LAF Reviews of TLA

[hasdi]

Fourthly, the Avatar State was never explained even with one sentence. Viewers just saw his eyes go white and thought he was concentrating.

Actually, it was explained in one sentence at prologue - the Avatar has the ability to enter the Spirit World.

Do you seriously think people who haven't seen the show will make that connection...?

*Aang's tattoos and eyes glow and give him incredible power*

audience: OMG! It's like that one sentence from the "prologue"!!!

Actually it went more like this....

*Aang's tattoos and eyes glowed and wind started blowing all over the place*

audience: WTF is happening to Aang?!!

*Aang was then seen in the Spirit World and he saw a glimpse of the Dragon Spirit*

audience: Oh. Ok, he is in some sort of "Spiritual Mode". His body is still back on the real world... so all the glowing and blowing thing is some kind of side effect when he tapped into the spiritual leyline and stuff...

At least that is what I gather from my buddies who have not seen the show. When I asked them about the "Avatar State", they go like "Avatar what now? How did you come up with that?!!"

IMHO, Avatar State was "never explained" by M.Night because he did NOT include it:

Despite what wikia says, I think M.Night dropped Avatar State from the movie because it's a GODMOD, and gaping plot hole in the series: if you can recall your past abilities, why bother mastering the other elements? After Nick approved season 2, Mike and Bryan limited the usage of Avatar State with "you break the Avatar Cycle if you are killed in the Avatar State". The wave thing at the end of the movie was just him using the power of the Ocean Spirit. My 2 cents.

[Mooseboy018]

I think he made it too vague. Of all of the things in the movie that he didn't explain every two seconds with exposition, he chose this...?

[TheAusMan14]

My non-fan friends picked up on him going into the spirit world, but yeah no idea on avatar state

[hasdi]

My non-fan friends picked up on him going into the spirit world, but yeah no idea on avatar state

Good Riddance. Can't say I'm surprised - if M.Night restricted chi-fire and threw out lightning generation, why wouldn't he do the same with Avatar State? A god-like power for the protagonist may appeal to neophytes but every adversary becomes a small game - where is the challenge in that? Even Mike and Bryan realized they to do something about it when they reworked the series for season 2, eventually disabling it (albeit temporarily) with Azula striking Aang's back in "The Crossroads of Destiny". Dropping it also enables Avatar State-related plots to be cut out in the second movie.

I think he made it too vague. Of all of the things in the movie that he didn't explain every two seconds with exposition, he chose this...?

I think he explained it quite well to the general audience who has not seen the series - fans tend carry with them the baggage of animated series when they walked into the movie. He probably should gave fans a "heads up, I changed this too" as he did with chi-fire, so they don't get confused. Then again, the Avatar's "ability to communicate with the Spirit World" in movie's opening text, was never mentioned the original series' opening title sequence... it's kind of a dead giveaway, i.e. why not include "Avatar State" in the opening text? Isn't that a more significant ability?

[Lil GaGa]

It definitely leaves you wanting more though, which is not a bad thing.

It leaves you wanting more information, not for more of the story.

[Mooseboy018]

I think he explained it quite well to the general audience who has not seen the series

I still think it was just too vague at the end. M. Night had good intentions, but he just failed to properly portray them on screen.

At the beginning of the movie, Aang gets upset about the death of his people and goes into the Avatar State without being able to control it. At the end of the movie, he comes to terms with their deaths (with no DIALOGUE!!! gasp!) and seems to master the Avatar State. But we never get a good enough look at Aang in the Avatar State at the Southern Air Temple (from what I remember), so I don't know if every audience member would immediately make the connection between that scene and the wave scene. And the editing was just terrible in the first Avatar State scene, and everything just happened so fast.

I think this was definitely one of M. Night's better ideas, but it just wasn't executed as well as it could have been as a whole.

[hasdi]

But we never get a good enough look at Aang in the Avatar State at the Southern Air Temple (from what I remember), so I don't know if every audience member would immediately make the connection between that scene and the wave scene.

We should probably give a new term to this revised "Avatar State"... any ideas? Spirit-Power Mode? Spiritual Mode? Spiritual State? Anyhow, just because M.Night used exposition and narration "every two seconds" to explain scenes he could not show due to limited running time, does not mean EVERYTHING he wanted to convey was via exposition and narration. He didn't explain the workings of spirit-power mode right at that Southern Air Temple scene but clued them in at several points throughout the movie.

This is how I think the spirit-power mode works in the movie: it has to do with the concept of spiritual Ley lines, which is popular in other works of fiction and RPG games. Each line is a stream of mystical or spritual energy. When crossed with other lines, the intersection points (or nexus points) are endowed with great spiritual power, i.e. a "spiritual place". Many cities are build around the nexus points; the ones noted in the movie were the 1) place where Monk Gyatso died at destroyed Southern Air Temple, 2) somewhere close to the jail area at the Northern Air Temple, and 3) the Spirit Oasis at the Northern Water City. If Aang taps into the power at the nexus points, his bending powers increase many-fold:



The nexus point is also the best place to communicate with the spirits. Sort of like a internet router or a telephone junction box, Aang can communicate with anyone in the Spirit World, or tap into the power of a spirit with a worldly incarnated form, such as the Moon and Ocean Spirit. At several points in the third act, the northern waterbenders were mentioned to be using the power of the Moon spirit. Which begs the question, what of the power of the Ocean spirit? Has anybody figured out how to tap into it and if so, what new waterbending technique do you get with it?

