‘Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender’ movie review: Post-war Gaang reunion bends under franchise pressure

Through some combination of good fortune and a few persistent friends who refused to take no for an answer, I finally watched Avatar: The Last Airbender earlier this year. Even though my childhood had its Nickelodeon staples in SpongeBob SquarePants , Rugrats , Hey Arnold! and plenty of others, Aang and his adventures somehow slipped through the cracks (an anomaly that continues to bewilder almost everyone I know). Watching it almost twenty years after its premiere meant missing the nostalgia that has become inseparable from the show’s reputation. I don’t particularly mourn that. Without childhood memory smoothing over the rough edges, Avatar had to survive entirely on its own ideas, and I’m glad it came to me when it did, because few children’s shows have ever smuggled such a sophisticated understanding of empire and rebellion into an adventure this joyful.