To dive into the first and most major flaw
of the Avatar live-action series, it’s something that’s completely out of the control of
the creators. And that’s the fact that Netflix only gave
the showrunner 8 episodes for season 1. The animated series is very fast-paced with
20 episodes and most of them tell key stories. Obviously, you can’t feature all of these
adventures and cuts are inevitable, but only having 8 episodes is definitely not enough
time to execute book 1 of Avatar the Last Airbender. Or actually, it’s more like 7 episodes because
every episode has 6 minutes of end credits which adds up to 48 minutes over the season. So this leads to multiple major problems that
really hurts the live-action series and the first one is that in order to fit in all of
these adventures, they essentially combine 2 to 3 per episode. This is honestly the only way to deal with
this problem other than cutting out a lot of the story. However, it leads to most of these adventures
being underdeveloped and having unsatisfactory arcs. It’s in general more rushed especially since
the showrunner is even including episodes from season 2 into the first season like the
Love Tunnel, Aang meeting Avatar Kyoshi, and the spirit that steals people’s faces. Initially, that may seem pretty questionable,
but to be fair, there’s not a lot filler episodes in season 2 so importing some of
those stories into season 1 makes partial sense. And before going into some of the shortcomings
of combining all of these adventures together into a small amount of episodes, I actually
think that some of these pairings were pretty good. Like Aang going to Kyoshi Island with the
goal of meeting Avatar Kyoshi. Before this in the show, it was mostly a coincidence
because in that episode Aang wanted to blow off some steam by riding some massive fishies. While in the live-action version, it’s tighter
story-wise and makes sense to make it a goal to go there specifically. I also thought that including Jet in Omashu
and him trying to assassinate the mechanist because he was working with spies was a solid
integration. Although it was questionable about how Jet
was completely OK in also killing the king of Omashu. When initially it had more to do with civilian
collateral damage in a fire nation village. But the vast majority of these story combinations
either were slightly flawed, didn’t work very well, or were drastically inferior to
the animated show. Like the tracker June was just a quick plot
device to capture Aang, Aang meeting Avatar Roku was extremely rushed and completely lacked
any tension, urgency, and stakes like the original, the spirits capturing people had
barely any impact because it was quickly brushed over, Katara and Sokka being captured by the
face stealer gave that subplot some stakes, but it ultimately didn’t really make sense
as to why the spirit kept them alive for so long, not to mention that that conflict was
solved with a mcguffin instead Aang overcoming the spirit. Like there are a lot of different aspects
that make these stories inferior because of how rushed they are. Which this doesn’t bring into account the
fact that the episodes are constantly cutting away to other subplots where characters are
going through unrelated adventures. This in turn also makes some of these episodes
feel disjointed. They’re trying to juggle so much because
a lot of these adventures are pretty essential to the overarching story. And when you only have 8-episodes you sadly
have to do this. Then another major flaw that comes about by
combining all of these stories is that it fragments the main trio of Aang, Sokka, and
Katara. Apart of what made season 1 of the animated
series so fun was the unbreakable bond that these kids were forming together. They were constantly having fun, they were
learning to depend on each other, there was a bit of a romantic undercurrent which I assume
is being done away with, and they in general got to know each other very well. However, in the live action adaptation, most
of the time they’re split up on their own adventures and this in turn robs the development
between these characters. There is a small amount of character development
between team avatar, but nowhere close to how much there was in the animated series. Hell, in episode 6 both Katara and Sokka have
less than a minute of screen time. Which is pretty insane considering that they’re
both main recurring characters. And they’re absent for 12% of the show. I’d argue that the character development
between this trio is one of the most important aspects of the series. And to me, that was kind of the charm and
heart of the animated show. When you isolate each of the characters like
Sokka dealing with the mechanist, Katarra meeting Jet, and Aang hanging out with Bumi
during the same episode, it takes all of the focus off of any background character development
and puts it purely on the story. Which some of these subplots would be much
better if all 3 characters were together. The main example being the King Bumi arc. In the animated show, King Bumi kind of comes
off as a crazy and mysterious antagonist of sorts in which he holds Katara and Sokka hostage. And Aang has to complete a set of challenges
that in turn teaches him different lessons. The main reason why Sokka and Katara are integral
in this story arc is that they add stakes to the story. Aang has to succeed or his friends will die. That and it also has a great twist in the
end where King Bumi actually turns out to be Aang's friend before he froze away and
Katara and Sokka were never really in danger. While in the live action show, Bumi’s identity
comes out right away and Katara and Sokka are off doing their own thing which makes
