[Slight spoilers for Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender]

On the day it (officially) released, I FaceTimed by brother and sister-in-law and “together” we watched the new Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender movie. The three of us drank in the rush of nostalgia and beautiful animation, a retread of familiar paths from our childhood. And it is a fairly good movie, in my opinion. While knowing The Legend of Korra kind of spoils the direction the plot takes (because we already know how the movie can’t end), it was nonetheless a thrilling ride, a sweet return to a childhood classic, and a visually gorgeous film.

And yet… it kinda felt like a sugar rush. An burst of high-energy that left me feeling thrilled, but only for a short while before fading away.

Part of that sugar rush feeling comes from the nostalgia factor. Seeing familiar characters, but grown up and still acting in ways that we know and remember from the TV show, triggers that response. I couldn’t help but watch the movie with a massive grin on my face the whole time. I laughed a lot. I enjoyed the journey. In general, there’s a certain chaotic energy to the nostalgia that, when strong enough, I think puts on blinders to a host of errors or the realization that something is not as great as it could be. (Though conversely, I think nostalgia can also produce the opposite effect: heightened criticism if something doesn’t live up to high expectations, but I find that for me, I personally experience the joyous, forgiving energy with most nostalgia-based projects.)

The other aspect of the “sugar rush” feeling with Avatar Aang has to do with the movie’s pacing. So much movement is packed into that hour and a half runtime. Once the movie starts, it never really slows down. That’s probably my biggest (and slight) criticism of the movie: I felt like we didn’t get enough real time with these characters, particularly Team Avatar. We got glimpses into their relationships 12 years after the events of the series, but it remained surface-level. The film failed to show any substantial growth, both as individual characters and in how their relationships changed as they grew older. The movie didn’t leave space for some more casual interactions, and some of the dialogue for a few characters seemed to be based on their more memorable or quotable (“memeable”) moments from the original series, played up for humor rather than allowing them to be the more complex characters we know them to be. This was especially true for Toph and Sokka. As for the other characters, Zuko is just kind of, well, there, and Katara has moments of depth, but even she functions as primarily as a way to challenge Aang as he wrestles with his decisions over the course of the movie. And even though Aang is the emotional and thematic arc of the story, even his character growth seemed so rushed and not fully set up. All of this shallow and/or quick character work is because there’s a lack of moments to breathe in the pacing of the film. It just moves from one action sequence to another, and the action sequences themselves move so quickly it’s almost hard to follow what exactly is going on.

Like I said earlier, I very much enjoyed Avatar Aang. But in the aftermath, its impact faded quickly, and I’ve not really had the desire to rewatch it, like I do with other movies I really enjoyed from the first watch. I almost definitely will rewatch it at some point, but I don’t feel a lot of urgency to.

My thoughts on Avatar Aang also made me ponder the role of nostalgia as a sugar rush effect in other examples, too. I realized that I feel similarly about the Super Mario Galaxy Movie. I also loved that movie, but it had the same sugar rush result, also stemming from the nostalgia and rapid, action-heavy pacing. And, to give a non-kids-movie example, Spider-Man: No Way Home uses a similar nostalgia-based strategy. Admittedly, the pacing is marginally better given it has permission to be a 2-hour movie. Still, for all my earlier praises of the film, it isn’t perfect, and I think because of its use of old Spider-Men and their villains, it’s easy to overlook some of the odder elements of its plot. The film’s magic also wears off with each subsequent rewatch; I find I primarily enjoy the movie nowadays if I’m in the mood for a hit of nostalgia. This reflection on the sugar rush of nostalgia coupled with rapid pacing also makes me wonder if Avengers: Doomsday will have a similar effect: cram in a bunch of familiar, nostalgic faces as a way to grab attention and trigger that forgiving response to plot holes and other shortcomings, while smooshing it all together in a 3-hour action fest that lacks sufficient slower beats to build meaningful character arcs and themes.

However, perhaps this strategy is not always or necessarily bad. After all, nostalgia as a marketing strategy and storytelling tactic is not new. I recently watched Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which came out 10 years after the original show’s cancellation. That timeline sounds a lot like Avatar Aang, a movie about Team Avatar’s future that came out well after the show’s original run. The plot of Star Trek: The Motion Picture is good, for the record, though has some weird pacing decisions by including very slow space travel in an effort to show off the graphical advances of the time. But it did what Avatar Aang did: brought back familiar faces of the Enterprise on a new adventure, giving them an excuse to get the team back together and explore what their future in Starfleet looks like. Like with Team Avatar in Avatar Aang, the film gives glimpses of where each of the Enterprise’s crew ended up, with a greater emphasis on Captain Kirk and Spock over the other characters.

So, is nostalgia a bad thing? Not necessarily. Depends how you use it. If a story has no substance beyond the quick boost of past familiarity, then it’s probably not a strong enough crutch. If a story feels rushed, too, it may also not be enough to make a lasting impact. But it can work to cover up some minor flaws in a story and still entertain. It may have a niche audience of old fans, but that’s okay too. Not every story in the world needs to have mass appeal. Sometimes, it’s okay to give the old fans a small sugar rush of nostalgia.