Netflix's Avatar: The Flattening

back during the rounds of pre-release interviews for Netflix's liveaction Avatar show a lot was made of a curious decision the showrunners had made to tone down or otherwise remove saker's sexism from the character in story in the first few episodes of the original Caron Saka was obnoxiously sexist and a major arc of his throughout the first season is his maturation learning empathy humility and respect Saker was always a hero right from the get-go when the chips were down he always did the right thing but he had flaws he was impatient he was arrogant he was somehow simultaneously overly serious and inappropriately joky and throughout its three seasons all of these sharp edges are sanded down resulting in the more rounded balanced soccer we see at the end of book three that was what made him a great relatable character he wasn't defined by his sexism he was defined by his strength of character in overcoming it and admitting he was wrong while the outcry at the time was fierce little did anyone know that this wasn't an isolated incident it's it's a systemic problem in the liveaction show of pushing all the characters closer to a middle gray personality whether in adding a bit of edge to previously actualized mentors or softening the extremes of the protagonists and antagonists in the process of adapting from 2D animation to 3D live action somehow everything had come out the other end flatter [Music] [Music] when critically analyzing a piece of work it can be both a blessing and a curse when it's an adaptation the first problem to overcome is human psychology we have an inherent bias towards certain pieces of information on a subject and consider all other pieces of information in relation to that one thing it's called the anchoring effect and often times it's completely arbitrary which particular thing you're brain chose to Anchor to well not arbitrary often it's the first or last thing you're exposed to rather it's not based on any inherent value this can make judging something like an adaptation particularly difficult if you're trying to approach things in an analytical way true objectivity is impossible paradoxical and not even desirable when it comes to looking at fiction stories exist to affect us in some way viewing them through the lens of a dispassionate robot would be missing the point you should embrace the fact that something made you feel a certain way and get to the work of trying to understand why in ever increasing depth the trouble is that inherent bias towards the original of a work is yet another lay of subjectivity you have to factor in and potentially overcome while analyzing it's even worse if you have other forms of attachment to the original like many people I grew up watching the Avatar cartoon I remember coming home from school and watching episodes way too close to the TV I specifically remember watching the blue Spirit episode for the first time on a cozy Saturday morning I remember the immense feeling of of catharus from the show's finale partly because it was only behind the Lord of the Rings in giving me that feeling and partly because I never expected to get that feeling from a [ __ ] Nickelodeon cartoon I remember falling in love for the first time in my teens because of Avatar I surprised a Girl by recognizing her phone background was Ang in the Avatar State and she ended up being my first real kiss to say that Avatar is a core pillar of my childhood would be a [ __ ] understatement and all of that is clouding my judgment of the Netflix show honest self-aware rational criticis ISM of an adaptation you have feelings of attachment towards is extremely difficult frankly I don't think that I'll achieve it here but I also wouldn't expect it of anyone else after all we've been burned before just through simple pattern recognition the term adaptation or based on the hit so and so is if not a red flag at least a dark dark orange it's still a sticking point if you pretend to be objective and try to just focus on the work itself on the one hand differences between the two are more obvious so you can easily highlight the reasons why you liked one work more than the other more neutrally the very fact that there are differences can sometimes help you understand authorial intent and at least appreciate what they were trying to do they changed it for a reason presumably and a great number of changes can add up to a Clear Vision of what they were going for but on the other hand the obviousness of some changes can lead you to misidentifying the actual cause in your change of feelings yeah Soaker isn't Goofy and his name is pronounced SOA but that has a great deal less of an impact than removing the sights of all of his character grow growth from the story when I was a kid I loved the Aragon books to a probably unreasonable degree it was the plot of Star Wars with Dragons I had no defenses against it there's a couple of surface level details about the character a that come up over and over again in Aragon's narration that being her jet black hair and the scent of pine needles that surrounds her she's yenifer coded is what I'm saying so when the movie version came out in 2006 I was Furious we have no idea whether she smelled like pine needles and admittedly it would be wild if Ed spielers goes up to like is that Pine but one thing was very obvious that [ __ ] has red hair it occupied all my thought for the rest of the film I couldn't even enjoy the parts that were close to enjoyable I knew consciously that it was a terrible film in many other regards but all I could say when the movie ended and my parents asked me why I didn't like it was A's hair wasn't black Now by no means is it a mark of a good adaptation to merely replicate the surface details of the original Gamal del Toro's Pinocchio doesn't even remotely resemble the image of Pinocchio we've become familiar with in the past 140 years of Pinocchio media but it's arguably the best version of the story ever told better than the original and better than the Disney version which most people hold up as the gold standard but the creators of the Aragon film weren't trying to tell a new story using the framework of the book they were trying to cash in on a popular fantasy novel by making an equivalent movie version of it I didn't have the words back then at the tender and mild age of 11 to adequately describe what bothered me so much about it and even now it seems so silly to try and justify it after all it's such a small thing A Drop in the Ocean of much more affecting problems with the film the color of a character's hair is so insignificant that she could have any color at all and that was the problem