After 18 years of failure, Avatar: The Last Airbender finally has a worthy successor

Since Avatar: The Last Airbender ended its three-season run on Nickelodeon in 2008, no one has been able to quite recapture its magic. M. Night Shyamalan’s 2010 live-action film was an unmitigated disaster. Netflix’s live-action series alternates between being too brutal in its portrayal of the horrors of war and so faithful to the source material it feels unnecessary, while lacking all the charm of the animated series. Even the show’s original creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, faltered with their sequel The Legend of Korra, which had moments of greatness but also spent too much time on YA tropes and mediocre villains. It took nearly 20 years, but Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender finally delivers the worthy follow-up fans have been waiting for. Director Lauren Montgomery worked on the original Avatar and Korra, along with some of the best animated adaptations of DC Comics like Batman: Year One, Young Justice, and All-Star Superman, and she puts all that experience to work here. Montgomery combines her expertise to make Avatar Aang feel like a Superman movie. Her film leans on the similarities between the two powerful heroes, both the last survivors of a lost cul