I get why so many people claim that it's a horrible movie.

- It has no decent introduction of – I would claim – important characters such as Appa or Momo, neither with their name, nor some close-up screen-time of their faces;

- it has a hard-to-follow story (but for a reason … I will get to that);

- confusing audio-first transitions (leaving the audience in a "Who's talking now?" state);

- an ugly protagonist boy Aang being pursued by a not ugly enough Prince Zuko (they *really* toned down his facial burn);

- uncomfortably bad blocking and weak camera work in general, making the decent choreography look boring and the visual effects (at least in some scenes) feel unsubstantial;

But it's more than a series of unfortunate details. Creating a movie adaptation of "The Last Airbender" (or rather, its first season) is a difficult task to begin with. After all, it is the best TV show out there, driven by its many likeable characters, their motives, personalities and, least of all, their character developments; as well as an overall sense of balance and connectivity towards everything and everyone.

This movie is not capable of fulfilling that role. Not a surprise, really! There just isn't enough time.

Most of the characters neither get the chance to build up a relationship with the audience, nor clarify their motives, lest of all show some development. Ultimately, they don't live up to their original versions. Sokka? Lacks his unique bite. Katara? Not nearly as memorable as in the show … Although, Shaun Toub does a marvellous General Iroh.

As for the story … I mean, I get (and even expected) that they took some liberties in creating a coherent story. But the people responsible for this film didn't really *change* that much. They rather left out a whole lot of scenes, and diluted others. Which, in turn, changed the impact of the scenes that made it into the movie.

In all honesty, quite the contrary: I'm rather impressed by how closely they stuck to the source material. Seriously, there's almost no deviation at all in the scenes that they focused on.

Thus, it's basically more of a re-telling of the show/season – rather than a re-interpretation, as is usually the case with movie adaptations. That obviously means that the movie adds nothing new either. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.

On the one hand, fans who know the show already also know the plot of this movie from its first second – and therefore, they can follow it better. Or rather, they can compare it better, and highlight mistakes and bad decisions, bad performances, et cetera.

On the other hand, people who don't know the show get to see a movie, as it is now – considered independently of the show – that lacks greatly in its storytelling. The scenes, told as briefly as they are being told here, don't make as much sense anymore.

It makes you wonder who this movie was made for: the fans or the potential future fans? Though … it doesn't matter that much, anyway. As the movie turned out, it was "just okay" for the former (or should be, imo), and "not interesting at all" to the latter group.

It's frankly a weird film-making decision to begin with to cram a whole season into one movie, stay true to as many scenes as possible – with the limited screen-time of a mere movie – and still expect a good result.