it would have been so easy to make her hair black they could have dyed it they could have used a wig they could have cast a naturally blackhaired actor but instead they just left it Ginger but listen their hair color didn't really matter I mean it definitely does make a difference we have ingrained preconceptions about people's op appearance mostly learned behavior like it or not you will have immediate unconscious reactions to people's appearance that you cannot control sometimes that'll be useful like how storytellers can use this coding to convey character via surface level appearance and sometimes that'll be distinctly not useful and something you have to actively fight like the idea that blondes aren't as smart or um racism but for the purposes of effectively telling the story of Aragon Aya's hair color wasn't the problem itself it was just the Smoking Gun the symbol of my frustration at a character being dismantled and poorly put back together with pieces missing and barely resembling the original it was supposed to be imitating it was more of a warning sign that if that aspect of the character didn't matter then what else was considered disposable it's the question the director of every Superman film past and future faces do we put him in the dumb [ __ ] strongman underwear outside his clothes it can lead to a bit of a domino effect if you think that he's better without his briefs do you also think he's better without his careful avoidance of unnecessary damage if you think he's better without the carefulness do you also think he's better without his unshakable optimism and if you think he's better without that do you even want to make a Superman film Zach sure enough the Aya I knew the stern cold practical solitary Warrior from the books was replaced with this sweet sensitive vulnerable Aragon Super Fan and the movie was bad the acting was stilted the dialogue was dull and cliched the action was underwhelming what I was saying when I was so annoyed by Aya's hair was they didn't care care enough about the thing I love to do it justice she could have had black hair and three different lines commenting on how she smelt like a car freshener and she still wouldn't have been a and this is how you end up with the trailer for The liveaction Avatar show and the majority of hopeful praise directed at it everyone and everything looked spoton the costumes the hair and makeup the environments it was basically a onetoone recreation of the cartoon some specific shots were even directly lifted from the cartoon what better sign could you have that this would be a faithful adaptation merely converted into live action well it turns out that in the same way that scen a detail missed out can often be a signifier of a lack of care for the source material when an adaptation so slavishly pays attention to these surface level details that can give the outward appearance of authenticity without any guarantee of substance underneath the hood the problems that exist within the live action show would always be problems regardless of whether or not qara had her hair loopies their absence would perhaps EX exacerbate the problems and likewise their presence doesn't eliminate the problems so what are these problems I keep referring [Music] to I should say off the bat that this isn't entirely a Relentless bashing of the show while I do despise it overall like I suggested earlier much of the physical production of the show is wonderful and several of the performances are the equal of the ones in the originals hey how was I supposed to know she was a fire nation Soldier very occasionally moments in the show would actually surpass the cartoon those are worth pointing out and I will but for now I have gripes so I'm just going to get out all of the random issues I have with this show that aren't really my main concern but I still want to go off just indulge me for a few minutes first off the way that angry earthbender guy sarcastically pours water out in front of iro before chucking the water skin on the ground then taking one bite out of an apple and throwing that away as well like I know you're angry but that's your stuff my guy they soldiers at War don't they have rations and it looks so muddy there does he have to go and pick up the water skin later and go wash it off somewhere this guy perplexes me this reaction from iro is so funny it completely undercuts the drama and horror of Zuko's burning everyone is so dry in this show and they pick this one moment to act like an anime character bizarrely cartoon iro was much more restrained in his reaction speaking of acting the difference between the child actors and the adult actors is so Stark bless Gordon Cormier looks the part and is so enthusiastic but Noah Ringer looked the part as well neither are particularly good actors and why is Ken L such a bad actor I don't just mean here I mean in general it's at this point that I wish my video on Old hadn't got a copyright strike and needed to be taken down cuz you'd see the history of my Vendetta against him I honestly really tried to get on board with this portrayal of Xiao I do like the characterization of him as more of a preing opportunistic idiot than his straightforwardly evil cartoon counterpart but lung delivers every line as if it's his first day he's ever spoken and he's trying out whole new intonations out of curiosity and it completely throws me off you won't mind if we take a look ourselves the Firepower during San's Comet at the beginning is curiously weak it's pretty much the same as normal firebending you see people pull off throughout the rest of the show which has me wondering if they've thought ahead about this and this while we're on the invasion for some reason they've made the show a lot darker than it was before I don't mean in terms of content there was so much death and mutilation in the cartoon I mean in how graphic they were with the horrors of violence like did we really need an extended shot of gatso screaming as he's burned alive while children cower behind him does that hit harder than just the single shot of his skeleton I don't think so because of the implication there are four or five separate instances of people being horrifically burned alive in the show and the only one that's better for being there is Zuko I can absolutely see how actually witnessing the moment of his burning would help you sympathize with the character I don't like how most of the focus is on ozai's subjective experience of the moment as opposed to say irose but best believe we'll get there later it's just there were two other much worse burnings all the way to death ear in the show so I'm honestly a bit jaded about the whole