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Use firelords ember3/12/2023 there is a 484-minute long film that consists solely of a single shot of the Empire State Building.) You can certainly imagine my surprise-and horror-upon eventually discovering that “The Ember Island Players” really was a real episode of Avatar.Īnd that’s essentially where the issue lies: I simply cannot accept this as a canon-official episode of Avatar. In that sense, I could at least appreciate it the way one could appreciate an Andy Warhol film: the idea of its existence is more amusing than the film itself. It looked like an actual episode, with high production value and everything (considering it was animated by JM Animation, who always made the best-looking episodes). Still, while I didn’t find it funny, I admired how dedicated the creators were to the joke. At that point in my life, I didn’t like Avatar anyway, and this didn’t help. My first viewing of it wasn’t on its official premiere date, but several months before, when my sister showed me a video of a Comic Con screening of it. I’ll admit that my attitude towards this episode is greatly shaped by how I first became acquainted with it. No matter how I feel about the rest of the episode, this ending is always effective and horrifying. stage-Zuko is killed, as is the stage-Avatar, and the Firelord finally wins the war. According to Toph, what we’re seeing is “the truth.” After twenty-minutes of slander, episode assassination, stage humor, and general meta-silliness, everyone is startled to discover that the play is actually a piece of Fire Nation propaganda. ![]() What they see, however, they do not like, for their portrayals onstage are either: 1) wildly inaccurate or 2) goofy exaggerations. Sokka finds out that there is a play being put by the eponymous players that’s all about Aang and friends’ adventures. Yes, even bigger than “The Great Divide.”* This episode is the biggest mistake ever inflected upon the good name of Avatar. The problem with “The Ember Island Players” is that it’s wrong. (And depending on how you feel about recap episodes, it kind of works in that regard as well.)īut there is a great looming and fundamental problem with the episode that goes beyond whether it’s “good” or “bad.” It’s neither. Hell, I can’t even say I wasn’t moved because the ending is pretty damn disturbing. I can’t say that the characters are ignored because part of the joke is their individual reactions to the play. I can’t say it isn’t funny because I laughed at more than half of the jokes, and three of them were very big laughs. I can’t say it just doesn’t work because, frankly, most of the time it does. ![]() It’s all but impossible for me to review this episode in a conventional manner because, on the surface, it sorta kinda accomplishes all it set out to do. For serious artists, self-deprecation can be an admirable trait sometimes. (All their true ambitions were being saved for the failure of Korra.) “The Ember Island Players” was just meant to be a playful jab at themselves and some of the absurdities and many of the failures of Avatar. Truth is, I actually enjoyed it much more this time around than I did two years ago, back when I labeled the episode as “pure evil.” That’s a silly accusation, of course, because that would imply that DiMartino and Konietzko had any sort of ambition here whatsoever. Notice that I didn’t say that I hated “The Ember Island Players,” or that I even disliked it. Here’s my verdict: I wish that “The Ember Island Players” had never been made. ![]() I promised I’d be honest about these things, and if that means ripping this episode apart, so be it. I mean, this episode is practically on every fan’s Top Ten Episodes List! Aw, well. This is where the Avatar: the Last Airbender fandom and I officially part ways, never to look back. I’ve been dreading it since the very beginning. Chapter Fifty-Seven: “The Ember Island Players”
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