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My analysis: they got close. There's a lot to recommend this movie. They cobbled together a good semblance of the story of Book 1: Water, and included several memorable scenes that anyone who is a fan of the show will recognize. The acting from the kids is a bit wooden. The kid who plays Aang is dead on perfect insofar as appearance, and hopefully with a little more experience he'll be able to more closely nail the character. The actors playing Sokka and Kitara could have been better matched, though their costumes and gear are pretty close. Again, with more experience their acting should improve. The girl playing Yueh (the moon spirit!) is appearance-perfect. One could also tell that there were a lot of deleted scenes, so the special edition DVDs should be chock full of content that didn't make the theatrical release.

All told, if you're a fan of the series, the movie shouldn't be a total disappointment so long as you recall that it's a movie adaptation of a series. The events happen a bit out of order, but close enough to offer a semblance of the series. The 3D is wasted, so if you're paying extra for that it might seem a bit of a gyp, but so many movies these days are using the technology that it seems hard to avoid. Now if they could just find a way to get rid of the tacky glasses...

The martial arts in the movie are acceptably represented. Since this is a movie adaptation of Book 1, you don't get to see much from the Earth benders, but there should be plenty there in the next movie. The taijiquan of the Water benders and the Baguazhang of the Airbender are performed well, but with a bit too much emphasis on forms over adaptation for me. The Long Fist used for the Fire benders, though seen only a little was decent, again with too much form emphasis. I'm looking forward to seeing Toph Bei-Fong's Mantis-style Earth Bending in the next movie.

Finally, this movie does more to distinguish between the intended real-world parallels of the series. The Fire Nation is clearly a Japanese derivative, but the inhabitants bear the racial characteristics of the Indian people, while the Air benders are clearly derived from Tibetan styling and racial stock. The Earth benders that are seen are clearly Chinese in both race and custom. What threw me a bit was the Inuit/Caucasian Water benders of the South, whereas the Northern Water benders were quite clearly a somewhat bizarre blending of Northern Chinese culture and North-Central European racial characteristics.

At any rate, for me this movie was decent. 7-8 out of 10.