Avatar Aang The Last Airbender is a continuation of the legendary series Avatar: The Last Airbender. After Aang brought peace to the world by ending the war with the Fire Nation, a new city was built to bring the nations of the four elements together. However, as the last airbender, Aang only sees how everyone but him has a place to call home in Republic City. Seeking relics of his culture, he ends up embarking on a journey that leads to the possibility of bringing airbending back to the world.

The story is something I was really concerned about going in. This was for no reason other than my belief that the original series is one of the best written shows of all time. However, the story really managed to impress here. It first of all fits perfectly as a continuation of the original series while not introducing anything that hinders how it eventually leads into the sequel series The Legend of Korra. It tells an incredibly detailed character-driven narrative as Aang struggles with being the last airbender, something he had little time to really do in the original series. When introduced to a new airbender for the first time, the emotions are all over the place and expressed very well. It is genuinely a story that feels like the perfect continuation of a series I fell in love with all those years ago.

The characters are the heart and soul of this movie as Aang struggles with the fact that he has a chance to not be the last airbender anymore. The group finds a new airbender, Taga, from a time long before the events of the original series, who dealt with a similar tragedy as Aang. However, while Aang ran away before the Fire Nation wiped out his people, Taga was front and center as his people were decimated by the Earth Kingdom.

The two clearly have very similar grief, but how they experienced it shaped them very differently. These differences play out in a very extreme fashion as the two engage in a battle of might and morals. The story isn’t long enough here to give the rest of Team Avatar a big role to play in the heavy emotional side of things, but having them around really helped to show how Aang and Taga are very different and why. Aang had friends of all backgrounds to reaffirm his belief in unity, while Taga exiled himself from anyone who wasn’t an airbender. The returning characters are just as amazing as always, and the newcomers are equally impressive and fit perfectly with the rest of the series.

The presentation was just absolutely beautiful. The animation was far better than anything I would have expected. There were scenes that were done so well that I was glued to them the entire time. This helps a lot when you see the fight scenes as the characters bend their respective elements. The flames of firebending, the flow of waterbending, and so forth are rendered so well that it becomes captivating. The scenery shots are equally amazing, and the movie is just gorgeous to look at.

I really don’t have any criticisms for the movie itself. It was absolutely amazing in every aspect and tells a story that I plan to watch over and over again. The emotional scenes hit hard, and the characters are incredibly well written. My only issue is knowing that there was a chance for me to watch this at the theater, and I simply didn’t get the chance. I’m nowhere near the few places that had it released this way. I rarely go to the movies anymore, but I would have bought a ticket day one for this.