Movies that excite me: The Last Airbender

*i was going to provide pretty pictures and handy links, but I decided to write this from my phone. Gotta love a Blackberry

Despite the fact this movie should have been called Avatar except the fact some huge movie about huge blue aliens took the name, The Last Airbender is based on a highly popular and amazing Nickelodeon cartoon. The series ended in 2008 and consists of series refered to as Books and the episodes are Chapters.

The tale follows Aang, the last of his kind and the Avatar, and the brother/sister pair of Sokka and Katara. They are in a world where the elements - water, earth, fire, and air - can be "bent" by certain people who have the innate ability to do so. The firebending nation is out to rule the world and Aang, the avatar who can bend all the elements, is supposedly the only one who can stop him.

That's the basic story. There are so many layers to the Avatar world that make the series very successful.

When a movie was announced, fans got antsy. They wanted this done, but they wanted it done right. M Knight Shamalan is the director and many people are still worried this movie will not give justice to the series. When actors were being chosen, fans were quite upset as many white actors were rumored to have been chosen when the Avatar world has characters who clearly are not white. Petitions exploded on the internet and so did communities against the moviemakers (such as aang_aint_white on Livejournal)

So, what do I think? I love Avatar...a lot. It is one of my favorite animated series ever. I was worried about the movie. Very worried. I still am quite worried that this will not live up to my expectations, but that is the problem with movie goers these days. They judge movies too harshly. From what I have seen in the trailer, the movie will be taking the entire season 1 (which takes place in the Water tribe area of the Avatar world) and it looks darn good. The bending looks fantastic and I can not help but love the cute kid who will be Aang.

I will be at this movie. I will even be wearing a costume. I'm excited.