thing by this point while the effects are as good as promised if not better in most cases and there are some wonderfully lavish sets throughout there are also some tragic green screens that took me right out of the scene and finally this one tilt and pan I just I just hate it all right that's enough of the random gripes I needed to get off my chest let's get to the point flattening so I can't stop thinking about this dialogue right here look at the power you have that's because of me that wasn't you that was me I just can't get over those lines it's like a teenager wrote it or a first draft placeholder line you used to establish the idea you want to convey there then go back later and make it more elegant but they just forgot to do it or at least I did think that until it turned out that that was the entire theme of the show's writing somehow the phrase show don't tell never ended up reaching the eyes and ears of those professional scrip screenwriters because they are obsessed with telling you about things that it would have been far more impactful to show you get this crazy hamfisted couple of lines at Len's funeral is it true he abandoned The Siege yes after his son was killed so his son dies a hero and he'll be forever known as a coward it's incredibly clunky partly because of the wording itself like it's not something anyone would actually say while in earshot at a funeral but also the fact that this is how we delivered this information as opposed to it being implied through iro interaction with other Fire Nation soldiers or people at the funeral we never see anyone else revering lieen or disrespecting iro for abandoning bar singi so its impact is minimal I'm still not sure it's as bad as this though your failure in the 100 day Siege of baring won't be held against you your son died in that Siege didn't he yes he did again I offer my condolences on your nephew burning to death in that terrible accident it's such a shame because the interaction between iro and Zuko later that very scene is fantastic Zuko recognizes how hollow the nationalistic platitudes he's been trained to say are so he opens up to iro about a time Len's kindness helped him and sits by his side in isolation the bit when the tear falls down io's face with the piano version of leaves from the vine playing in the background [ __ ] me I might have cried if I wasn't so numb from you know the rest of it all another one that got me all vexed was saker's Ice dodging trial first of all there's the fact that he even had an ice dodging trial back when the tribe was all together which was a big sticking point for Sakura and the cartoon given his obsessive desire to be the man of the house and a real water tribe Warrior I get where they're going with it he overheard that he hadn't earned the win by his own skill so he's going to get a redo later on either to show how much he's grown on his journey or to prove B's words correct that he demonstrated true leadership by having friends like Ang and qara help him pass the trials except we never actually see saker's initial trial we just hear hakoda and B describing what happened yeah budgets are a thing but to be frank you could cut down the fight scenes in the prologue either the Earth Bender one or the attack on the air Temple and be better off devoting the time and resources to a life-defining moment of one of the main characters rather than pew pew Bam Bam the scene has the added drama of soccer over hearing the conversation and how disappointed his father is but it doesn't hit as hard as it could because we never actually got to see how Saka acted in that moment how he performed under pressure we don't know if he hesitated or panicked or whether he even knew that he'd [ __ ] up at the time because it probably wasn't anything internal that he could work on for this soccer everything is just a skill issue but we'll get on to more of that later show don't tell is a useful piece of guidance for writers but it's not very nuanced talking is the primary way that we exchange information in the real world after all I love me a good talkie scene it just takes a bit of effort to make that act of talking compelling what I'm not a big fan of is wasting Words which may be a surprise to some of you either familiar with this Channel or looking at the Tim stamp right now listen I'm a late Millennial I'm telling you this is the absolute shortest amount of time I could talk about Avatar for there's just so much dialogue in this show characters go on for minutes at a time when literally one or two lines or even none at all could achieve the same effect sorry I need to stop using models like could or might it did the animated show [ __ ] did this the episode masks is the absolute worst for it this moment right here between Ang and Zuko I think they actually do it better in the liveaction show almost everything is exactly the same as the cartoon but put Zuko on a boat so when he launches his Fireball at Ang and he deflects it with a blast of air the back blast pushes Zuko away that's brilliant a great visual metaphor for their relationship and Zuko and Ang's differing outlooks it's a shame then that they had five more minutes of chitchat before that where they spell out each of their motivations in explicit detailed language it can't be for the audience we certainly don't need more dialogue explaining that Zuko is motivated by external expectations and Ang is scared of them they couldn't stop saying it out loud I don't want the responsibility I'm scared of my power I'm scared of being alone why did we need it spelled out that they don't have any intrinsic desire to fight the other when they kept the dialogue from the original scene that does it better if we knew each other back then do you think we could have been friends is it to endear them to one another I'd argue that working in Synergy and saving the other's life multiple times during the Escape does that trick better the added scene ends in pretty much the exact same way as the original two Zuko launches a fireball at Ang and he deflects it it robs the later moment of its impact because Zuko's sudden violence in the face of Ang's kindness isn't shocking he just he just tried it earlier it fool me We Can't Get Fooled Again the episode is bookended by this rambling barely coherent narration from iro and you know what [ __ ] you I'm going to play the whole thing in full so you have to feel the full weight of his speech it's amazing how far we'll go to hide our true selves from the World perhaps it's because we don't want people to know how much they really mean to us which is funny because the truth is we would do anything for them we travel incredible