Wildfire Riders

This was not a bad movie. This was not a good movie. It just kind of...was. It had this overall sense of being sort of a "Highlights of Book One" reel as opposed to an internally consistent film. This is just the thing: Successful not-movie-to-movie adaptations are just that, adaptations. Not recitations. This was a recitation, and that was it's most grievous failure. It was very much unrefined, and the real disappointment is that if they had taken the time to refine it, it would have been truly memorable.

So I'll break this down nice and easy.

LIKED:

-All the aesthetics. Gorgeous scenery. Northern Water Tribe city was well-depicted. Abandoned Air Temples tangibly melancholy (even without the bones littered around the southern ones). The Fire Nation army was suitably menacing, and I loved how the royal palace, when depicted, was not the rather gloomy "evil overlord citadel" thing it was in the cartoon, but a truly majestic estate that looked like a pleasant place to be.

-Stoic Aang. This should not have worked, but it somehow did. Aang's whole deal in the cartoon was that he was a goofball who had a big responsibility to own up to. Aang's portrayal here kept the weight of responsibility, but his reluctance was that of an insecure kid who just wanted to live with his family (such as it was), which I can buy. The flashbacks were very nearly tearjerkers.

-Zuko. Like in the cartoon, he's angsty without it being obnoxious, and he's perfectly relatable. This actor is just good. He alone in the cast had the moxie to ham it up as much as they were all evidently encouraged to.

-The rest of the Fire Nation, really. Iroh felt 'just right'--tough, but good-natured. Ozai we did not see much of, but I would go so far as to say I like the look and stage presence of him here better than in the cartoon. Azula had even less screen time, but what little impression that COULD be gotten was good--my expectations might be unreasonably high, though, given how DeLisle just DOMINATED that role in the original, but she seemed pleasantly psychopathic here. Zhao was okay, too--not the greatest, but I bought it; he was pleasantly nasty, and though his final moments weren't brought on by quite as spectacular an event as it was originally, the sheer impersonal mercilessness of it was viciously satisfying. (I suppose that was a spoiler, but if you're reading this, you probably saw the show already)

-Aang and Zuko's chemistry. There wasn't much by way of dialogue exchanges, but the physical interaction between the two spoke pretty well.

-The ending. For all the missteps, the finale was satisfying. Not as explosive as in the original show, but I completely bought it, and the way Aang finishes things off is, despite the absence of giant wrathful fishgods, appropriate to his character: In no uncertain terms is it made clear to the world that the Avatar has Arrived, and He Is Ready to Rock You.

DID NOT LIKE:

-To M. Night: Remember that saying, "Show, don't tell?" Show, don't tell. Show, don't tell. SHOW, DON'T TELL. SHOW! DON'T! TELL!! Really. Too much narration, too little evident onscreen. Biggest offenders were the sequences with the liberation of Earth Kingdom villages, and the establishment of the relationship between Sokka and Yue, but it was really sort of all over the place. Whomever first established that rule seriously knew what they were talking about.

-Katara and Sokka were just kind of...there. There was very little chemistry between them and anyone else onscreen, and this is particularly bad with Katara--we know that she's not only the hero's love interest later on, but also our own "connection"; she's the narrative voice, and is supposed to serve just as much as she does in the cartoon as the primary "point of view" character for the audience. It doesn't click.

-Very little follow-through with the characterization. We know Sokka is supposed to be goofy, and he's framed as such, but we're just kind of supposed to accept this without him ever actually doing his usual goofball stuff onscreen. Stuff characters outright say is happening doesn't happen (hey guys, didn't they say when the Fire Nation got here we were supposed to, y'know, douse all flames in the city?).

-The fight scenes lacked punch. I have this impression that they were trying to go for more "realistic" depictions of martial arts, which they had just fine, but seemed to forget that the primary element of the martial arts in this story is FLINGING AROUND THE ELEMENTS AT YOUR FACE. This does not call for realism, this calls for glorious nonsense. They had a golden opportunity to take the flying Hong Kong wire-fu approach to the bending styles, and missed. This made me sad.

I'll finish this off with some miscellany.

DID NOT CARE: Lots of Water Tribe characters were white. Yep. White. Get over it. Despite the fact that this seemed to have earned the film a ton of preemptive hate, it really did nothing to diminish from it (really, absolute least of the problems it had).

MISSED: Kiyoshi Warriors. Where are you?

LOL: Iroh: "Zuko, there's lots of pretty girls around here." Please follow through with this and deliver unto us an awesome Jin in the potential sequel--I don't care how little screentime she actually gets.

DELICIOUS: Brownzula. You know exactly what I am talking about.

PLEASE: If you cannot find a suitable little girl to play Toph in the sequel, just get Dwayne Johnson. That would rock. (you see what I did there? )

GOD TIER DVD EXTRA: No cast/crew commentary. Instead, get voice cast of the cartoon to do commentary "Ember Island Players"-style. Hell. Yes.

WILL NOT: Pay to see this movie again.

WILL: See the sequel, if the powers that be allow M. Night to do it after this nonsense.