See? Now the last part of the movie makes more sense. After he was saved from Zuko, Aang said that he knew what to do after talking to the Dragon Spirit, but he didn't do the wave thing right away. Instead he was running around in circles beating the bad guys. My theory is that he was looking for another nexus point to tap into the Ocean Spirit by following one of the Ley lines out of the Oasis. After circling back to Sokka and Katara (a scene that was cut), Sokka became frustrated at Aang and said, "Princess Yue is DEAD! What did the Spirit tell you to do?!!" Aang disregarded Sokka's outburst and seemingly noticed something from a distance, another nexus point. He then dropped his staff and raced to that location and began taping into the Ocean Spirit's power....

[D@vid]

But we never get a good enough look at Aang in the Avatar State at the Southern Air Temple (from what I remember), so I don't know if every audience member would immediately make the connection between that scene and the wave scene.

We should probably give a new term to this revised "Avatar State"... any ideas? Spirit-Power Mode? Spiritual Mode? Spiritual State? Anyhow, just because M.Night used exposition and narration "every two seconds" to explain scenes he could not show due to limited running time, does not mean EVERYTHING he wanted to convey was via exposition and narration. He didn't explain the workings of spirit-power mode right at that Southern Air Temple scene but clued them in at several points throughout the movie.

This is how I think the spirit-power mode works in the movie: it has to do with the concept of spiritual Ley lines, which is popular in other works of fiction and RPG games. Each line is a stream of mystical or spritual energy. When crossed with other lines, the intersection points (or nexus points) are endowed with great spiritual power, i.e. a "spiritual place". Many cities are build around the nexus points; the ones noted in the movie were the 1) place where Monk Gyatso died at destroyed Southern Air Temple, 2) somewhere close to the jail area at the Northern Air Temple, and 3) the Spirit Oasis at the Northern Water City. If Aang taps into the power at the nexus points, his bending powers increase many-fold:



The nexus point is also the best place to communicate with the spirits. Sort of like a internet router or a telephone junction box, Aang can communicate with anyone in the Spirit World, or tap into the power of a spirit with a worldly incarnated form, such as the Moon and Ocean Spirit. At several points in the third act, the northern waterbenders were mentioned to be using the power of the Moon spirit. Which begs the question, what of the power of the Ocean spirit? Has anybody figured out how to tap into it and if so, what new waterbending technique do you get with it?

See? Now the last part of the movie makes more sense. After he was saved from Zuko, Aang said that he knew what to do after talking to the Dragon Spirit, but he didn't do the wave thing right away. Instead he was running around in circles beating the bad guys. My theory is that he was looking for another nexus point to tap into the Ocean Spirit by following one of the Ley lines out of the Oasis. After circling back to Sokka and Katara (a scene that was cut), Sokka became frustrated at Aang and said, "Princess Yue is DEAD! What did the Spirit tell you to do?!!" Aang disregarded Sokka's outburst and seemingly noticed something from a distance, another nexus point. He then dropped his staff and raced to that location and began taping into the Ocean Spirit's power....

Wow........You just made me like the movie even more!

[Mooseboy018]

It's a cool idea, but the movie should have been a little more clear if that's what M. Night was trying to do...

[Takara]

This is how I think the spirit-power mode works in the movie: it has to do with the concept of spiritual Ley lines, which is popular in other works of fiction and RPG games. Each line is a stream of mystical or spritual energy. When crossed with other lines, the intersection points (or nexus points) are endowed with great spiritual power, i.e. a "spiritual place". Many cities are build around the nexus points; the ones noted in the movie were the 1) place where Monk Gyatso died at destroyed Southern Air Temple, 2) somewhere close to the jail area at the Northern Air Temple, and 3) the Spirit Oasis at the Northern Water City. If Aang taps into the power at the nexus points, his bending powers increase many-fold:

The nexus point is also the best place to communicate with the spirits. Sort of like a internet router or a telephone junction box, Aang can communicate with anyone in the Spirit World, or tap into the power of a spirit with a worldly incarnated form, such as the Moon and Ocean Spirit. At several points in the third act, the northern waterbenders were mentioned to be using the power of the Moon spirit. Which begs the question, what of the power of the Ocean spirit? Has anybody figured out how to tap into it and if so, what new waterbending technique do you get with it?

See? Now the last part of the movie makes more sense. After he was saved from Zuko, Aang said that he knew what to do after talking to the Dragon Spirit, but he didn't do the wave thing right away. Instead he was running around in circles beating the bad guys. My theory is that he was looking for another nexus point to tap into the Ocean Spirit by following one of the Ley lines out of the Oasis. After circling back to Sokka and Katara (a scene that was cut), Sokka became frustrated at Aang and said, "Princess Yue is DEAD! What did the Spirit tell you to do?!!" Aang disregarded Sokka's outburst and seemingly noticed something from a distance, another nexus point. He then dropped his staff and raced to that location and began taping into the Ocean Spirit's power....

Never thought about it that way but now that you've mentioned it, I can clearly see that happening in the movie

It's a very nice theory... it shows that you are really into that stuff

I also think that M.Night didn't explained more about it to drew people to see the next movie.
My sister got out of the cinema saying she wanted to know more about the glowing tattoos (like me, she loved them ) and was hoping to see more in the second movie - she's a fan of the movie but never saw the series (don't kill her please, I'm trying to get her to watch it on her free time )
Like me, we're both waiting for a sequel (okay... I'm going to be killed by some of you, won't I??? )