this story very underwhelming. And they essentially re-tool the story by
having Bumi teach Aang that the world is tough and you have to make hard choices. Then Katara and Sokka conveniently show up
at the very end to save the day. So in comparison to the animated series, it’s
largely a downgrade. Or there’s even the issue of the new showrunner
completely misunderstanding the point of some of these stories. Like the secret tunnel developed the character
relationship between Katara and Aang, and Sokka also had a funny juxtaposed relationship
with the singers that had some satisfying humor. While in the live action series, the story
feels a lot more shoe horned in and it seems like the creators had no place for it in season
2, but they wanted to include it in season 1. Another major example is Aang’s primary
reason of going to the Northern water tribe to learn waterbending. In the live action show, they mostly change
it to where Aang gets a vision that the Northern Water Tribe is going to get attacked and they
have to go there and prevent it. Instead of you know, going there to learn
waterbending. Or at the very least, having the crucial development
between Katara and Aang in which she teaches him the basics of waterbending. Like it’s absolutely insane that Aang doesn’t
waterbend a single time in the entirety of season 1. That’s the entire point of the first season. It’s just mindboggling to me that this low
hanging fruit for character development and skill development was skipped over and they
just had Katarra learning waterbending on her own off screen. I was fine with the change of Katarra not
getting the water bending scroll from pirates and it came from her grandmother, but it’s
wild that Aang doesn’t have any drive to actually learn it. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if
they start season 2 where Aang learns waterbending from Katarra off-screen. I really hope I’m wrong, but due to how
fast and rushed the development of the show is, that could be a reality. So from all of these flaws it leads me to
think that this is the main reason as to why the original showrunners left the show. If you didn’t know, the original creators
of the animated series were going to be the showrunners for the live action adaptation. Then suddenly, there were big delays and there
were quote on quote creative differences. So if I had to guess, they probably refused
to tell the first season of Avatar in a middling 8 episodes. And this is pretty funny coming from Netflix
who made 5 billion dollars of net income during the year of 2023 alone. So it’s pretty sad that they couldn’t
spare more episodes because to me, to properly tell this story you need at least 12 episodes. Also, surely they’d be able to justify more
episodes because of how popular The Last Airbender is as an IP. Instead, it comes across as Netflix not really
caring about the actual quality and just what to milk the franchise for more money. And before moving on, I know I’ve been very
negative towards the live action show so far, but it’s not a terrible adaptation. It’s largely mediocre and is especially
worse to me since I literally just re-watched the animated show and it’s fresh in my mind. Also, the new showrunner does make some good
changes here and there like General Iroh having some new scenes with Aang, fleshing out Iroh
and Zuko’s backstory some more, seeing the fire nation destroy the air nomads, and Suki
and Sokka’s relationship being more developed. However, for each of these good changes, it’s
immediately counterbalanced by multiple bad changes that hurts the story in different
ways. That and since they are adding in new material
into an already short time period to tell season 1, it in turn compromises different
aspects about the original show since the time is even more cramped. Let’s go into the next big issue which is
the direction in which the creators take the main characters. Before diving into the abyss of issues of
the main trio, I think Zuko and General Iroh are pretty much flawless. It is hard to get over the legendary voice
work of animated Iroh, but I think Paul Lee who plays the live-action version still does
a great job. The relationship between Zuko and Iroh is
strongly intact and I think the extra backstory they give their duo makes their relationship
even stronger. Iroh is my favorite character in the animated
series and he thankfully is perfectly adapted. And then that’s pretty much the end of the
good side because the 3 main characters are pretty rough. Firstly for Aang, since the creators are rushing
the story so much, it feels like they leave out a lot of the childness and childlike activities
that defines Aang. One of the biggest examples is in the first
episode where instead of the writers establishing Aang's camaraderie with his friends through
an actual scene, they instead just tell us this information through Aang delivering a
monologue to Apa. This essentially breaks the rule of show don’t
tell and the writers are primarily breaking this rule to save time. Along with Aang running away being a big part
of his character in the animated show because he was angry and afraid of being separated
from all of his friends. He deeply regrets doing this and it constantly
haunts him throughout the entire show. While here, he just coincidentally goes on
a joy ride and crashes into the ocean at the exact time the air temple gets raided. If this change was to remain, It would make
more sense if Aang was actually there during the raid, but he was forced to abandon his
people to stay alive. The survivor guilt would thus be more significant
because Aang decided to go along with leaving behind everyone instead of it being by accident. So these two crucial aspects about Aang are
