Some of you may remember me raving about how awesome the early episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender were and how disappointed I was when shortly thereafter the show fell to the level of your average good kid's show. Sure, the animation still kicks the stuffing out a lot of American TV programming, but art direction and execution by themselves are hardly ever a reason to watch something.
Well, I did really like Avatar's story, but since there was no way I was going to wallow through the mediocrity I was sure would be the second and third seasons, I decided to watch just the season 2 and 3 finales. 2 was certainly worth watching but didn't come close to living up to the show's early promise, but I see the 4-part episode that rounds off the series as almost living up to - and even in some ways equaling and surpassing - the quality of the show when it first began. Some parts of it were so awesome it hurt. Now take that with a grain of salt, because my expectations were low going into it - also one of the reasons why I was so blown away by James Cameron's Avatar.
And can we talk about music, briefly? *VERY minor spoilers possible, use no caution whatsoever unless you're like me and extremely uptight about that kind of thing* Avatar's score when it's at its best is very impressive, and a beautiful complement to the action. Since I didn't watch hardly any of seasons 2 and 3, I can't say how much of it was new for the episode, but the overwhelming majority of the music that accompanied the action scenes I don't recall having heard before. The Avatar's theme(s) are used very effectively, both what I'd like to call his "epic journey" theme and his otherworldly "Avatar state" theme that sets the tone for some prominent action at the end of season 1. I guess the soundtrack was done by Benjamin Wynn and Jeremy Zuckerman, and they did a really great job. I look forward to exploring any other work they might have done in my spare time.
-R
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