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Okay, so here we go. Avatar: The Last Airbender released it’s live action adaptation on Netflix recently. And honestly, I think it was really good. Like, I kinda expected it would be trash. But I was hooked, and i’m hopeful for more. But let’s talk about that.
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Nah im not gonna watch another shitty adaptation of anime live action
Animation IS a medium not a "cheap medium for selling stories" unless you Story is a simple videogame or simple book making a series or movie is Dumb
At least Netflix learn about Cowboy Bebop but i dont care about any live action adaptation except maybe Dune 😂😂
I am glad I am not the only one who loved the changes in Ozai
#justiceforheibai !!!😂
L take L video
Tired of pretending? Who tf is pretending, you think people are shitting on it cuz it’s “trendy”?😂 no it’s just bad
This show is for people who liked the animated show but need live action to take an animation serious.
I very much appreciate your opinion on that series. Helps to sort my mind. Well done, keep up the good work.
I really like the show, and I like a lot of the character changes, at least enough to see how they play out in later seasons. Solid 8/10. I think I would have given the original cartoon 8/10 when I saw the first season too. The amount of negativity toward this show is a little overwhelming though. I’ve skimmed hundreds of comments and only found a handful that were positive. So here are my defenses:
-I think there is a guiding principle behind the character changes: greater emotional realism. In a cartoon, it’s ok for characters to have extreme personalities because it’s natural for us to suspend our disbelief more when we watch a cartoon. I just think that if they didn’t make adjustments to the characters to moderate their personalities, it would be impossible for the actors to pull off those roles in live-action.
-Zuko and Azula: Like many fans, I assumed these characters were much older than they were watching the cartoon, and didn’t realize they were teenagers until probably in season three when my brother brought it up. I think that’s because they aren’t believable teenagers. Some of the actions they take are far too cruel to imagine of a fourteen or sixteen-year old. We’re used to this in anime, but I just don’t think you could have a fourteen-year old girl believably threaten to drop a soldier overboard (which is not even close to the most frightening things Azula does).
-Ozai: people seem to be concerned that he’s not heartless or powerful enough, mostly because of the Agni Kai. I think it’s fine that he wouldn’t use his full power on his son, and I think he let Zuko have an opening to see if he could ruthlessly strike his own father. I guess he looks slightly hesitant as he burns Zuko’s eye, but he still follows through as an enormously demanding and manipulative father. Again, he seems like a more believable version of how a father and monarch might try to repress his emotions in real life.
-Iroh: he was great for comic relief and advice in the cartoon, but I never felt like that well-adjusted wisdom and slightly detached humor were consistent with his back story. If he’s really sensitive enough to abandon command of the most important battle of his life and perhaps the war when his son dies, is it really believable that he would have an aura of having everything figured out just a few years later. The Netflix Iroh seems much more consistent with this fragility that was crucial to how events turned out in his family.
-Aang: he seems a bit more serious, but I don’t really mind. I’m just glad he hasn’t been obsessing over Katara. It was ok for him to have a crush on her in the cartoon, but for that too develop into a romance while he was 12 didn’t make any sense.
-Katara: I agree, she seems to have lost much of her forcefulness, which I do miss. But again, I’m just relieved that she shows zero signs of romantic interest in Aang so far. So I guess that makes me ok with her character on balance.
-Sokka: I guess I never thought of overcoming sexism to be very important to his character, so I didn’t notice much of a change. He’s probably the closest to the cartoon version of the main cast.
-Zhao: I like that they made him more conniving and duplicitous, I think that’s more interesting than cartoon Zhao who just came off as generally competent if overly prideful. I was a little disappointed that his death was a little anticlimactic compared to the cartoon.
-Bumi: he was good for comic relief in the cartoon and his quirkiness masked the issue that his story doesn’t really make any sense. Netflix Bumi seems like a person who has believable been in power and at war for the better part of 100 years, weighed down by that power and responsibility.
-I do agree that the writing didn’t come off as elegantly as the cartoon and there probably was too much exposition, but it’s hard for me to tell having watched the cartoon already.
Uncle iroh’s and zuko’s actors killed it
I LOVED it!
As someone on Chernobyl once said “Not great, not terrible”.
I see this version as a different iteration, it has problems but it's not the worst thing I've seen. I'm optimistic to see where this goes.
Kinda surprised you didn't like the Bumi change, when I can surmise you seem to like the seeming melodramatic tone of the show, a lot more expository and similar to a soap opera than an action comedy which I felt was ATLA's genre, which is why many felt too off about this remix. I think maybe the trials were unnecessary, but for what they did I think the aspect of Bumi being a bitter troll was there and I think was fine.
That being said surprised you didn't notice the "show don't tell" issues where it's less dynamic which means scenes felt drawn out which ironically means removing stuff from the OG that could've fleshed out the show. It's also funny how varied people are at the opinions of episode 1 either thinking it's the best or the worst of the live action.
The adaption is fine, but has many problems.
The first problem being that it wields exposition like a weapon.
We did not need to be reminded that Aang was the Avatar as many times as we were. We did not need to be reminded that Katara was a Waterbender as many times as we were.
