Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender review: the most beautiful Avatar, undone by its pacing

Let me start with the main thing: visually, this is one of the most beautiful Avatars ever made. It is also a film with some of the worst pacing I have come across. The pacing is what breaks everything and drags my score from at least a 9 down to a 7 (and at times a 6).

My Avatar

A bit of context, so it is clear where all this nitpicking comes from. I have loved Avatar since I was a kid: I rewatched The Last Airbender on DVD more times than I can count, then again as a teenager and again as an adult. For me it is a 12 out of 10 and the best thing ever made as an animated series (and as a series, full stop). I liked The Legend of Korra too, somewhere around an 8 out of 10.

Before Avatar: Seven Havens came out, my wife, our five-year-old daughter and I rewatched everything there is: first Aang, then this film (my first time seeing it) and then Korra.

What it is about

It is 13 years after the Hundred Year War. Aang is an adult and is still trying to keep Air Nomad culture alive. A gang of non-benders who hate benders is after an ancient power tied to one of the forgotten Avatars, so Aang gets the old team back together (Katara, Sokka, Toph and Zuko) to reach it first. In other words, it is the bridge between Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra.

A world you want to sink into

For me, the best part of every Avatar is not the fights but the slices of everyday life in this world. How the characters talk to each other, how cities and temples live. Those scenes are what pull you in. They are here, and they are great.

And the nostalgia works. Seeing the team together in one frame after all these years is a joy, even with all the problems below.

Animation, fights and music

The animation is top-tier. Hand-drawn characters over 3D backgrounds look like an expensive feature, and bending has never looked this spectacular. No wonder critics regret that it never made it to cinemas. RogerEbert.comVariety

The fights are visually stunning, but they are different from Aang’s or Korra’s: less tactical and less tense. A fight used to be a small puzzle (who outplays whom, and how). Here it is more of a spectacle.

The music is excellent. Jeremy Zuckerman, who scored the original series, is back, and you can hear it. Multiverse of Color

The characters

Adult Aang is great, although he slips back into his worries from the original show. Katara is great, and so is Toph.

Zuko is cool, but he gets very little screen time. For a Fire Lord who became one of the most interesting characters in the franchise, that is a pity. Multiverse of Color

Sokka, though, is a total letdown for me. He was comic relief in the original too, but he had depth: drama, worries, brains and kindness. Here he is reduced to a character who just throws out gags and recycles jokes from the earlier shows. He has lost all his weight and his charm.

Overall, some characters have regressed, and some have been simplified to a genuinely awful degree. Some critics take a softer view and put it down to each hero simply not getting enough screen time. Multiverse of Color

What goes wrong: the pacing

What I disliked most is the pace of the story. Scenes rush into one another with rare breaks for quiet conversation, and every character tries to show off their brightest traits. Everything suffers for it: the drama and those very slice-of-life scenes I love this world for. It feels like there is enough material here for a miniseries, not for 99 minutes.

The arc with the people who oppose benders is unnecessary. One main villain would have been enough, because the film never develops these people at all: they are there only because the plot needs a threat.

Who it is for

The film feels a bit like fan fiction, so I am not sure people who have not seen the shows would get much out of it.

Watch it for the gorgeous visuals if you miss Avatar, or to fill in the gaps in the story between Aang and Korra (even if it has its own slip-ups there, such as the Air Acolytes). My score: 7 out of 10.

Where to watch

Paramount+streaming↗

What critics say

Also onMMetacritic↗RRotten Tomatoes↗LLetterboxd↗

Director

Lauren Montgomery

Studio

Avatar Studios, Nickelodeon

Composer

Jeremy Zuckerman

Voices

Eric Nam, Jessica Matten, Steven Yeun, Dave Bautista

Release

25 July 2026, Paramount+

Based on my own viewing. Prepared with AI tools; text and score by Vladyslav Hulin.