catch you, since you’re my sister slash girlfriend lover!
KATARA: HAHA KAY
(Slice through ice. Grumbling. Glowy things.)
SOKKA: OH GOD IT’S A BALD KID
KATARA: There may be a beacon going up in the air that’s gonna destroy our tribe, but we should save him! He looks important and I know this because I’m a main character!
AANG: (Stoic face) I am a new actor. I say five word phrases. Let me be your Jesus.
(Random flash to Zuko. Zuko is sitting on ship, and he is definitely NOT the Zuko from the series. He is, in fact, and apparently the whole Fire Nation is, Indian. And the Earth Kingdom is Asian. And the Water tribes are white, since they apparently ran out of races. In fact, everyone is cut-and-dried except Uncle, who is I think may be Jewish.)
ZUKO: (Suddenly in white suit, singing and tap-dancing) Goodness gracious, great balls of fire!!!

The movie only had two parts--- Part 1: Fill In Story Line, and Part 2: Ice City Thing. Ice City Thing is summed up nicely as this:
SOKKA: She’s out of my league, but she’ll never know since apparently this movie doesn’t have any other teenage boys in it.
AANG: *stoically flies around* My vague dragon told me. I must be Moses now.
ZUKO: I’MUNNA POP OUTTA THE GROUND LIKE A HUN!!! :D

Yeah. I could do the whole movie like this. Because it WAS like that. There was NO flow to it---it was just PEACEFUL SCENE STORY DUMP SCENE OH WAIT ACTION SCENE SINCE WE HAVEN’T USED THAT YET repeated over and over again until they almost had you fooled into thinking it was a pieced-together movie. And there WERE only two sorta funny parts. And I think they were obligatorily (is that a word? now it is) funny---since it was Sokka getting bitch-slapped by Appa’s tail and Sokka getting pwned by Katara’s water. Knee-slappers. Now, I’m a pretty diehard fan of Avatar, but even if I used the Twilight method of pretending it was good for the sake of my utter devotion, it didn’t work. There was a little voice in my brain named LOGIC going ‘No. This is wrong. This never happened. Wait, what DID happen? NO DON’T KILL THE FISH’ over and over again. Then that little voice died a little mournful death in a puff of anguish and pain as I watched the rest of the movie. When it ended, I was like…wait…that’s the end? We haven’t SEEN anything yet! But apparently we didn’t need to, since the entire Spirit world (one shady-looking dragon) and the whole other world (A couple of Earth camps, some sloshy-looking water, and metal Fire Nation boats) had been totally and entirely revealed to us so that we all could understand.