With the spring season at last in full swing, I can finally return to mostly ignoring spring’s airing anime, and instead gorging myself on a variety of other films and television shows. In this season’s case, there’s not really much choice, anyway; the coronavirus is delaying productions left and right, and with everyone stuck inside anyway, what better time to power through shows you missed the first time? Personally, I’ve been finally getting around to Avatar: The Last Airbender, and discovering I missed a goddamn treasure back when it first aired. All that and more as we return to the Week in Review!

First off, I watched Sam Peckinpah’s breakthrough hit, the 1969 western The Wild Bunch. The Wild Bunch actually came across my radar not through a search for more westerns (I’m frankly getting a little fatigued on the genre at the moment), but by hunting down other key films of the “New Hollywood” era, which was characterized by a new wave of auteur directors challenging both the visual and narrative modes of classic Hollywood. The Wild Bunch feels like a film with one foot in both eras; its all-star cast, featuring great performances by all-time greats like William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, give it an inherent sense of golden age grandeur, but its fatigued characters and focus on the ugly end of the “cowboy era,” as well as its snappy and luridly graphic cinematography, make it simultaneously feel like a violent response to the moral and visual clarity of earlier westerns.

Along with its phenomenal cinematography, strong central performances, and the beautifully frantic action sequences that bookend the film, The Wild Bunch also stuck out to me for a more specific reason: it’s almost certainly the direct inspiration for both Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II. Centered on a group of failing bandits desperate for one last score, the film’s narrative and even group dynamics felt inescapably reminiscent of Red Dead II, while the man hunting them occupied the precise role of John Marston in the original Red Dead. Always interesting to find such a direct creative root for another work I’ve enjoyed!

I also watched In the Mouth of Madness, a lesser John Carpenter work starring a very game Sam Neill. In the Mouth of Madness feels like it’s about two-thirds of the way to a genuine horror classic. It makes terrific use of a variety of Lovecraftian tropes, from the concept of a book that drives you mad, to the inherent spookiness of New England’s quiet forest towns. It’s got plenty of novel scares, and the way it conveys a Silent Hill-esque sleepy, unreachable town is significantly more effective than the actual Silent Hill films. Unfortunately, the film isn’t always capable of executing on its strong core ideas; the script is too weak, which is particularly damaging for a film about the power of horror novels, and the so-so practical effects mean some “big moments” feel more ridiculous than thrilling. There’s enough good in the film that I’d recommend it to any big horror fans, but it stumbled too often for me to consider it a truly great horror film.

Finally, the biggest project I’ve been embarking on recently has been a watch-through of the original Avatar: The Last Airbender series with one of my housemates. I was a year or two too old to really get into Avatar when it first came out, and since then have tended to assume it was one of those “anime derivative” properties that undoubtedly meant a lot to the people who watched it as a kid, but likely wouldn’t hold up in comparison to the genuine article.

Having watched the whole first season and a good portion of the second, I am happy to report that I was entirely wrong, and that Avatar kicks ass. My assumption was that Avatar pulled heavily from “adventure shonen” anime like Inuyasha or Fullmetal Alchemist, where a group of characters wander around the countryside and get into random battles and quests along the way. That’s absolutely true, and Avatar draws heavily from shows like those – but in the end, Avatar is actually a much better show than most of its principle influences.

Avatar’s characters are multifaceted, flawed, and charming, demonstrating both great strengths and consistent weaknesses, and growing from their experiences while still staying true to their fundamental personalities. The worldbuilding is sturdy and intelligent, with each new piece of information fitting neatly into a convincing whole, and the systems of magic and combat in this world reflecting both its cultural diversity, as well as the show’s core themes. The fight scenes are diverse and beautifully choreographed, combining martial arts with elemental powers in a way that feels graceful and dazzling. Hell, even the show’s comedy is genuinely funny, in contrast with the shrill noises and sexist background radiation of most shonen adventures. And every single episode offers something new; character introductions and tournament arcs alike never take up more than one episode, keeping the show exciting from start to finish.

It’s a great show on the whole, with only its frequently uninspired direction and its often messy composite detracting from its dramatic appeal. But in terms of writing, Avatar is strong on all fronts, and one of the most rewarding shows I’ve recently experienced.