distances risk Our Lives even fight monsters but I suppose it can be scary to admit you need people some might see that as a weakness a liability after all what greater pain is there than losing someone you love or Worse finding out someone you love has left you behind I guess that's why we feel the need to hide away and protect ourselves so we put on a mask it's not hard to understand why what's hard is knowing that sometimes the mask is who we really are first of all that was so many words too many words if it takes you that long to say we wear masks to protect ourselves from hurt you're a [ __ ] writer if you were padding to fill the scene you didn't need to Zuko's actor Dallas U is really pulling it off in these scenes in fact he's great all around at first I was put off because he's trying way too hard and it's a bit awkward but then I remembered oh oh yeah duh this is Zuko he's a self-consciously tryhard bad boy Dallas U slaps in this role and if you watch this Montage without the voice over everything it says still comes across just let the Montage the music the performances speak for themselves and second it doesn't really read in the voice of wise mournful Uncle iro it sounds more like a ya protagonist or a Meredith gray voiceover and it even has the same gry Anatomy way of Desperately struggling to pull a bunch of desperate plot threads together like Spider-Man on any mode of Transport like does Ang wear a mask in this show I thought that kid wore all his emotions on his sleeve to the point of nearly being incapable of deception is it saying that as a result of losing gatso and temporarily losing the rest of Team Avatar he starts putting up walls I guess you could see him trying to keep qara from fighting and merging with the water spirit as him doing that but it's still feels stretchy to me is that fair to say speaking of Ang the show devotes a huge amount of time at the outset to Ang's pre iberg life you'd think that with that time they could find a way to show you Ang's character via decisions he makes or his interactions with other characters but no the show would rather just monologue to you about who Ang is you get gatso telling him how wonderful and special he is first in real life and then in a flashback but you're not just anyone Ang you're strong and kind and generous I hate when stories have a character do something to reveal their heroism and make me organically like them like a save the cat moment I much prefer it when shows tell me this is the main character he is good and strong and nice and brave like him probably the first moment that made me fully question if the show's writers were even good was Ang's absurdly lengthy monologue about how he feels to Opa and you know what [ __ ] you we're playing the whole thing again yo says I'm supposed to be the Avatar me don't even trust me to feed the baby bison and I'm supposed to save the world he said I need to remember who I am but I know who I am I like to play air ball and eat banana cakes and goof off with my friends that's who I am not someone who can stop the Fire Nation not someone who can stop a war the other kids always say lucky because of things I could do but I trade places with any of them I don't want to leave I don't want the responsibility I'm scared of my power I'm scared of being alone scared I'm not kidding this is dialogue on the level of the Star Wars prequels H you're breaking my heart you know what let's break this [ __ ] Soliloquy down and see whether this information could be gleaned through actions instead via the the cunning use of clips from the original show I like to play airball and eat banana cakes and goof off with my friends the other kids always say I'm lucky because the things I could do but I trade places with any of them I don't want to leave I don't want the responsibility I'm scared of my power I'm scared of being alone this sequence's equivalent in the cartoon does contain one or two lines that sound just like this I was afraid and confused but the difference is this is a confession Ang has kept the circumstance that led to his being frozen in the iceberg a secret for 11 episodes by this point until this fisherman accuses him of turning his back on the world and qara defends him not knowing the full story which makes him feel guilty he's explaining his reasons for running away to qara someone he respects too much to continue lying to he's not explaining it to the invisible audience all in all it doesn't matter how good or bad the performances are the dialogue still lacks any Nuance or subtlety so it falls flat Beyond individual lines the macro storytelling decisions in the show leave a lot to be desired the liveaction show story is told mostly in chronological order now opening with San planning The Invasion Ang finding out he's the Avatar and the attack on the air Nomads before moving on to the main plot in the southern water tribe I'm fairly certain the only reason the opening Earth Bender fight exists is to assure the audience that the bending won't look like absolute shite this time the damage this one shot did to the hearts and minds of Avatar fans is incalculable it's good we can laugh about it now though while the whole thing is definitely a tone Setter and some nice visual spectacle to get everyone immediately engaged I think something is lost by telling the story this way the cartoon left a lot of things of mystery in the first few episodes why did the Avatar disappear how did Ang end up in the ice why isn't he jumping into the fight now that he's awake again how did Zuko get that burn what led to him needing to hunt down the Avatar so badly some of those questions aren't answered right away which gives you a compelling reason to keep watching and vitally there's a very good reason that information is withheld from you none of the characters want to talk about it the Avatar disappeared and the last 100 years of war happened because Ang freaked out and ran away before getting caught in the storm Zuko was given his scar by his own father for disrespecting him and he needs to find the Avatar to end his banishment it's the greatest shame that each of them carries neither of these characters would be happily giving up that kind of information to people around them which gives them some added depth and heightens the drama of the later reveals I'm not proposing some kind of avant Nolan timey wiy nonlinear storytelling method here it's just selectively revealing certain pieces of information to the audience to maximize their impact and help you empathize with the characters that are likewise finding out this information In fairness to it the liveaction show still keeps Zuko's Origins a