Moist Meter | Netflix Avatar the Last Airbender

time to moist meter the liveaction Avatar The Last air bender Netflix series I'm not going to blow smoke up your tokus you all know that I was not optimistic that this would turn out to be a good show anytime anyone that worked on this show talked about it they made it sound worse and worse so I had pretty low expectations but as always I'm open for a pleasant surprise now I'm going to treat this moist meter a little differently than pretty much any review of this you're going to see I am going to do my best to not compare it to the cartoon the original Masterpiece of avatar The Last Airbender it's very clear off rip from even the first episode that they wanted to kind of carve their own path in the Avatar universe and instead of making a onetoone recreation a carbon copy of the cartoon they wanted to kind of put their own spin on it so they've made a lot of major changes to it so I'm here to give you the moist meter on whether or not this show stand stands on its own two feet if you've never watched the cartoon will you like the live action I will however kick this off by saying I don't think the show is dog [ __ ] by any means but I still don't see a single reason on God's green earth why you would choose to watch the liveaction Avatar over the cartoon version the cartoon is better in every single aspect so I just want to put that out there if you're someone who's like captivated by the idea of Avatar you're going to get a lot more mileage and a lot more entertainment out of the cartoon it still holds up well today it's Timeless I also this will be the last comparison I make there there's a major change in the live action where Ang no longer goes on any like side quests he doesn't really have fun per se he doesn't do things just for the sake of fun he's much more serious all the time to match the more serious tone of everything in the show which in my opinion flattens the character so Ang in the live action is not near nearly as dynamic as he was in the cartoon which is a real shame but that'll be the last comparison I make here that's just a complaint that I felt pretty strongly about if you've never watched the cartoon maybe you won't feel that way the actor who plays Ang I think does an extraordinary job like I was really impressed with Ang in this show I lied I've got one more comparison for you you know how they made this hoopla about this show needs to be accessible to even a mature audience they said that the cartoon was kind of just aimed at kids and this needs to be like a to Game of Thrones fans or whatever it's really ironic that that was the statement they made because now that the show is actually out what they really did is they took the cartoon and dumbed it down so any subtlety that existed in the Avatar cartoon series is now just beaten to death in the live action they just explicitly state every character emotion ever because they don't trust the audience to be smart enough to pick up on it so the cartoon actually is far more mature and subtle when it comes to its writing than the live action at no point during the Eight Episodes here do you even have a second to really think about a character's motivation and try and figure it out for yourself or what they might be going through because that character will inexplicably just tell you what they're feeling and what they're going through just out loud so don't worry about ever needing to use your brain to like pick up on themes or anything cuz man they are really on the nose with everything but anyway that is the last comparison I'll make let's go ahead and dive in I like I said I was very impressed with Ang's performance here I thought Ang was done Justice overall even though I wasn't a huge fan of him lacking The Whimsy that he used to have I do still think that he is a strong character and does a great job I also think the visuals were far better than I would have ever expected them to be after the 2010 disaster which had a hundred million budget I was convinced you could never CGI good bending it'll always look like a [ __ ] YouTuber Adobe After Effects skit but I was wrong this actually has really solid fight choreography and the bending for the most part always looks really good especially the environments like the places they visit look beautiful like legitimately they look really stunning you can tell that this is a very big budget production I will say though in on this front there is one consistently lackluster piece of CGI and it's always around the water bending the water bending just lacks any real oomph it lacks power anytime Katara is water bending and she shoots water in an enemy it comes out and Strikes with about the same amount of intensity as me spitting water out of my mouth it's just like a little splash it just seems so weak which is a shame because water bending is so [ __ ] cool and there's so much utility behind it and it they do some better job as do a better job as it progresses towards the end but for the most part getting there the water bending is just really underwhelming and lackluster but overall I will say that I was very impressed with the visuals here I think they did do a pretty good job of capturing how cool bending can be in a fight and they do get pretty creative with a lot of the ways these fights unfold so I was pleased overall with how it was presented another compliment that I'll go ahead and get out there is I actually enjoy some of the darker elements they've added to this where they just go whole hog and show someone being like lit on fire literally [ __ ] incinerated you know it shows ozai's brutality where at one point he just like scorpion out of Mortal Kombat just [ __ ] summons fire under someone and just murders them it really helps showcase how menacing of a monster oai is so I do think that that's a cool direction to take that and I think it makes it pretty thrilling I really think when it comes to like the stakes this feels like a real perilous situation that the cast is thrown into like there's a war it's it's tragic there's a lot lot of Despair everything's kind of [ __ ] I think it does a good job of getting that across now let's get into my complaints I think the writing from start to finish is pretty bad the dialogue is like words no one will ever say to each other in a real conversation ever and it is egregious in episode one I think it's because they tried to condense so much story into only eight episodes that they had to rush through everything and you feel it it feels so [ __ ] rushed with its narrative it's it's awful