Everything Wrong With The Last Airbender

The Avatar State and the Spirit World

M. Night Shyamalan needs a lecture on the difference between the Avatar State and crossing into the Spirit World.

The Avatar State is a defense mechanism triggered by intense emotions that causes intense destruction until it can be controlled. The Avatar's eyes (and for Aang, his tattoos) will glow and will have intense power and AWESOMENESS

The Spirit World is the realm of the spirits. Its kind of like another dimension separated by a veil. The Avatar has the ability to cross over into the Spirit World, which makes them the Bridge Between Our Worlds, or something like that.

Shyamalan sadly is not informed how the two things work and has somehow connected the two. In his movie version, Aang went into the Avatar State after finding all his people were dead and he was somehow transported into the Spirit World.

?????????

What? How did that happen? The Avatar State and the Spirit World are two completely separate things!

Aang actually struggles with crossing into the Spirit World and communicating with the spirits as seen with the episode "The Winter Solstice Parts 1&2". He soon figures out how to do it by the time of the North Pole and its a different process than the Avatar State.

Aang is able to cross over by being in a spiritual place and meditation, not triggering the Avatar State. So, the movie portrays all of this with complete inaccuracy.

Also, the Spirit World in the movie is all wrong. It looks like a misty, blue forest that we don't really see all that much of and we can hear the voices of people saying things we just heard them say two seconds ago. During movie Aang's two encounters, he comes across this cave and we see a dragon spirit. Then, the dragon talks to him and tells him to use the ocean to defeat the Fire Nation. Obvious much? Can we actually see these kids figure out anything for themselves?

Here is what I find wrong with this version of the Spirit World. The dragon is not supposed to talk. Why, you may ask? Its a dragon. They do not speak. Avatar Roku is meant to be the one to give guidance to Aang, not his dragon. Roku is the one that is to warn Aang of Sozin's Comet and tell him how to find the spirits.

Oh wait, what comet? movie-only watchers may ask. Oh yeah, IT WASN'T MENTIONED IN THE MOVIE! It took me weeks to figure out that it was missing from the movie. In the show, finding out about the comet created a sense of urgency for Aang to master all the elements as soon as possible. Before they learned about it, they were going to learn waterbending because that what was needed to be done. Then they knew they didn't have as much time as they thought because the comet would mean the end of the world.

Yeah, don't worry about it. You can just leave important plot points of impending doom out of its adaptation. That's cool. Then they'll just go along with learning the elements in their own time, not knowing the urgency of what's coming in the summer. La-dee-da. They have all the time in the world.

NOT!

In the movie, they didn't even decide to go to the North Pole to learn waterbending until halfway through.

Yeah, sorry. Got a bit off-topic with the comet but I felt like I had to say it before I forgot.