Sean Madigan » avatar

TV Review: Avatar – The Last Airbender Series

Sean — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 01:46:03 +0000

I recently completely finished the Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender in it’s entirety. It is 3 seasons long, and I watched all but the last few episodes all in a row, and recently finished the last few finally. Those who haven’t seen it are probably asking why I, a 21-year-old college student would be watching a Nickelodeon cartoon. Well, Avatar is serialized and very serious. It is not a children’s cartoon, all about action and dumb puns. It is full of action, some genuinely funny moments, tragedy, and so much emotion. People die, there’s love; it has everything. Avatar: The Last Airbender is much closer to your average prime-time medical drama (but better) than any Nickelodeon cartoon.

But what exactly is Avatar about?

Avatar is a tale of 4 nations (the air nation, water, earth, and fire), each nation having benders (people with the ability to bend, or use that particular element to fight or do whatever). The avatar is a person who knows how to bend each element, and his/her job is to bring all of the nations together and keep peace. The current Avatar freezing himself in ice for 100 years (sort of accidentally) because he is afraid of taking the responsibility. During this time, the fire nation begins its conquest to take over all of the nations. Two kids find and wake up the Avatar, and they begin their journey to defeat the Fire Lord and restore peace to the world, making friends and enemies along the way.

After watching the entire series, I have to say this has to be one of the greatest television series ever created. There are maybe 4 episodes that are pretty poor and nothing really happens in them, but every single other episode is packed full of emotion. And that is what I love so much about Avatar. There is such raw emotion in this series, especially the love between father/mother and son/daughter. A good chunk of the series is solely focused on the son of the the Fire Lord trying to restore his honer to his father, because his father was forced to kill his son to become the fire lord, but his son refused to fight and was kicked out of the nation for not having honer. There is a part near the end of the series between two family members that nearly made me cry. Yes I’ll admit it, and it’ll make you cry too if you watch the whole series through. Do it. Now.

I’m incredibly upset that the series ended, but I’m also excited for M. Night Shyamalan’s upcoming movie adaption of the show. If you heard this news then you might have wondered why in the heck Shyamalan would do an adaption of a children’s cartoon. Well now you know why.

So once again, watch the whole series from beginning to end, preferably all at once (roughly at once, you know what I mean). But it’ll be spectacular either way.

James Cameron’s Avatar Theatrical Trailer

Sean — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 01:48:07 +0000

Yesterday I posted about me seeing the Avatar sneak peak footage and said there was no trailer. Well either I lied or it was just posted. Either way, here it is:

Avatar – Theatrical Trailer

By the way, everything in that trailer was also in the footage I saw, which means I also still don’t know how this movie is going to be based on anything shown.

Avatar Day! James Cameron’s Avatar Preview

Sean — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:49:22 +0000

Yesterday I went to see the 15 minute preview of James Cameron’s Avatar at the White Marsh Mall theater in IMAX 3D. I have to say, despite the incredible hype and praise from people that went to Comic-Con (where this same preview was shown before) I really wasn’t blown away by this footage.

For anyone that doesn’t know, James Cameron is the famous director or writer of all of the Terminator movies and shows, the Abyss, Aliens, Titantic, and tons of other classics. Avatar is about humans in the future (or maybe just a fantasy world?) that find a way to transport peoples’ minds into alien bodies (avatars) so that they can travel to a distant planet. I think. This is all guessing from what I saw. The rest of the footage shows the people in their avatar forms on the planet called Pandora, who seem to be exploring and getting into trouble with big creatures and the local inhabitants of the planet (which look exactly like their avatars). The footage didn’t really seem to give away any key plot points, which James Cameron was quick to point out on screen before the footage was shown. It looks like 90% of the movie will be CGI and 10% live action.

Avatar looks really good; it seems to be full of action, drama, live action and CGI in 3D, and the CGI looks flawless; probably the best CGI I’ve ever seen. My main gripe though is the 3D. It may just be me, as it didn’t seem to affect Melissa, but whenever there was any action with a lot of movement my brain seemed to not be able to keep up with the 3D and it just looked kind of bleh to me. I think I’d actually prefer to see the movie in 2D. There also just doesn’t seem to be much of a story and the characters seemed to be a little bland, but I really can’t tell that from the footage seen so I’ll have to wait to actually see how that pans out.

So basically everyone seemed to be blown away by this footage as Comic-Con, especially the 3D technology, since James Cameron said that he was looking at 3D as lighting to make a movie better, not just a gimmick. But I really thought the 3D in the Pixar movies I’ve seen lately was better and the footage really didn’t ‘wow’ me like everyone else seemed to be. We’ll see!

Oh yeah, and just to let anyone know: there is no trailer for Avatar as of yet, which is why I went to see this 15 minute footage. It’s basically James Cameron’s version of a trailer, except it’s not on the internet.