Lauren Montgomery: Directing Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender marked the return to its 2D animation roots while expanding the universe into a large-scale cinematic spectacle. Aang, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, and Toph reunite for a new, breathtaking adventure to find an ancient power that could save the Airbender culture from extinction. The feature film is an incredible work of art that feels like an authentic continuation of the saga, combining nearly 2,000 hand-painted frames with massive CG backgrounds–a hybrid approach that perfectly balances nostalgia with the scale needed for a theatrical release. “We knew for this movie that we needed to take it to the next level, but we didn’t want to abandon everything that made the original so charming. Anime is still very 2D-based, whereas in Western film so much of it is CG now. We really wanted to continue our love letter to everything anime, maintain the 2D roots and the look of the original series and its characters,” shared Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender director Lauren Montgomery. For the backgrounds, “We were able to create worlds that were a little more immersive that allowed our characters to move into and through. We really wanted to make shots that were large scale, so that led us to using CG for a lot of our backgrounds, but the goal was always to make sure that they still felt hand-painted (many of them are hand paintings projected onto CG geometry).”

The film is filled with epic key moments, each one unforgettable and essential to storytelling. Montgomery explained that in the feature space, your runtime is limited, so you cannot waste any minute. Anything that was in Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender was there because it needed to be–establishing the characters in the beginning and showcasing their journey, whether it’s a connection or a fracture. “No action scene is in there just for the sake of spectacle … everything has a story running through it,” she said. This is true to lowkey moments as well, and the result is a cinematic experience that doesn’t skip a beat.

Even though he helped bring all the nations together after the Hundred Year War, Aang is stuck in the past–still feeling the weighty responsibility of being the last Airbender. In this film, he finds hope of restoring his culture from Tagah and Sonam’s staff. The long-lost Airbender “is a mirror for Aang … they both went through essentially a genocide. They experienced it in different ways: Aang was not present for it but still feels responsible; Tagah was present and feels partially responsible that he couldn’t stop it,” Montgomery said. The commonality between the two feeds their needs, but their differences in values eventually leads them against each other–both trying to restore their culture through an ancient power that should never be wielded.

“Air Nomads are formed from the mist. We walk the world for a moment in time, then we return to the eternal wind.” This poem signifies Aang and Tagah’s bond throughout the film. In the airship, they share this same philosophy of impermanence, acknowledging the fact that nothing is really meant to last forever, possibly even the Air Nomads themselves, “but the second after Tagah says that poem, the very next statement is him saying to Aang, ‘We’re not going to accept that’. He says it in such a positive way that Aang falls for it. He wants to change history rather than recognize the fact that he’s literally turning against the philosophies that they’ve grown up with and believe. There’s a few moments throughout the movie where he’s leading Aang further away from those Air Nomad practices, even when they’re pushing their way through the storm and do this really big final move of plowing through a tornado … it’s such a forceful and direct use of their power, which is not how Aang has ever used his power. He has always gone with the energy, but Tagah is slowly teaching him how to wield it in very direct ways.” Montgomery added, “In the end, when they say that air poem again, I think it is Tagah finally realizing that he didn’t achieve his goal. He didn’t get it his way, but at the very least he can find acceptance in the fact that this is all part of the culture that he loved so much–this impermanence and that maybe embracing it is really the only thing he can do.”

Aang has had a long journey of self-discovery. After all that he’s been through in this film, Lauren Montgomery feels that the character has “come such a long way, just the arc of him finally coming to terms, because being the last of your kind is very difficult to accept … feeling that shame, that guilt, and that weight of being the last. The fact that he’s able to go through this movie and come out on the back end a little bit lighter and with a better sense of how to move forward in a healthy way, that sets us on the course for the rest of the Avatar universe and the events in [The Legend of] Korra. Just seeing him knowing that he’s found some peace in his life, it made me happy for him.” After its theatrical release, you can now experience Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender on Paramount+.