sometimes straight up like listening to a monologue as a conversation isn't Fun it takes you out of it they just beat you to death with Exposition off rip so for example when a character is talking to Ang the character is telling Ang everything the viewer needs to know about the lore you've been asleep for a hundred years because you have been frozen in ice when you ran away and got hit by that storm but you are the Avatar the only one that can save this world that the fire nation has attacked after we lived in harmony like I know I'm getting right back into a cartoon comparison I know in the cartoon it's kind of like that sometimes but it has more episodes to flesh that out and there's more actual character bonding and relationships outside of like an exposition dump here you don't have that and that leads me to my next complaint where the characters never really feel like friends it feels like their relationships progress off screen like there is no reason for the characters to be as close as they are in this show because you never actually see that develop even slightly cuz most of the time when a character is talking to each other like if qara is talking to Ang or Saka the conversation is only ever about business like it's [ __ ] business 100% of the time always serious for the most part where they're just talking about here's what I'm thinking here's what I want to do do you think we should do this and here's why we need to do this and probably should do this those are the only conversations they really have there's no real character character bonding they don't feel like characters most of the time when they're talking they feel like just Wikipedia summaries of the show and they're just vomiting that out so I think the writing for pretty much every part of this is just not good and I feel bad because I think most of the cast really puts forth a good performance except I don't know why they're taking qara in the direction they are they just don't give her much to do or to say so she never really gets a chance to shine as a character really none of the characters get that chance except for Zuko and Ang those are the two standouts to me in this series I've seen quite a few complaints about Zuko's temper tantrums being too childish but for me personally I didn't have an issue with it I think that criticism is a little misguided given the character so I actually thought Zuko was done quite well now let's let's bring this all full circle here if you've never watched the live act or if you've never watched the cartoon will you like the liveaction Avatar it's kind of hard to say because there is some things to like about it the visuals the fighting and there is a lot of fighting and since of course it is the DNA of Avatar the story is compelling even if the writing's super weak for the most part so there is quite a bit to like but it really feels like even if you've never watched the cartoon that this show is rushing through things by the time it ends it still feels like all of the characters are strangers to one another and all of the major narrative plot points that are being hit kind of just happen super quickly without any kind of buildup which I think takes a lot of the intensity out of the situations that we're seeing especially in the final episode the final episode is visually really cool but man does that blow through a lot of content in a really quick period of time where you never really care about any of the emotional Stakes I do like how they convey the big Rampage in the Avatar State at the end I think it comes across really [ __ ] cool but I just didn't feel any kind of emotional investment into it at least I wouldn't if I hadn't seen the original and I feel like that's going to be the case for a lot of people it's a fun set of fights that you watch at the end and then that that's it it just kind of hollow oh while I'm thinking about it though I do want to give a little bit of praise for what they did with the face stealer I actually really liked how they portrayed the face stealer in this I I actually thought that landed pretty well I actually thought most of what they did with the spirits was pretty solid so there's there's another compliment I can fish out here for the liveaction series The Show breaks that rule of show don't tell this series is always tell tell tell tell tell tell it is always just overe explaining every minute detail of what every character is thinking feeling and going through at all times because it is just rushing through things it doesn't give you the opportunity to see any of that build and grow it just feels all so unnatural and stiff which leads to a lot of it feeling flat but there is it's not dog [ __ ] like I said it's better than I expected it to be given everything they were saying about it beforehand it's it's more than I thought it would be so overall I didn't hate it or anything but I think it's kind of mid plugging it into the moist meter I'm going to give it a comfortable 50% it is better than I thought it would be but it's still not great and if you're going to watch this as someone that's never watched the cartoon I feel like you'll walk away with a lukewarm opinion on it it's not anything special like it stands on its own two legs kind of like it does try and carve out its own identity here but it's not like a wonderful identity that it ends up with because it's still trying to adapt mostly from the cartoon while making tweaks and changes and trying to still capture all of that in its Eight Episodes so it's always [ __ ] speed running through this very crucial lore and it just doesn't work all that well it's I feel like maybe if they had 12 episodes they could have maybe made this work better I don't really know but as it currently is I don't think it's anything amazing but I also don't think it's nearly as shitty as most people myself included expected it to be so that's kind of nice I guess but anyway if you're ever interested in Avatar just watch the [ __ ] cartoon like this doesn't really justify its existence this feels like a Netflix cash grab kind of like I wouldn't necessarily say it feels soulless because clearly there are people behind this that did at least care about the original property that's kind of clear especially with things like the Cabbage guy coming in but it's just still not that great that's about it 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Channel: penguinz0

Views: 1,930,752

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Id: YoS9fe49J5s

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 24 2024