mystery at first and if you absolutely had to lose the storm tying the reveal into the blue Spirit episode makes perfect sense but all those questions about Ang are abandoned in favor of flatly charting all of his major life events in chronological order presumably this is so that the audience builds up main character attachment to Ang specifically and follow him as their point of view character but the result is that you have zero curiosity about Ang as a person qara Saka and all the rest of the village are wondering who Ang is and how he got there but the audience isn't so it's just dragging the story down to dwell on their questions similarly seen gatso explicitly get air fried by soan in the opening means that there's very little shock in finding his skeleton later listen I don't think anyone was ever under any illusions that all the Airbenders would just be chilling at the temple Common Sense would tell you that gatso would be dead after 100 Years anyway and they foreshadowed it all fairly thoroughly beforehand I mean what's the name of the show uh-oh John but receiving confirmation that a genocide occurred and in such a brutal way no less is the first real what the [ __ ] moment the show has if the tone for the first bunch of episodes has been all Plucky kids fighting off silly bad guys and going on fun adventures then it's jarring to suddenly see a corpse in the live action show you know exactly what happened to the Airbenders because you watched it all go down the only tension and drama you can get from the scene is wondering when Ang is going to figure it all out and how he'll react when he does and even that the cartoon did better with qara and Saka initially trying to convince Ang that the air Benders are all gone then covering up evidence of the Fire Nation in a futile attempt to protect him from the truth after they realize how much it will devastate him in this show Saka just picks up the helmet in full view of Ang in the middle of a scorched Courtyard well I'm generally a fan of the way Zuko's flashbacks were handled apart from the fact that he actually decided to fight oai and seemed to be able to get a hit in like what the [ __ ] I do think his story is lessened somewhat by separating his and Ang's Back stories now that montage and the cooler shove effect aren't doing all the heavy lifting of paralleling their two stories the writers have to find other means to connect the two which is the kind of decision that leads to all that extra dialogue in masks I also have mixed feelings about the condensed plot lines in the show jet and the mechanist stories have been folded into an expanded omashu plot along with some parts of season 2 including the cave of two lovers and aashu's defeat and aula is here full stop it's certainly more efficient if that was your focus say if you're limited to a certain runtime or budget and want to get all the hits out there it also makes the world feel a lot more connected and in my opinion having jet come into conflict with the mechanist over the former's absolutist stance on opposing the Fire Nation is a great move but that comes at the cost of some of the Nuance present in each of those characters dedicated episodes moving the mechanist out of the Northern Air Temple means that Ang isn't forced to accept progress except that making a memorial out of the air Nomads doesn't help the people currently living Saka barely gets to interact with Jed at all because he needs to be working with the mechanist at the same time so he doesn't get the chance to demonstrate his empathy for civilians regardless of their Nation even the pacing within the show on its own terms is a bit off as a result of this condensed structure that confrontation between qara and Jet where they say the dumb lines that occurs as at the start of the episode and it's the last time we see jet it's framed like the big conclusion of an episode Arc for qara but it occurs at the start of an episode disjointed from the events of the previous episode that it's paying off basically they're relying on you binging the show here or at least watching it in two episode chunks some episodes were completely cut and honestly while I could make a case for keeping imprisoned I am 100% fine with losing the waterbending scroll The Great Divide and the fortune teller there are some very fillery show of the week kind kind of episodes in the original that don't have much to do with the main plot and really aren't quite as entertaining as the rest having Graham Graham give qara the waterbending scroll is arguably more of an emotional beat than nicking it from some Pirates although it does result in some other losses we'll get to later Spirited Away and masks are probably the best example of the condensing working just like with jet and the mechanist involving such a cool character as June in more of the core plot is never going to be a bad thing in my mind and pulling the encounter with Co forward as well as changing his gimmick gives soccer and guitar are something to do while the blue Spirit Shenanigans are going on but other cut episodes are quite damaging to the quality of the show in my opinion both in the longterm and the short term B of the water tribe and the deserter are the sight of some fantastic development for team Avatar and we'll get into how their absence is a huge loss for the characters later on I know I keep saying that but so many of the issues here are holistic it's hard to separate one thing from another but practically speaking that likely means no Jong Jong in the rest of the show and they have no idea that hakot is alive these are all encounters that flesh out the world of Avatar and plant seeds that grow into some great moments later down the line rather than taking this winding bumpy route through the world where they visit a dozen new places and meet a variety of characters instead the gang visit Koshi Island omashu that one Village and the northern water tribe it doesn't kill the show it just diminishes it it flattens [Music] it narratively speaking an almost Universal characteristic of a protagonist is that they undergo change don't worry I'm not going to do the whole YouTuber thing where we patronizingly outline the hero's journey I'd be frankly amazed you managed to get to this video on this day and age on YouTube without ever coming across it let's just say protagonists almost always change Luke Skywalker starts out as an excitable naive Farm Boy itching to get out and see the world and ends his Trilogy as a thoughtful reserved Jedi Knight there are outliers of course like Lou and crawler but these are characters written to be alienated from the viewer they actually Pro the rule through