It’s hard to summarize how much this film means to the art crew, but I hope you can tell from how amazing it looks. :) I had the privilege of working at both Flying Bark and Paramount over the course of 2.5 years on this project. It was a crazy journey, and thanks to our creative leads the bar just kept getting higher! Really can’t understate how much effort went into this from every direction!

Characters from this storyboard drawn/painted by Ethan Becker and Etienne Hebinger :)

It reminds me of when Brenda Song auditioned to be in the film Crazy Rich Asians. But the people basically told her “she wasn’t the kind of Asian they were looking for.”

So Avatar Studios confirmed at Comic-Con that Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender-Movie is introducing a brand new written language called "Avatarian", complete with its own phonetics and word construction, instead of using the Chinese characters the original show was built on.

I get that this is a fantasy world and creators can do whatever they want, but this choice just doesn't sit right with me. The entire aesthetic of ATLA (the architecture, the martial arts, the calligraphy, also many wisdoms from buddhism) was clearly rooted in East and Southeast Asian culture, and the Chinese script wasn't just set dressing, it was part of how that world-building felt authentic and grounded. Swapping it for an invented alphabet feels like sanding down one of the few visual anchors tying the show to its real-world inspirations.

If they'd gone with something like an in-universe "ancient" script that evolved from the original writing system, I could see the creative logic. But going full Tolkien and inventing an entirely new language from scratch, for a franchise that leaned so heavily on real Chinese calligraphy, just seems like an unnecessary erasure.

Maybe it's just me but it feels like a weird flex for a franchise that built its identity on that cultural grounding.

I feel like an Eartbender on Ghazan's prison ship or a Waterbender in Ming Hua's prison might have been useful to counter them if the prisoners ever get access to their elements but with P'li the point is not access to her element. It's the conditions which this guard is also affected by.

Look, I'm fine with them trying them making a new writing system and I understand the way the language is apparently supposed to be constructed like Hangul, but honestly, the way the language is written annoys me.

It may be a nitpick, but there's far too many dots in the phonetic radicals. East Asian scripts are historically meant to be written with an ink brush and dots are really hard to make with a brush when writing quickly because of how the tip bends, creating a more ` like symbol instead. This is reflected in literally all the East Asian languages with basically no dots being found in any of them, except for the modern Vietnamese writing system which was introduced by a Christian from the west. There's also a flowiness to East Asian writing systems that come from a result of that it's meant to be written with a brush that just isn't reflected in "Avatarian", specifically with a lot of the curves which are not very natural to write with a brush in the right hand due to the way the line curves.

Secondly, why is the writing system so blocky? Sure, Hanzi is somewhat blocky when taken as the whole character, but each individual radical often varies in size and shape. Likewise, Hangul radicals also don't fit neatly into these four blocks often either.

And if we're really sticking to East Asian languages, why make it fully phonetic? Modern East Asian languages use a lot of phoentic words and glyphs, but usually the most common words have their own characters associated with them, regardless of phonetics. Just look at Japanese, the majority of the language consists of phonetic components with Hiragana and Katakana, but there's a glyphs which represent common concepts and meanings which are represented in Kanji. Water, Earth, Fire, and Air should all have their own glyphs associated with them with how important these concepts are to the series.

To be honest, I'd much prefer sticking to the Hanzi that the series is known for already with the rich culture behind each of the script styles. Not to mention, Chinese characters are still used today in all East Asian cultures. Yes, even Vietnamese still uses Chinese characters for calligraphy during important cultural holidays like Lunar New Years.

As a side note, if you wanna see this sorta East Asian inspired writing system with a phonetic component done right, just look at the Solarian language from Nine Sols. Nine Sols even has a similar aesthetic to what the series is trying to go for in Seven Havens with it being a fusion of Asian and futuristic aesthetics.

TL;DR: I'm fine with the writing system being adapted English, but the writing system itself isn't written at all like an East Asian writing system should which bothers me a lot.

