Simply put, Netflix’s take on Avatar: The Last Airbender is bad. At best, the show serves as a constant reminder of how amazing the original Nickelodeon cartoon was. At worst, it makes M. Night Shyamalan‘s 2010 The Last Airbender film feel like a mercy because at least that poor effort was only 2 hours long. Granted, there are some saving graces. Most of the cast is good, with relative newcomer Dallas Liu (PEN15) as Fire Prince Zuko, veteran character actor Ken Leung (Industry) as Commander Zhao, and the great Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) as Fire Lord Ozai being the prime standouts (yes, the show is very pro-Fire Nation, at least in making that the best part of this first season). Additionally, the bending visual effects look fantastic. But none of these pros are enough to bring balance to this world.
From the opening minutes, it becomes clear that this live-action remake aims to be both a dark and violent fantasy epic for the post-Game of Thrones crowd, while also trying to capture the silly and cartoony fun of the source material. However, this balancing act of sorts never fully clicks in the 8-episode season.
Lol surprising no one the show is ass
Rotten tomato score
Yeah, they really went for “less is more” in this case and it didn’t pay off:
Prince Zuko gains the most from the show’s writing, with an expanded look at his rivalry with the human weasel Commander Zhao (Ken Leung), as well as his relationships with his uncle Iroh (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) and his father Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim). And yet, when it comes to condensing the 20-episode “Book One” of the original series into only 8 episodes, so much is lost. Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender suffers from the same issue as Disney+’s recent Percy Jackson adaptation in that the characters are too far ahead of the story, with so much of the meat of the source material getting cut that the plot developments come across as way too convenient.
I agree that making things bloated can be bad, but Avatar: The Last Airbender was great because of its filler and slice-of-life episodes; it could take a break and come back to the “serious” stuff later.
Avatar: The Last Airbender was great because of its filler and slice-of-life episodes
Which seem like they should have been fairly cheap to film and edit, too. You don’t need a ton of money to make The Warriors of Kyoshi or The Waterbending Scroll, but they add so much to the relationships between the characters and their personal arcs that they can’t just be condensed or skipped.
There’s definitely some fat to be cut. Particularly in Season One, its clear Nickelodeon demanded a certain amount of formulaic “And now Aang has to win a big fight again or the kids will get bored” plot that was more about selling action figures than pacing out a story. But one of the remarkable things about the series was how this otherwise droning repetition in kids’ shows gave service to a larger and more interesting overall narrative.
8 episodes
Game of Thrones
Netflix
I wish I could say I was surprised, but I am absolutely not
Stop getting hyped for live-action remakes of cartoons, they’re always awful
Live-action remakes of cartoons must be a money laundering scheme at this point
The cost so fucking much to make and yet look like total dogshit. The special effects and post-production on Cowboy Bebop, for instance, looked worse than what I’ve seen on YouTube fan films from ten years ago. There’s no way that thing cost several million an episode.
Same with One Piece. The props and costumes look like they fell straight out of an anime convention. The directing was mid at best. The camera work felt amateurish. And they clocked that at $144M for the season. Where was all this money even going?
Hookers & blow for the producers?
Even my friends, who love Netflix sludge and thought this Avatar remake was good, commented on the CGI being mid.
I mean, all you do is hire a couple of script editors to pare down the writing and you’re halfway done
Trying to be like Game of Thrones. Jesus Christ
Everyone wants to be that last great gasp of monoculture
At worst, it makes M. Night Shyamalan‘s 2010 The Last Airbender film feel like a mercy because at least that poor effort was only 2 hours long.
FROM THE TOP ROPE
One of the messages driven home by the first series, is that Aang’s pacifist ideology is what’s needed most in a time of war. He entertains, educates, and elucidates non-compliance, and resistance. And that resistance can be as loose as a gentle breeze or a powerful gale. The airbenders primarily are dodging and using their opponents movement against them, and Aang tries very hard to be a gentle soul, and he only accesses the Avatar State in moments of a) great peril, b) the need for overwhelming force. Aang learns to be more mature as the weight of the responsibility sets in, without fully losing himself in the journey. He is not a grimdark hero, and it is what’s such a beautiful thing about the show. Even the cop-out at the end, with Spiritual Bending, instead of killing Ozai. He tried really hard to find an alternative to a moment of violence that would have continued repercussions (as every other moment of violent does, in this show).
https://hexbear.net/comment/4564984
Making the show grimdark is such a failure in understanding the source material and appreciating what make the show, the show.
Everyone else needs to stop trying to be like Game of Thrones. The best post-GoT show of this dark fantasy tv sub-genre is a Game of Thrones prequel.
From the article:
Avatar: The Last Airbender is set in a fantasy world where people can bend the four elements, but only the Avatar can master all four together. The Netflix original series opens with a sight that was only alluded to in the original — the moment the Fire Nation decided to start a war on the fellow lands. From the opening minutes, it becomes clear that this live-action remake aims to be both a dark and violent fantasy epic for the post-Game of Thrones crowd, while also trying to capture the silly and cartoony fun of the source material. However, this balancing act of sorts never fully clicks in the 8-episode season.
