Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender (2026), available to watch on my hard drive.
The following is a loose essay about my thoughts on seeing this film:
I was a bit hesitant to see this film for a few reasons. This follow up to the beloved Last Airbender series was originally going to be released in theaters. That idea was exciting to my sibling and me. A new Avatar animation? As a theatrical movie? Even then I wasn't that sure how badly I wanted to see it as more recent Avatar releases have trouble living up to the reputation of the original series, but surely Avatar in theaters (not that one) would be a special event worth checking out. Then a quiet disappointment happened. Normally the announcement that a film will release only on streaming and not theaters at least has some pros and cons. If it's on Netflix most people you know will be able to check it out very quickly, same with Disney+ in my experience, but the fact it would only be on Paramount+, a service not even available in my region, basically meant that the only people who I know in real life that would even be able to see it are, like, VPN users that would specifically go out of their way to pay for a month of this service. That is very sad. Then the only reason I'm probably writing this happened: the film leaked in full HD back in April. It was pointed out to me by someone else but if you go the social film website Letterboxd right now, it'll tell you that already over 97,000 people have seen this film. As far as I'm concerned April was this film's release date because it is still set to officially release on Paramount+ all the way in October. Like why? Why would I wait to watch this? You don't want me to use your service, you seemingly don't care that people are watching it early because if you did you'd release it at least some time before the end of summer in some format. I don't even like supporting corporate media, I tend to just download stuff off file sharing sites anyway unless it's perhaps made by indie teams that I like supporting. Here's the thing though, I do feel bad. I feel like a lot less people will see this without a big exciting release and I've always wanted the best for people that get to work on creative projects that I'm interested in like these. It's a bad situation, no doubt about it, of course no matter what we're talking about a project leaking half a year early is very bad. As you can guess though, yeah, I did watch it last night. My sibling had pirated it, watched it on their own and told me last week that it was good. On one hand I was glad to hear that it was good but on the other I still wanted it to feel like an event when I watched this and now the person I wanted to see it with had already seen it so I ended up calling my childhood friend that loves Avatar: The Last Airbender and made plans to meet up yesterday to watch it. Avatar was actually my favorite television series growing up and my friend loved it so much that it was basically part of their personality, we all knew they really loved Avatar and this was actually our first time watching a piece of Avatar media together in the same room if I remember correctly. There's something very special about this honestly, being kids watching these kids going on a grand adventure and then growing up to be adults and seeing them as adults go on a new adventure again. I did really like the movie, it felt like they had a story they really wanted to tell. We learn a bit more about this world that we love, there's compelling character drama and the occasional light-hearted fun. Sometimes what's happening on screen is genuinely epic and thrilling and also this is shockingly probably the most beautiful 2D animated film I have ever seen. The lighting, the composition, so detailed and fluid, the way so much just cinematically pops. I think the worst you could say about the film is that you might find it only decent story wise or writing wise or something along those lines. I do think I like its story though and a lot else about it. We'll see how it resonates long term with me but it's clear this film is a huge labor of love. I think realistically speaking, this is basically the best I could have hoped for regarding a modern film based of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's largely centered on Aang and not so much the extended cast but the movie's titled directly after him so it's okay, I guess. Again, I did have a great time watching this with my friend, we actually watched it at their house on their really big TV with a group of friends including my sibling who was willing to rewatch it. I, just for fun, arranged previews before the movie started like how you'd see in a movie theater. One of the advertisements I put was for the old 2007 licensed game Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Burning Earth, very fun of me. My friend was thoroughly humored by all the previews I put which was nice. Also just for fun I asked my friend after the movie if they wanted to watch the old Avatar shorts and they said yes. These shorts were DVD extras that I found on a file sharing site and I think I remember them being televised a long time ago. They are in a "chibi" version of the show's art style and are mostly just supposed to be fun and silly. There are only three of them and they are on YouTube but they're cropped and look worse. I included these extras yesterday because it all just helped make the afternoon more special, just because something special is seemingly gone doesn't mean you can't do something about it and that's what I tried doing. I hope you enjoyed this essay, it's over now. I just felt like writing about this film's weird release and my personal experience with it, Avatar means a lot to me after all. Farewell reader.