poorly executed and thus make him inferior to his animated counterpart. The core being of his character is still mostly
intact and doesn’t hinder the show’s quality that much. Next, in the trio we have Sokka. For Sokka, he essentially feels like he’s
starting out as his season 3 more mature self, when instead, he should be starting out more
childlike and immature. I know in the animated series he can be a
bit relentless and annoying at times, but you can definitely downplay that to a certain
degree so it’s not overwhelming. However, in the live-action series, Sokka
starts out way too mature and he’s just brooding a lot of the time. Which brooding is never a word I’d associate
with a character like Sokka. He’s supposed to the person in the group
that constantly brings levity and is always upbeat with his humor. And over time, he slowly turns into more of
an adult. So I’m not sure how his character is going
to technically progress if he’s already starting out at his endpoint besides him becoming
a more competent warrior. Then lastly for the trio, we have Katara. Out of the trio, I think she was hurt the
most. Because her main function within the first
season was to help and teach Aang how to water bend, while that’s just not a thing in the
live-action version. So this essentially deletes a lot of her potential
character development with Aang. And then the bigger issue to me is that her
personality feels significantly more muted. She comes across as such a bland character
in the live-action show and her animated counterpart feels like a drastically different character. There she was a deeply passionate, caring,
outspoken, driven, and mother-like character, and here, all of those characteristics are
either not developed enough or are mostly downplayed. This may also have to do with the acting which
is another entirely different issue. Child actors in general can be very hit-or-miss. And normally, some child actors like the actor
who plays Aang can overact at times. And by overact, I mean he can exaggerate his
emotions in a lot of his scenes. When instead, a lot of moments for acting
tend to call for more subtlety and nuance. As an example, I think Bella Ramsey despite
her shockingly being 20 years old now, was one of the best child actors I’ve ever seen. Through Lyanna Mormont and Ellie, she conveyed
so much detailed emotional range and conveyed a meticulous nuance that was shockingly better
than most adult actors. While in the Avatar live-action series, I
don’t think most of these child actors are able to carry the immense weight that these
characters require. Along with the creators largely removing the
childlike nature of these characters, which I think these actors would have an easier
time portraying. So if they want to make the show more mature,
then casting actors who are slightly older who can more naturally deliver that would
make more sense. They do kind of do this with Sokka and Zuko
who are both in their 20s and I think their age helps the acting for the characters they
portray. I wouldn’t classify them as being great
by any means, but they do get the job done. So this kind of creates a disparity between
the younger and older actors in terms of quality of acting. For Katara, I do wish they casted someone
older for the character since she’s supposed to be the mom of the group. However, she can’t really play into that
since she’s naturally much younger than Sokka’s actor. Then for Aang, you obviously can’t cast
anyone older and even then, if they don’t make seasons 2 and 3 really fast, they’re
going to have a stranger things conundrum where the kids are turning into fully-fledged
adults. It would be really weird if by season 3, Aang
is like 20 years old. Outside of the main characters, there’s
one villain character that I think was kind of butchered and that was Azula. It’s hard to judge her since she hasn’t
had a lot of scenes yet so I won’t discuss her acting ability, but I don’t think Azula's
live-action version will come anywhere near as being as menacing as her animated counterpart. Because fundamentally, it’s hard for someone
who resembles a child to command a lot of fear. Despite the actress who plays her being 21
years old. In the animated show, she seems much older
than what she technically is. Because of this, she constantly exudes an
extreme aura of menacing energy through every line she delivers. In the live-action show, I have a hard time
believing she’ll come close to that, but hopefully, I’m wrong. So overall, it’s kind of unfortunate that
the acting isn’t that satisfactory because the main value that a live-action adaptation
can have over an older animated series, is the fact that you can communicate more complex
emotions. Animating faces that communicate extreme nuances
is really difficult, especially back when the original show was made. So I was kind of looking forward to that being
a major improvement and unfortunately, I was let down. Then finally we have the show’s production
value which is both amazing and bad at the same time. To go into the glaring positives, we have
the VFX. All of the elements look outstanding and are
always photorealistic. In particular, I loved the opening scene of
the show where this earthbender was fighting fire benders. The rock work looked amazing in the blue directional
light and the highlights on the rocks in particular made them look perfect. Along with the character interacting with
the rocks by running up them which also cements them as feeling real. But yeah, literally everyone has applauded
how great the VFX in the show is and through the final episode you can really see that
