Last Airbender

When one thinks of children's cartoons and summer blockbusters, mindless entertainment is generally what comes to mind – not philosophy, religion and world culture.

Yet one of this summer's top-grossing films, The Last Airbender – based on a children's cartoon titled Avatar: The Last Airbender – deals with all three.

The fictional universe of The Last Airbender is divided into four basic regions: the western Fire Nation, the large-mass Earth Nation, the lands of the Air nomads, and two tribes that make up the Water Nation. These four nations can also be associated with four of the basic cultural types.

The Water Nation exists at the south pole, where the journey begins, and the north pole of the world, where the journey ends. The society of the Southern Water Tribe is remarkably similar to the Inuit tribes that inhabited the colder regions of North America: the tribe is fairly primitive, with little technology, and depends on hunting and fishing for survival.

Though little is seen of the Earth Nation in The Last Airbender, the settings that protagonist Aang and his friends explore are remarkably similar to the Chinese landscape: forested, mountainous in places, and full of rivers and other water scenery. In The Last Airbender, Chinese script is also used on signs.

The Fire Nation, the only industrialized one of the four nations, bears several similarities to industrialized Japan during the Meiji era, which was also Japan's most imperialist age. The Fire Nation is similar to other imperialist nations during the same period, such as England and France.

Perhaps the most striking cultural resemblance in The Last Airbender is that of the Air Nation to the monastic world of Tibet.

Aang's visit to the Southern Air Temple brings viewers into a world of tranquility and meditation. When he enters the temple, one of the first things that the viewer sees is a set of cylinders on spokes set into a wall. These are a lot like the prayer wheels found in Buddhist temples in Tibet.

Much of the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender is based on Buddhism as well as concepts such as reincarnation: Aang is a powerful manipulator of the elements who has been reincarnated for thousands of years in each of the four Nations – a being known as the Avatar.

The word ‘avatar' is based on the word ‘avatara,' a Sanskrit word used in Hinduism to describe the descent of a deity to Earth in human form. Reincarnation is a concept that stretches between both Hinduism and Tibetian Buddhism, most famously in the case of the Dalai Lama.

The Last Airbender addresses more than a mixture of cultures and religions: it also deals with human respect towards and harmony with nature, particularly in the climatic ending scenes in which one antagonist, General Zhao of the Fire Nation, decides to kill a nature spirit in order to give the Fire Nation an upper hand over the Water Nation.

The Zhao scene is a primary example of the main difference between the Fire Nation and the other three nations: the industrialized Fire Nation cares little about the natural balance of nature or the spirituality of the world in which its citizens live; instead it cares more about personal gain.

Natural balance, a trait the creators of the series borrowed from Taoism, is important to the people of The Last Airbender: without natural balance, which the Avatar represents, the world will fall apart.

Though much has been said about the poor quality of The Last Airbender's casting and acting, those who can tolerate those things may be interested in other aspects of the film. To understand more of the philosophy and religious influences of the movie, it must be watched, with the DVD version being the more beneficial method since special features are included.