In The Last Airbender,
the world has been split into four separate nations, one for each of the four elements - air, water, earth and fire.
The film begins with two members of the Southern Water Tribe, Katara (Nicola Peltz) and Sokka
(Jackson Rathbone), a sister and brother hunting for food like nomadic tribesmen because food is scarce.
Their father has gone off to fight in The War, while their mother was killed when they were young. During their
search, Katara happens to unearth a small lad, Aang (Noah Ringer, right), who we learn (as if you haven't guessed!)
is the Avatar, aka the last Airbender - and you can understand why they didn't call the film by that name as it
might have been confused for the overrated piece of nonsense from James Cameron.
So, what is his schtick? Well, with four elements, anyone who can bend an element can generally only bend one.
However, but the Avatar is the only one who can manage all four of them. 100 years ago he disappeared, and that's
when life stopped being peaceful around the world. Now that he's been brought back into the game, the bad guys are
sure to lose as he's back to kick baddie ass.
Wanting to stop him is Prince Zuko (Dev Patel, below-right, son of Fire Lord Ozai (Cliff Curtis), from the Fire
Nation, who kidnaps him and only Katara and Sokka can rescue him and bring peace to the world again and end The War.
Zuko basically needs the Avatar to restore his honour with his father and become an heir to the throne once again.
Given the nature of this movie, it doesn't really take a genius to work out how things will pan out.
Aang knows all about airbending - as can be seen with him throwing air at some of the bad guys to push them away,
but needs to be retaught how to bend earth, fire and water. As for his background, the Fire Nation killed all
of the Air Nomads, so basically the same story of Luke Skywalker returning home on Tattooine to find his aunt
and uncle killed.
Just give up trying to follow the plot - it's riduculous - and enjoy the CGI instead, at least for the most part
early on. After a while, the film slows down and there's much more exposition (which doesn't really lead anywhere)
than CGI, which comes almost as an afterthought sometimes.
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