I watched the ATLA movie and I have thoughts...
The animation is so good, the fight scenes are well coreograph and everything looks beautiful.
However the script wasn't as good in my opinion.
All other characters besides Aang don't have a significant amount of screentime or something interesting happening during the movie.
It is so weird that Katara is the only one to not trust Tagah. Sokka would not have trust his ass, but this movie keeps treating him as just a side funny nonbender that got 1 hype moment at the end and was still used as a joke.
Also in general all non bender's in the movie are treated... weird(?)
Like, this was also a critic of mine from both ATLA and TLOK, the enemies for the most part are people from a marginalized group. And in this movie the main antagonist is a nonbender that got airbending, and the other nonbenders are also enemies. Idk, it doesn't help that the only nonbender in the gaang got used only for jokes and queerbait (I love Zukka but unfortunately they will never be canon 💔).
Talking about nonbenders... WHERE are Suki, Mai and Ty Lee. Suki only appears for 5 seconds at the end. Where are my queens??? Where is Azula too????
I feel the movie could have been entirely about finding more flying bisons, maybe they could have had an antagonist with the classic "I want to use this rare species to make movie muahahaha" or just not have any antagonist at all and the conflict is solely based on the struggles of said odyssey and how the gaang manages it. Idk. I just felt that another antagonist victim of a genocide that looks for revenge and aang has to stop him because that's evil was already used enough in the franchise.
I found it really heartwarming that Sokka and Aang were able to see old Zuko and Katara in that one scene :") that was nice
Anyway, going back to the queerbaiting, look, I love Zuko and Sokka, I have been shipping them since I know what gay people are, I really enjoyed the little moments they gave us, but like... I already suffered with voltron, do they really think I was going to buy it???? And it felt they were only distracting us from the fact THAT SUKI AND MAI WEREN'T THERE.
Idk, the overall story is still watchable, not saying it wasn't entertaining, I would have loved to watch it ON THEATERS. It just felt really superficial in terms of writing. And for someone who has been waiting for an ATLA movie, this felt like a filler episode.
(Another complain I have is that they decided to stop using chinese and created their own fantasy language, and I just feel they are trying so hard to distance themselves from the asian and indigenous influence that the world has. Specially because I found out they used chatgpt for research instead of hiring people)
yousharknotpass
gummygunk