For example; They changed the scene in the downed Fire Nation ship from Aang and Katara doing something they weren't supposed to be doing and drawing Zuko to the village to Aang yelling out "YoU cAn WaTeRBeND?!" and Katara going "Ye."
The second problem is the strange changes; Like the downed Fire Nation ship going from a looming, trap filled, reminder of a genocide on the Southern Water Tribe to the place Katara can secretly practice Waterbending.
In this version, Zuko has no real reason to think the Avatar with the Tribe. The light from bubble Aang was in gives him /The South Pole/, but it was Aang and Katara setting off a trap in the ship that gives Zuko actual visual confirmation.
Also, Zuko looking for "the one who doesn't belong" was weird to me. That was where the original revealed that Aang was the Avatar, so I guess they had to change that, as we already knew Aang was the Avatar from the Monks using the exposition cudgel.
I would bet that this show will be forgotten after its finished. People will enjoy it for now, but in ten years, it will be left with the Shyamalan movie. An adaption that exists.
I'm really happy that this season is doing great. I don't have Netflix anymore, but when the series is done, I'm GONNA get the DVD collection of this one. Yes, this is still a mixed bag based on reviews, but I've seen clips and so far I'm hooked. It might not be 100% adaptation but at least they got the core root of it. And another big thing in its favor…THEY GOT THE BENDING RIGHT!!! 'We don't talk about Shyamalan- naw-naw-naw'
I feel like the main problem that really keeps this show from being good is the writers just telling and not showing. Literally when Aang found out he was the Avatar and went to talk to Appa and he literally just says how he’s a kid and he doesn’t want to be the Avatar. Another example is when Sokka at the start just starts talking about why Katara shouldn’t water bend and there was just so much exposition in their first conversation. Also when Zuko was on the ship, he literally just tells Iroh how he’ll take any sign of the Avatar. Also Aang’s conversation with Gyatso just felt really unnatural where Gyatso just tells Aang he needs to train and Aang just tells Gyatso how he’s so good at bending already. Also when Aang “runs away” he was just going for a ride cause he was upset and he was gonna come back so it didn’t have the same impact as in the original where Aang truly felt like he didn’t want the responsibility so he was planning to run away and not come back which had so much more of an emotional impact. Honestly these kind of problems just shows up throughout the season and it feels like the show is so afraid of being subtle and the show is always just telling the audience everything as if they don’t think the viewers are mature enough to pick up on subtext.
This feels like the other side of the same coin. Either saying it's "Really bad / complete flop" or "Really good / complete success". It is neither. It leans towards the former though.
The acting was flat or shaky mostly because of the writing and direction imo. Sokka and Zuko were great but didn't have the material to support it. I was never a fan of Aang or Katara.
The visuals. The bending was good? Did you see the same Water and Earthbending I did? For Momo and Appa. I legitimately forgot they were supposed to be part of the story a lot of the time. When Momo "died" I really was convinced that was gonna be it for the little guy so they could save money.
Then there was the Firebending. Comet enhanced was the same impact as regular Firebending. The only reason we know it's stronger is from the original show and/or because Sozin outright just says "It's better".
Ozai in this version doesn't really hate Zuko. He was literally going to lose to 13(?) year old Zuko in an Agni Kai. That is not good.
The theories going into this were that they would use this extra time to develop characters that didn't get a whole lot of time in the original. Jet, Bumi, Suki, Yue. That simply did not happen. The relationships with these people still feel rushed. It was a lot of wasted potential. It's baffling how they managed to accomplish that.
This show simply doesn't hold up on its own. Without the nostalgia, it would be considered a fairly mid to slightly ok show. Probably a 6/10 for most. With the original, people either overhype it or massively downplay it. The reality is, it's not a good adaptation honestly. It's a weird elseworlds story.
If they filmed episode by episode, that changes my whole perspective
Its got flaws but despite those it does so much right and it’s solid asf imo, 7/10
All the CG in Kuruk scenes were an an unpleasant case of uncanny valley, that's what really bothered me about this. Not the occasional "that's not a real person" switches in bending stuff, not the character rearrangements that happened, not converging plotlines. They did Kuruk so dirty. Something about the blue colors they settled on for the wispy past-life-communication space was not doing a very good job of blending the CG elements with the live action. I didn't take too much note when it was Roku at first viewing, even it was the same quality because the reds they used were doing their whole job and not just half of it. Kyoshi was legit just in a foggy forest so no complaints there. What'd Kuruk do to earn being an errie machine?
I’m with you. It wasn’t perfection, but I was also bloody AWESOME!!!! If we don’t get a second and third season (well BookTwo and Nook Three) I’m gonna be crushed.
Since this is an adaptation, I want one thing. Sokka deserves a happy ending with Suki. In the timeline of the cartoon, Suki died young after the war and Sokka died alone. She was truly his one and only. So, now’s the time to give him his happy ending. Plus, the chemistry between Ian Ousley and Maria Zhang is just incredible!👍🏻 I loved seeing them on-screen together and I wanna see more, especially after Yue’s death, with how traumatized he was by book 2 in the og cartoon. But, we all know how things turn out in the end.
Cartoon did it better
I don’t care what people say. I love it! ❤❤❤