To See, or Not to See: That Is My Question

About six months ago, my brothers introduced me to Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender. With my friend Erin, I blew through the first season and Netflixed the last two seasons as quickly as I could get my greedy little fingers on them. Sometimes, I watched an episode twice.

Yes, I get it. The anime-style cartoon is directed toward 9 to 12-year-old boys, but I, like many people, was hooked. I was hooked into the story, the characters, the excitement, the wondering "What's going to happen next?!?!"

So I do not regret those couple of months in my life at all. In fact, I enjoyed the series so much that I'm re-watching them this summer, and I wish I had the money so that I could buy all the DVDs. Yup. I'm a fan.

Here comes the dilemma: The movie is coming out (tomorrow, in fact), and the reviews so far have been, well, awful. On the rotten tomatoes meter, Shaymalan's The Last Airbender has one of the worst rating I've ever seen on that site: 6% . Even the Twilight movies, which I love to loathe, have significantly higher rating that this apparent disaster.

I am terribly curious, of course, how Shayamalan translated this beloved story to the screen. I think a lot of it would be fun to see in live action. But I don't want it to soil my fondness for the series. Can I separate the two enough in my head? If the movie proves to be as miserable as everyone is making it out to be, can I pretend/convince myself it never happened? Or maybe I should right now pretend that it never happened and simply not go to see it. Disappointment is, likely, inevitable.

Bah. I'll probably end up seeing it. I'll let you know how it goes.