their Defiance of it a common change is for a character to overcome some kind of floor or personal hang-up part of Luke's growth as a character is suffering the consequences of recklessness and arrogance as well as the turmoil of finding out Vader is his father he learns patience and mindfulness and develops empathy for those he previously thought of as unredeemable monsters again the slightly sick feeling you get when Lou fails to become a better person is what happens when you go Against the Grain here in the Avatar cartoon the characters went through dramatic changes over the course of the show not only do you have saker's Arc which I covered in the opening but Ang similarly matures staying a goofball all the way through to the end but gradually embracing the responsibility he has as the Avatar qara is arguably the most static of the characters and even she has arcs in several episodes where she has to learn lessons about herself this is why it's particularly confusing that Saka doesn't start out sexist in the liveaction show absent that particular flaw he doesn't have any emotional journey to go on he starts out pretty great and ends up pretty great staying static like this not only makes Saka more boring but it also makes him harder to relate to more than that it diminishes his relationship with his father in the cartoon hakoda and the other men leave the tribe when Saka is much younger and his sexism stems mostly from trying to embody the heroic masculine traits that he idealized in his father fueled by his last words being a man is knowing where you're needed the most and for you right now that's here protecting your sister it instills in him this idea that people have strict roles and responsibilities in society and that the role of protector is tied to him being a man the tragedy is that hakoda was just trying to comfort his young son to give him some guidance and Direction given he won't be there to teach him for years or potentially ever so he offers him a brief set of instructions on how to be a good man that Saka completely misreads because he's a baby they keep Saka Hang-Ups about his father in the liveaction show along with how that resulted in how seriously he takes the job of prot protecting his tribe they even expanded into the flashback about the ice dodging trial where we find out that he's haunted by his failure to live up to his father's standards but that never results in an insecurity that hurts the other characters or even damages Saka in any way internalizing that he's not good enough for his father only ever comes out in his criticisms of qara for being naively optimistic which aren't even presented as being flaws she did make friends with a terrorist after all all it does to him personally is motivate him to try and become a better fighter in a really calm and even tempered way which just feels wrong to me especially when you compare Saka to Zuko's similar issues with his father adding in the ice dodging trial scene unites the two in failing to live up to the standard set by their fathers the only difference is that hakoda is a nice guy and lies to Saker about how well he did and oai is a dick so he banishes Zuko but that makes Zuko into a horrible little baby while Saka is just fine it makes the whole encounter on Kyoshi Island feels so lackluster Sak's whole reason to be there isn't to learn humility and respect actual problem is that he's not very good at things he's a natural on the Maracas but he [ __ ] up his ice dodging trial and he loses to Zuko even if he wasn't sexist you could still make the Kyoshi plot work for Saker and they get so so close to doing it when Suki appears interested to hear that he's the protector of his village I was so certain that he was going to lie and inflate his skills as a warrior leading to a humiliating public defeat by Suki in aspiring match where he learns that he should admit his shortcomings and learn from his betters but no he just confesses that he hasn't had much experience and is delighted when Suki offers to train him he's not even really bragging when he talks about being his Village's protector it sounds more like he's genuinely trying to relate to her if anything Suki is painted as the one showing off as she initiates the fight and feels the need to one up him in everything so there's no issue with his beliefs or personality it's just a skill issue I can't tell you how uncompelling that is to me you could say that they're pushing Saka down the path of realizing he doesn't need to be a hand-to-hand fighter to help his tribe through his interactions with the mechanist but in that case what's the point of him learning how to fight from Suki or painting that whole experience as a positive one is it just to establish Suki as a romantic interest for Saka or is it in service of Suki's story about opposing isolationism feels like the wrong move to put all the character development on the side characters at the cost of the main ones you can have both again the cartoon did it but if you have to pick I'd say pick the main qara also suffers from this excising of her more negative traits an issue she has to overcome in the cartoon is her jealous of Ang's natural bending ability as the only remaining water bender in her tribe she struggles so much taking baby steps as she figures it out all on her own then comes Ang and he does things in seconds that she took months to learn her insecurity about her bending ability even leads her to steal putting the gang in danger but she overcomes her competitive nature and focuses on herself and in the end she becomes a much better water bender than Ang as a result of her practice and dedication in the live action show he shows up tells her to be one with the force and she figures it all out I don't even think she tries to teach Ang water bending which is pretty wild I don't need this particular storyline to exist in the show but qara has nothing else to work on she's never unkind to anyone she's not bossy or domineering and it's not even like witnessing the brutal death of her mother left her with any violent irrational hatred her only problem is she needs someone to teach her water bending it's just a skill issue except no she doesn't even need a teacher and gives her like two nuggets of wisdom and everything else she gets from the waterbending scroll it turns out you don't need a teacher to figure out this Ancient Art you just need a book and to think about it for a second well have fun teaching yourself I'm sure you'll do a great job yeah she [ __ ] did everyone's calling her a master by the end of the show and she's presumably only been doing this for a few months you found a master haven't you yes you're looking at her which makes it [ __ ] that Ang doesn't properly water Bandon the show given how naturally attuned he is to the elements there's not even any back and forth between her and Zuko as the son and moonrise respectively which serves as a small scale version of the Moon Shenanigans later and the daily pace of the war qara is perfect so she can't lose which means they just end on a stalemate when the moon is killed and a fireball destroys the building what they do keep in is the whole northern water tribe sexism subplot where paku refuses to train qara because she's a girl keeping this in shows that it's not the entire presence of sexism amongst the good guys that the showrunners objected to it's specifically sexism in the main characters no one in team Avatar has inner flaws to overcome they mostly just forget that they're already awesome and need to be reminded of that on occasion the first questionable moment of these was when Ang finds gso's corpse and goes into the Avatar State destroying his surroundings and risking hurting Saka and qara in the cartoon he's gearing up to go nuclear when qara actively decides to try and talk him down she relates to him over their shared pain of loss and reminds him that even though the air Benders are gone he still has Saka and qara they've already resolved to Journey with him and keep him him safe but this is the moment they truly become a family Ang descends calms down and apologizes before collapsing in the live action version he thinks about gatso and that time he went on about how awesome Ang is and remembers that he'll always carry gazo's love with him you know what is beef if not cow persevering then he just calms down and descends and breaks down in katara's arms he also doesn't apologize for nearly killing them so that's it he can get himself out of the Avatar State they spend a lot of the rest of the show going oh that Avatar State sure is dangerous you need to learn how to master it or you could hurt someone Ang but all of that falls flat for me because he already did he mastered himself in probably the most extreme circumstance he'll find himself in for a good long while and stopped himself from hurting anyone he didn't need outside help it was his memory of Gat that kept him grounded which he'll always have Ang's lack of control over the devastating power he wields is a big sticking point in the cartoon so much that there's an entire episode devoted to someone trying to help him control it which goes terribly in the season finales he makes conscious decisions to enter the Avatar state with varying degrees of success but every other time is prompted by a loss finding gatso skeleton nearly losing qara and Saka in the storm Xiao killing the moon Spirit thinking qara had been killed by the earthbender finding out ARA was stolen and when he loses control in that state the only thing that brings him back is the intervention of an external force one time it was Roku but usually it's qara that through line that qara can always bring him back from the edge is a powerful one and I don't think the memory of Gat is a better replacement for it with this moment when ARA is stolen and Ang flies off the handle be better with Ang taking the time to have a good think about gatso and how much he'd want him to be kind or with Katara grabbing his arm and looking at him with this empathetic expression Clinging On to him until he finally stops and cries In Her Arms the cartoon used these moments to reinforce his fear of this power he always apologizes for nearly hurting people seeming ly shocked by the destruction he causes in the state I'm sorry I'm sorry I got so mad I'm Sorry Kara and just like when he messes up firebending he resolves never to use it I hope you never have to see me like that again in the live action show he doesn't even seem to be particularly worried about the fact that he nearly killed his only two friends in the world katara's dialogue to comfort Ang is changed from reassurance that he's not alone to reassurance that loss makes you stronger which I never like in anything you can't say that in a show where Zuko exists they do have qara Tang down from the edge in the liveaction show but it's been moved to the end when he merges with the water spirit the whole scene is reframed around Ang surrendering his body to the spirit as the ultimate sacrifice to save the world and when the moon is restored qara manages to talk him down with a version of the speech she gives him in the cartoon I think that's pretty great and in fact both liveaction adaptations made the right call in giving Ang a personal reason to go apeshit in the north and I like that there's some trade-off for Ang in becoming the coyon monster but I also think that it's less impactful having the point where Ang needs to be reached by qara occur when he makes a cold conscious choice to give up than when he's blinded by grief and rage by this point in the story he's fully accepted being the Avatar now he's just trying to figure out how to do it properly his journey with the Avatar State isn't synonymous with his reluctance to accept responsibility or his immaturity when wielding power anymore he just needs someone to teach him how to turn it on and off like Saka it's just a skill issue but the strangest instance of smoothing out a character's negative traits for me is that Ang didn't run away the show certainly acts like he did and I honestly have no idea whether this is a me problem Ang originally doesn't seem to feel any guilt about the state the world is in at the start of the show but by the end of it he's apologizing to people for abandoning them and I just get the sense that he was gaslit by everyone into misremembering what actually happened what actually happens is ang monologues to ARA says that he needs to go flying to think and then when the storm starts getting really bad he says to Ara that they should go back as far as we see the kid never meant to run away and so far everything we've been told about him is that he's perfect and special and can do no wrong so no wonder he doesn't feel any guilt about disappearing for a 100 years it was a total accident people even absolve him of any lingering sentiment he might have by pointing out that if he'd been there he would have been killed which uh maybe I'm not too sure about that like we went over earlier Ang's main Arc as a character is that he needs to overcome his fear and accept the responsibility of being the avatar in order for that to work he needs to have actually run away from that responsibility before but at the end of the first episode of the show he's fully gung-ho to be the Avatar and making a beline