most of the budget probably went to the VFX. Like that massive spirit water kaiju fight
was flawless and actually blew away my expectations. Then the production value takes a nose dive
because the vast majority of scenes in the show take place on the volume. And the reason why this is a negative is because
of two things. Firstly, every water tribe scene was filmed
on the volume and none of the production was actually filmed in a more arctic climate. This in turn makes the setting feel fake for
a multitude of different reasons. When characters are breathing none of them
have frosted breath. Which to me, is a massive oversight because
that sells how cold the environment is. When that’s jarringly missing, it immediately
takes away from the realism of this world. I know this is a fantasy world that is fictitious,
but fantasies in general want to sell you on that world actually being real. Like Game of Thrones is constantly filming
in real and grounded environments, and even a newer show like The Rings of Power properly
sells how cold the environment is. Then another aspect that sells this cold environment
is how your face reacts to the cold. Generally in these cold environments your
lips crack and become chapped very easily and your cheeks are constantly red. While in Avatar the last airbender, the actors
seem like they’re in a warmer climate and they don’t portray any of these signs. So it’s kind of contradictory and can be
very distracting. This is especially worse since a Netflix movie
that takes place in a very cold environment just came out called Society of the Snow. In that movie, the make-up and overall look
of the actors was incredibly realistic. Then when you go back to Avatar, you can see
how fake and cheap looking the show is. The authenticity of this world is completely
lacking. Which this is probably a combination of the
director not focusing on this and Netflix not wanting to actually film on location. Like I find it hard time believing that they
spent so much money on the VFX and they couldn’t simply add in fake frosted breath. And to be fair, if they don’t want to film
in a very cold environment I can understand that, but they use the volume all the time. It’s really easy to tell if they’re using
the volume because they try to hide the background out of focus and it constantly creates this
cheap shallow depth of field look. And if you ever focus on the background the
resolution can be noticeable at times. Along with the lighting feeling off in some
scenes since it can be hard to match the realistic lighting of the environment. This especially feels even more noticeable
because they do actually film in some real villages and jungles so it makes the difference
between these real environments and the fake ones stick out even more. Another shortcoming of using the volume excessively
is that you can only work with a very small set. This can lead to the scale and size of scenes
feeling small and not very dynamic. And sometimes it can even feel claustrophobic. One example is during episode 7 where Katara
meets with the water tribe and Aang in this great hall and you can clearly tell the set
is only a couple tables. It feels really cheap and the cinematography
in turn is constantly being limited to just singles of the actors with the background
out of focus. This overreliance on the volume makes it feel
like Netflix is trying to cheap out of shooting on location and building real sets. You can argue that you can’t feasibly shoot
on location which is true for some of these places like the northern water tribe, but
for a place like Omashu you can definitely find a real location and then use VFX set
extensions to add in the unrealistic buildings. Just like in Kingslanding or Minas Tirith. Other fantasy properties were either able
to find real locations to integrate into their fantasy worlds or built great sets. This drastically makes the world feel real
and believable and helps immerse the audience into the story. While in The Last Airbender, it felt like
I was constantly being ripped out the world from the fake looking surroundings. This also isn’t to say that the volume is
bad because when it’s used correctly with great ambiance, lighting, special effects,
and cinematography, it can be seamless like in House of the Dragon. However, if you start to overly rely on it,
it can be become very noticeable and break your immersion. Then one more quick aspect about the production
design are the costumes. I’ve seen a lot of people complain about
it and I mostly agree that it feels too clean and new. It gives off this aura of cosplay wardrobes
where the costumes don’t feel lived in. Overall though, I’m not that upset with
how the live action adaptation of the Last Airbender turned out. Because the current showrunner, Albert Kim,
was dealt a losing hand by Netflix by only giving him 8 episodes and I admire him for
taking the challenge when the original creators bailed for good reason. There’s some good aspects here and there,
although it’s mostly overshadowed by the abundant flaws with the story’s execution. It could technically be much worse, but that’s
not necessarily a good thing. The directing in general along with the acting
is pretty lacking and the production value besides the VFX was very disappointing. I wish this adaptation turned out to be as
fun as the One Piece adaptation. But yeah, since the animated version of Avatar
The Last Airbender is just significantly better, is more fleshed out, and contains more story
beats, there’s not much reason to watch the live-action version over the animated
series. Thank you for watching and my Letterboxd,
Patreon, and Discord links are in the description. As always thank you immensely to my top patron
Logan Farmer.