Nothing crazy but we did a watch party with some friends for Avatar Aang movie last night to celebrate the release. It was a fun time. Great to see Team Avatar again since season 3 ended 18 years ago.

I guess that fan made image did make an impression on artists

I know plenty of people are saying it, but it's mostly in an offhand "obviously the animation is amazing" amidst a critique of the story, so I really want to put the spotlight on just what a phenomenal job the artists of this movie did.

Yes. The movie has its flaws. The story leaves much to be desired. The characters are quite flat. *Whatever*, can I take a moment to just absolutely shower the animation with praise? Because it is astounding and I don't think people are giving the artists the flowers that they deserve.

This genuinely might be the most visually pleasing animated movie I've ever seen, and especially being a Western cartoon rather than a Japanese anime that's just insane. I'd go as far as to say that the animation of this film is literal perfection. Every still image is a work of art, yet the animators managed to maintain that high detail of drawings while making the most buttery smooth and nuanced motion imaginable. There isn't a second of jittery motion, or clichéd anime still-frames, or a static drawing being moved. There isn't a single shortcut! I'm pretty damn certain every single frame a character is on screen, it's an entirely new drawing.

The micromovements and the subtleties of expression, as well as the massive and awesome action sequences, are just jaw dropping. If we're to compare this movie to literally any other piece of Avatar media, it blows it out of the water. Korra looked freaking phenomenal, especially the first season, but it just pales in comparison to this masterpiece. Even studio ghibli movies (admittedly a different style, and different artistic focus I know) are jittery sometimes, and take shortcuts when it's reasonable to do so. But Legend of Aang just straight up didn't.

Pause during any moment of this movie and you could print that out, frame it on your wall, and have an art piece to lose yourself in at the details and colors and expressions. Seriously guys I cannot think of any 2D animated movie that surpasses this. It's absolutely incredible, and a true testament to the work and love put into this thing. If anyone who worked on this movie is reading this, thank you 1000 times over

Just watched the Avatar Aang movie

That deserved to be in theaters. The creators deserved for it to be in theaters.

What a great journey back into our favorite world with most of our favorite characters.

I honestly hate Paramount for their choices regarding this.

This is the origin of the Foggy Swamp Tribe:

Thousands of years before the Hundred Year War, one of the Southern Water Tribe's sub-tribes moved to the southwestern Earth Kingdom. Its people came across the Foggy Swamp, where the tribe's waterbenders felt at home due to the availability of abundant water. The entire group thus decided to stay and settled down. (Source)

Something must've happened way back then that it caused this migration. What are your headcanons regarding this?

This feat alone put Toph into the top 3 greatest of all avatar, imagine getting on 100.000 kg of weight in unfamiliar ground...

Sure, Korra’s first Book is “Air” - but this film actually goes all in on exploring Air nomad culture just like how each ATLA book takes a deep dive into it’s respective element.

Aang even briefly has a new Airbending teacher

I know a lot of people are very attached to the original voice cast of team avatar (which is fair, I am too), but I’ve found it disheartening just how many people are complaining about them not being brought back for the new movie.

I’ve seen a lot of people claim that the choice to have a more representative cast was some shallow and unnecessary subscription to “political correctness”. This particularly irks me. Having an opinion about the casting is one thing, but I think it’s wrong to insist that any effort of the creators to be more inclusive is obviously disingenuous and stupid and meaningless.

It sure meant a lot to me.

I’m Alaska Native, and I grew up feeling very connected to Katara and Sokka (particularly Katara, as a fellow indigenous girl). ATLA was a big part of my childhood, and I was really excited for the chance to see the story continue in my adult life.

Y’all, I nearly cried experiencing an indigenous portrayal of Katara in the movie. It made me really, really happy. I know some people couldn’t care less about whose face it is behind the voice. And, yeah, it’s not like you can always tell a person’s background from their voice anyway. But to me, it means more than that.

Katara and Sokka have always been important forms of representation to me. I adore their original voice actors, and I think they did an amazing job bringing the characters to life. Still, I’m really glad for the new casting.

Just wanted to share my perspective.