Too many shows nowadays try to do this.
Bad shot.
Doesn’t capture the charm.
It definitely went for being too “realistic.”
Alternate universe where they make a practical effect Apa instead 😔
That would’ve been wizard.
can’t fucking read the form of the flying cartoon bison against the backdrop thanks
Needs more Greenscreen.
Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead ruined television.
Fuck grimdark
no, executives ruined television.
True
Game of Thrones went downhill since season 2 and basically got bad with season 5 onward.
It’s not even that good.
There were other shows besides it.
Why is it so aspirational? I feel bad for all the kids named Khaleesi
Oh goddamn, you just had to remind me of… that.
Man season 4 was excellent. It’s in season 5, when they really diverge from anything in the books, that it takes a nosedive. That said, I can’t really remember season 3’s events, so maybe 3 wasn’t so hot either
Season 3 was the red wedding, basically the climax of the first grand arc.
It’s in season 5, when they really diverge from anything in the books, that it takes a nosedive.
Dance of Dragons was a weak entry in the series and it showed. By then, it was pretty clear GRRM didn’t want to write the main characters anymore and was working up entirely different stories in the margins. Getting away from the source material was Good Aktuly.
The fifth book is titled A Dance With Dragons. Dance of Dragons was the Targaryen civil war hundreds of years before the events of ASoIaF.
Also it was A Feast For Crows with most of the brand new point-of-view characters (Cersei, Brienne, Aeron, Victarion, Arianne, Areo Hotah, Arys Oakheart). ADWD had all the returning fan favorites (Dany, Tyrion, Jon, Bran, Theon). It wasn’t that GRRM was bored of writing the main characters, half of them died in ASOS and the cast had to be rebuilt in AFFC. In addition, ADWD and AFFC was originally intended to be one book but was split due to length, and all of the POVs were split apart - many of the favorites moved to ADWD. George liked writing the main characters just fine.
I wouldn’t be getting your fantasy reviews from someone who doesn’t even know the name of the book folks. Did you even read the books or are you going off show discourse and meta-commentary? The show started getting bad around season 4 and collapsed rapidly the further and further they got from the material. They weren’t even following ADWD at all, over half of it was made up and wrong and obscene (adding SA scenes where they made no sense just for shock value became very common, especially around Sansa and Cersei). They reversed character growth and flanderized everything into a bad cartoon. They had teleporting fleets, super villains with plot armor and atrocious cringy dialogue.
They absolutely needed the books and the show runners were 0 creativity hacks who floundered like idiots once they didn’t have GRRM guiding them.
Man I’m reading dance now, and I love it
That user is full of shit and doesn’t know anything about the books
The whole Quentyn Martell arc was unsatisfying for me. But if you enjoy it, more power to you.
God, the MCU and Game of Thrones really spawned a lot of rip-offs even though they weren’t even that good to begin with!
Genuinely enjoyed the first seasons of both. Good acting, good directing, good set design, good pacing, good intrigue… and the fucking costumes in GoT. Every season they got better.
But so much of what was good in these series was the investment of a ton of time and effort and genuine love of the source material. Once that fell away in the later seasons, the shows just collapsed in on themselves until they were nothing but self-referenced tropes. Season 8 of GoT sucked because it was so obviously and disastrously rushed. It was clear the showrunners didn’t want to do this job anymore, and it gutted the end product.
Only for the current cycle. Soon the iron will be hot for a “back to basics” fantasy story to get popular, and then all grimdark will be wiped away and we’ll be left complaining about how every show has incredibly simplistic and unsatisfying morals.
a live action adaptation of a beloved animated series is actually mid at best and otherwise terrible depending on who you’re asking?? i’m shockedThis is bad:
Granted, there are some interesting results from Netflix’s approach, with the season able to make explicit what the children’s cartoon couldn’t. The fear of war and genocide and years of occupation weigh heavily on the characters we meet along the way, particularly Aang’s companions — the waterbender Katara (Kiawentiio) and her brother Sokka (Ian Ousley) who was left to protect his village when all the men left for battle. The problem is that the show can’t fully commit to a singular tone. Just when it’s about to make a poignant observation about the cost of war, it reminds the audience that it is still based on a cartoon and introduces an insane wacko character that feels out of place in this otherwise more adult adaptation — I’m looking at you, Bumi (Utkarsh Ambudkar).
Tries to become everything but becomes nothing.
It’s got the bullshit cgi pre-teen sheen that Rings of Power had. It’s cringey to even look at
At best, the show serves as a constant reminder of how amazing the original Nickelodeon cartoon was. At worst, it makes M. Night Shyamalan‘s 2010 The Last Airbender film feel like a mercy because at least that poor effort was only 2 hours long.
Lol
Jesus Christ, I was hopeful about this too!
If you want a seemingly good live action remake… I heard mostly good things about the One Piece show.
Yeah, it’s 'ight.
Not sure what you think, old friend, but this review confirms my worst fears…
