Tonight the journey ends. After 57 episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, my housemates and I are left with episodes 58-61, which were originally televised as a movie, but for DVD and TV were separated into four episodes.
It was an amazing experience to watch the series without reading ahead. You see, I hate surprises, and so, whenever I read ahead. I like to focus on details, like character development, sets or in animation the drawings, etc. Recently, I tried not reading ahead with Avatar, Green Lantern: First Flight, and District Nine. Only once did it fail me.
Let me first say, all three movies had a very nice story and were very engaging of my interest, however, District Nine was almost unwatchable for me due to the camera work. It gave me varying degrees of vertigo and disorientation - it is that style of camera work, like in Blair Witch, where it looks someone is using a camcorder and waving their arms as s/he film. If I had read ahead about it, I would have probably not seen District Nine - no movie can be good enough to compensate for such wonky camera work, at least for me.
As for Avatar, well, I am very glad I did wait to just watch the episodes. The story has been absolutely amazing to see unfold and the creators were able to sustain the momentum and even generate it throughout the series. I have very high expectations tonight as we watch the finale.
My fiancée watched a couple of episodes and became interested in it as well. I think next year when the live action movie is released, we will forgo the movie theatre and look forward to re-watching the animated series - in Blu-Ray (one would think it would be released in Blu-Ray as the movie is released)!
For now, I will end with this:
