It’s usually a red flag when someone says a movie, or a TV series, or a video game, or whatever, is “for the fans.” That’s partly because it deflects criticism, accusing anyone who doesn’t like a thing of not being part of your super cool club. But it’s also because many films confuse “for the fans” with “fan service,” and fan service isn’t enough on its own. If a film thinks so little of the fans that it offers a pile of shameless cameos and in-jokes instead of quality storytelling, then the filmmakers probably don’t think much of their fans, whether the films make a billion dollars (“Deadpool & Wolverine”) or tank a whole franchise (“The Flash”).

“Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender” has fan service. People who love the classic animated series will probably enjoy seeing the cabbage guy again. And the foaming mouth guy. And a Kyoshi warrior just kind of hanging out in the street, doing whatever it is Kyoshi warriors do when they have the day off. But “Avatar Aang” is for the fans on a more meaningful level, since the fans will understand this film’s story in a powerful way, and everyone else will probably just get the gist of it.

After three epic seasons of television, “Avatar: The Last Airbender” spawned an equally impressive sequel series, excellent comic books and live-action adaptations which haven’t had the same cultural impact or universal acclaim as the original. (The less said about the 2010 film “The Last Airbender,” the better.) “Avatar Aang” takes place between the original “Avatar” and “Avatar: The Legend of Korra,” and it tells a story that’s impressive if you’re familiar with what these characters have gone through and where they’re destined to go. But the dramatic resolution to Aang’s ongoing inner turmoil won’t hit as hard if you’re just learning about it for the first time.

It’s been years since “Avatar: The Last Airbender’s” story ended and Aang (Eric Nam) is now a young man, a little wiser but still a huge dork. He lives in a fictional world where some people are born with the ability to bend one of the four elements to their will — air, water, earth and fire — and Aang is the legendary Avatar, the only person who can bend all four elements, who gets reincarnated every generation to unite the people. As a child, Aang saved the world from a colonialist Fire Nation and has, in the time that followed, founded Republic City, a political, economic and cultural center where the previously separate societies can come together and live, in theory, in harmony.

One of the recurring motifs in “Avatar” is that every Avatar tries to do the right thing, but every Avatar also makes mistakes which their next reincarnation has to fix. Fans of “The Legend of Korra,” a series about Aang’s successor, already know that Aang’s utopian city has a massive flaw: Building a society around the four bending cultures created a class divide where the non-benders — i.e. the rest of us — are sidelined, leading to civil unrest.

In “Avatar Aang,” we meet the first non-bender uprising, a group called “The Denied.” They’re searching for a magic staff they think will balance the scales. It doesn’t sound too bad when you put it that way, but they’re violent jerks about it, so Aang has to find the artifact first. He reunites with Team Avatar — the group of kids who helped save the world, who have also grown up a bit (some more than others) — and embarks on a quest of his own.

Aang is (no spoilers, it’s the title) the last Airbender. The Fire Nation slaughtered all the others in an unthinkable genocide. Aang was a child at the time, and was only spared because he had literally run away from his responsibilities. Aang’s survivor’s guilt and overwhelming shame have driven the character since the beginning — even when he was in total denial — but while “Avatar: The Last Airbender” concluded with Aang defeating the Fire Lord, effectively righting the wrongs, he never fully processed the trauma.

In Aang’s new quest, he discovers the second-to-the-last Airbender, a man out of time named Tagah (Dave Bautista), and Aang thinks that, at long last, there may be hope for his people’s survival. Perhaps, with Tagah’s tutelage and the magic staff, Aang can bring airbending back to the world and ease his guilty conscience. Of course it doesn’t go as planned and eventually Aang has to make impossible choices, all of which have serious, life-altering consequences.

“Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender” is a 99-minute movie. That’s not a lot of real estate. Director Lauren Montgomery jams a lot of action and spectacle into that short running time, and the animation is as stunning and fluid as you could hope for, with fight scenes and elaborate disasters which put most live-action movies — and a lot of animated movies — to shame. The scale of “Avatar Aang” was clearly designed for the theatrical experience, so let’s all give a big round of applause to Paramount for dumping the film on Paramount+ instead. Good job, Paramount. You’re really killing it lately — and by “it” I mean everyone’s opinion of your studio.

But at its core, “Avatar Aang” isn’t an action movie, it’s a film about reckoning with genocide, and while that’s a gigantic subject that would be difficult for any movie to explore properly, in any genre and at any length, the film does an admirable job of making its points. Over the course of the conflict, Aang has to decide what’s really important, and although the antagonists have understandable points of view, Montgomery’s film ultimately comes down to a matter of principle: The cycle of violence must not continue, at any cost. And there’s a big cost.

It’s powerful stuff, and fans of the series will take away additional nuance, since we know what Aang’s decisions lead to, for better and worse. I suspect everyone else will find the film dazzling visually but undercooked in other ways. Aang is the only member of Team Avatar with an arc this time around. The rest of his friends have to settle for small roles, mostly doing what they usually do, in the midst of a familiar episodic formula where they meet a mysterious and powerful new bender and debate whether or not to trust them. Without any character development to wrap around that familiar structure most of the ensemble is stuck cracking jokes and kicking butt. It’s nice to see them, joke-wise and kick-wise, it’s just a shame we never got to hang out.

“Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender” is a noble endeavor, and a largely successful one. That its greatest depths are difficult to see if you’re not familiar with the series is a problem, but it’s also clearly an intentional decision that allows this sprawling story to fit within a limited time frame. After all, this one is “for the fans.” Not because it has cute little in-jokes and cameos, but because it’s the latest chapter in a ongoing, epic tale. And what a moving and exciting chapter it is.

Peter Lassally, the late-night whisperer who produced The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and The Late Show with David Letterman, has died. He was 93.

Lassally, who died on Sunday, July 19, was a pivotal figure in the entertainment business, particularly in late-night, where he also produced The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, only retiring when he was 82 and the Scottish comedian was passing the baton to James Corden.

The producer, whom former CBS Entertainment boss Nina Tassler called the “strong, silent type”, also had a remarkable early life. Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1932 to a Jewish family, after the rise of the Nazis in Germany, his family fled to the Netherlands, where his sister went to school with Anne Frank. During World War II, Lassally, his mother, and his sister were imprisoned in the Westerbork transit camp and later in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. After surviving the Holocaust, the family immigrated to New York in 1947.

He got his start as an NBC page and an usher at Radio City Music Hall, alongside his friend Regis Philbin. He then worked in radio before working for hugely popular entertainer Arthur Godfrey.

Lassally joined The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1972 and rose to become executive producer. When Carson retired in 1992, he went to work for David Letterman, initially on NBC’s Late Night with David Letterman. Lassally is considered to have played a key role in Letterman moving to CBS with The Late Show and also championed Ferguson to become the host of The Late Late Show.

He was a confidante for many comics including Garry Shandling and Jon Stewart, who had a holding deal with Letterman’s company. Lassally wanted him to replace Tom Synder after Letterman but the job went to Craig Kilborn and Stewart took over Kilborn’s spot on The Daily Show.

“One of Peter’s real strengths is getting the host to understand how to listen, how to ask the questions that an audience might want to hear, and to listen to the answer and to not be thinking ahead with the joke,” Garry Shandling told NPR in 2012.

“One of the qualities that I have that get me through showbusiness is I respect talent, I’m in awe of talent. If you are really talented, I will put up with your craziness, because if you’re that talented you’re not a normal person, there’s something wacky about you. It helped me through at least 50 years of showbusiness in that I was willing to put up with craziness if I respected you and I’ve worked for some great broadcasters starting with Godfrey and then Johnny Carson and David Letterman and Tom Synder,” he told the Television Academy in 2014.

Lassally was nominated for 13 Emmys across his career and won two in 1992, for The Tonight Show, and 1994, for The Late Show.

He is survived by children from his marriage to Alice Lassally including his daughter Andrea Gibbin and son Tom Lassally, who works at 3 Arts, and his four grandchildren, Walker Gibbin, Eloise Gibbin, Annabel Lassally, and Owen Lassally.

“For Peter, family represented something profoundly meaningful. Having survived the Holocaust and rebuilt his life in America, he never took for granted the opportunity to create the kind of loving, secure family that war had threatened to destroy,” the family said in a statement. “Watching his children build lives of their own and seeing his grandchildren grow into adulthood brought him immense joy. He delighted in family gatherings, thoughtful conversations, and the simple pleasure of being together. Those closest to him knew that no professional accomplishment ever meant more to him than the people around his own table.”

“Peter built a life defined not by the horrors he endured as a child, but by resilience, generosity, curiosity, and optimism. Friends often remarked on his wit, humility, and remarkable ability to make others feel at ease. His life stood as a testament to both survival and reinvention—an immigrant who escaped unimaginable persecution and went on to influence one of America’s most beloved cultural institutions,” they added.

Megyn Kelly is giddy at the possibility of Kamala Harris running for president again.

On Monday’s episode of “The Megyn Kelly Show,” the host could hardly contain her joy while discussing reports that Harris may throw her hat into the ring to run for president again after losing to Donald Trump in 2024. It was clearly an idea she was fond of because she felt like it was a guaranteed win for Republicans.

“There are already major developments in the race to be the Democratic nominee for president in 2028. We’re rooting, of course, for Kamala to give it another go, and it does sound like that may be happening,” Kelly said. “Because look at this headline from New York Magazine this morning: ‘Like It or Not, Kamala Harris Is the Front-runner.’ You go, girl. You got this. Don’t believe the naysayers. Look at New York Magazine. They are acknowledging you’re the frontrunner. That’s right. Despite cackling through a billion dollars in 107 days, only to fail by losing every single swing state, the Democrats are seriously considering giving Kamala Harris another. I love them so much. Thank you, Democrats.”

She added: “Let her run! The more America saw Kamala Harris, of course, the less they liked her as a presidential candidate, but who cares? Because she’s a woman and she’s black, and if you are a Democrat, that’s all that matters. But Harris’s advisers somehow came to the opposite conclusion that she was building momentum with voters, determining that the problem for her in losing was simply that she didn’t have enough time to show America who she really was. The problem is not that we got to know her and didn’t like her, is that we didn’t get to know her.”

Kelly made her position on Harris clear throughout the 108 days she ran in opposition of Trump in the election following Joe Biden’s dropout. Back in 2024, the SiriusXM host even went so far as to say that electing Harris as president of the United States would only set women back.

“This person is weak and she is stupid,” Kelly said. “She is not a smart person and far from a deep thinker. She will get eaten alive by Putin and Xi. No one will fear us. She cannot make decisions. The 3 a.m. phone call will leave her paralyzed with fear and indecision. She will fail in her negotiations with our adversaries because she cannot think on her feet. The presidency is not a job you can do for four years with training wheels.”

She finished: “They say Kamala Harris will break barriers as the first woman president, but her election will set women back decades because she is not a smart person.”

Kelly is still clearly rooted deeply in the conservative side of politics but has suffered her own falling out with President Trump in the last few months surrounding the war with Iran. The host is clearly looking to the future and the hopes of the next president also being a Republican.