The burn mark across his eye says he is an exile, rejected by the king and with a nasty combination of violent urges and unresolved daddy issues. “I never asked to be special!” is one of several on-the-nose lines of dialogue reinforcing the idea that this garlanded child will have to sacrifice his youth to perform his sacred duties.īefore long, however, Aang has his first run-in with Prince Zuko (Dallas Liu), a prince of the warmongering Fire Nation – who we know is a self-hating baddie because he has a facial disfigurement (such is the slightly troubling visual grammar of the fantasy genre). Aang, who helpfully comes from a tribe with face markings in the form of a big arrow pointing down towards the face – so everyone can see this is the main guy, right here – would rather reject his destiny and goof off like a normal kid. This is a familiar tale of a kid with a big future. That we are not sure how people knew Aang was the Avatar, or how the thing with the comet worked, or how Aang knew he should trap himself inside an icy pod thing, is not meant to detain us. View image in fullscreen ‘We never asked to be special!’ … Avatar: The Last Airbender. At any one time there is a single person, the Avatar, who has the potential to learn how to bend all four elements and become an omnipotent, celestial peacekeeper whose eyes turn blue when they’re about to sort a bad guy out. Here, there are regions defined by fire, earth, water and air, with each population containing “benders” – people with the ability to bend their local element to their will and use it as a weapon. The narrative fits the template of countless fantasy series, with a world split into kingdoms that are perpetually at war or on the brink of it, where young people wield an uncommon influence and where magical powers exist to be used or abused. Almost two decades on, the fanbase is still there, ready to follow the story anew. Being forced to add a colon and a clunky subheading to its name did not stop Avatar: The Last Airbender from becoming one of the most acclaimed animated series of all time. It is linked to the 2010 M Night Shyamalan film The Last Airbender – that was also a live-action version of the cartoon – but none of the Airbender properties is anything to do with the highest-grossing movie of all time, Avatar, whose copyright lawyers nabbed the simple one-word title everyone wanted. In case you’re new to the Airbender universe – Netflix’s adventure drama Avatar: The Last Airbender is a live-action remake of the popular Nickelodeon animated series of the same name, which debuted in 2005.
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