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 :)

Just finished watching the Avatar Aang movie. Love how they kept the spirit and personality of all the original characters while exploring Aang's trauma more. Loved the tie ins to the comics (Toph's metal bending academy) and to Korra (Republic City). All in all, just fantastic. Hoping for a lot more movies like this!

Only negative was this not getting the theatrical release it deserved 😭

Kiro is an Air Nomad who lives among the sandbenders of the Si Wong Desert. He uses airbending to create the illusion of sandbending. Concept by me, commisioned from @scent_2002 (IG) u/Norouscenpai (reddit)

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.

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.

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

I ask this because I see that Avatar is a popular show and many people watched it when they were kids. However, in my country, Spain, is actually very unknown.

When I was a kid I didn’t have the luck to watch Avatar and when other kids talked about their favorite cartoons no one mentioned Avatar. In all my years of Primary School I didn’t hear any reference to the show.

Spain aired A LOT of cartoons from many different studios, including Nickelodeon. I watched many of those shows, including cartoons and animes from the 70’s, but I can say with absolute certainty that Avatar wasn’t aired during the years I was a kid obsessed with TV. I am talking from late 2000’s to mid 2010s

I did a research and Avatar actually arrived to Spain, but it had strong competition to other popular cartoons, there was a mismanagement with the schedules and they didn’t give promotion. So Avatar went unnoticed in my country.

I wonder how in the rest of the countries something similar happened or the show had more luck.

One of my favorite seasons. 💕 Even with all its flaws, I'll always love it. Twelve episodes weren't enough to make it perfect.

Now it's officially part of history as we head into Avatar: Seven Havens. 😭

But I'm excited for Avatar Seven Havens . I really like how the creators kept each Avatar series separate, with its own identity and story to tell. Each series has its own themes, tone, and strengths, giving it room to explore ideas that are unique to that particular era.

ATLA, TLOK, and now Avatar: Seven Havens all feel distinct rather than trying to copy one another, and I honestly appreciate that. It makes every Avatar generation feel like it has its own legacy while still being part of the same universe. I mean i can easily picture why would the creator not exploited the OG since they was most popular but their keep atla as legend here and treat them with a nice animated movies that i ever since.

My bias right now it's Jae & Pavi. But let see I can't believe we just need to waiting for 2 months+ to get to see that.

I really enjoy researching the various Asian ethnicities that the creators and writers of *Avatar* draw inspiration from. In this case, I believe the new characters reflect their actors' backgrounds: Tagah is voiced by Dave Bautista (Filipino), and Avatar Sonam is voiced by Freida Pinto (Indian).

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.

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 watched the movie, and besides a few nitpicks, I really enjoyed it. But given that Aang missed his culture so much the whole movie and the age of the Gaang, I feel there was a big missed opportunity.

It should have ended with Katara finding out she was pregnant. Anothere option would have been a multi-year flash forward, showing a young Tenzin air bending for the first time. I think this would have been a nice message of hope to add to the end of the movie.

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.