for people who'll guide him in what that means what that's replaced with is disagreements about what it means to be the Avatar and Ang and the crew usually win those disagreements every one of the avatars along with Boomie tell him that friends and attachments are a bad idea and he has to do this on his own the constant push back is that friends are great and everyone should Embrace their inner child the wrap-up statement of the show on Ang's character arck is that he needs to stop living in the past and look forward to the future but I don't think that matches up with the rest of the text the only thing in the past he keeps coming back to is gatso but he moved on from that and masks besides that he's very forward thinking actively trying to come up with how to help the world rather than living in this fantasy that he's just a little kid who can afford to goof around and put off helping put the world to rights that's cartoon Ang the effect that does have is that everyone who has a go at him for leaving the world to suffer for a century is wrong they have no leg to stand on which makes them seem like [ __ ] and Ang is a far more boring character because he has nothing to come to terms with about himself and work on in fact Ang never messes up in general here's a brief list of some [ __ ] up things that Ang does in the cartoon's first season running away from the air temple in the middle of the night setting off the booby trap in the Fire Nation ship putting the village in danger lying to sakur and qara about being the Avatar nearly killing the two of them in the Avatar state spending all of his time [ __ ] around trying to ride the unagi and whatnot instead of saving the world keeping the location of Saka and katara's dad from them and burning katara's hands with firebending none of these things are present in the liveaction show and along with them go all the character growth Ang doesn't need to learn self-control he's already right on track from the get-go I would say they haven't replaced it with other mistakes to tell a different but equally compelling story but they did Ang's new problem is that he's forgotten that he's actually the best and he needs to remember and accept that that valorizing of Ang ripples out to other characters as well if Ang doesn't do anything to wrong Saka and qara it's not a particularly difficult decision for them to stay with him like the choice between Ang and their father in the BAU episode after their introduction there's never a point where their friendship is tested and they reconfirm their dedication to each other they're just perfect to each other to the very end it's not just negative traits that get excised it's anything that could Rock the Boat between the three Mains after their initial encounter Ang doesn't seem to have much of a crush on qara for one not only does that mean that if they want to end the show the same way they're going to have to make Ang suddenly start to express feelings for qara which could be weird but without the cave of Two Lovers there's not really much chance for qara to reciprocate those feelings either Ang trying to impress qara was a pretty common motivator for a lot of his actions and led to him making a number of childish insecure decisions that put himself and the team at risk on more than one occasion part of his Avatar journey is accepting that he may have to sacrifice his personal wants like love for his duty to the world which the liveaction show definitely grappled with self-sacrifice is pretty much the only part of being the Avatar that his predecessors try to teach him but removing the additional context of his romantic love for qara I'mma Be Real it's just more boring there's less opportunity for drama and it makes him less of a relatable character to people who've also dealt with unreciprocated love you can see the same thing happen with Saka and UA and listen I'm not of the opinion that their romance is particularly interesting in the original but they somehow make it even less interesting in the liveaction show she's no longer engaged to that one nitwit she just broke it off independently off screen which kind of sabotages the whole defying tradition subplot of the north and worse everybody is okay with that Saka and the other guy get along just fine communicating openly with one another on the subject and supporting UA in their own ways which is lovely and ideal but have you ever met a teenager besides this way there's no tension no back and forth it just happens and it ends just like Suki it's flat in a more literal sense the characters are flattened by being less extreme than their cartoon counterparts the most obvious changes concern oai and aula and on the whole I like the changes in theory both characters take a much more active role in the events of the first season and a humanized far more than they ever were in the cartoon which I think is a smart thing to do naturally the show spells it out a bit too much but I like that it's there rather than not in the cartoon aula does get some very revealing back story throughout book three and ultimately becomes one of the most tragic figures of the story culminating in a complete mental breakdown in the conclusion through a combination of numerous betrayals leading to paranoia the lingering trauma of her mother's death and her desperate desire for ozai's love but she spent almost all of season 2 confined to the role of Zuko's psycho sister who shoots blue fire it was cool as all hell and it was shallow introducing her character earlier and actually showing us ozai's manipulations up front will make us hate ha the guy more and will probably make azula's later interactions with Zuko all the more compelling but I said that these expansions are better in theory because the result was kind of boring to me and this is one of those instances where I don't know if I'm just blindly preferring the cartoon because it's the original but I do have my reasons take oai in the cartoon we only saw him through Zuko's flashbacks and Ang's imagination and he was depicted in line with those two's perspective of him he was just a silhouette for the majority of the show a looming Spectre of Oppression to Ang he was a force of nature an impossible threat and the greatest realization of his duty is the Avatar that is until he reaffirms his belief that all life is sacred and he strips oai of his bending literally and metaphorically diminishing him to Zuko unable to understand how a father could maim and banish his son he was a terrifying and indomitable figure until he finally confronts ozai reducing him from a myth to what he always was just a man and an abuser and we see him in full that ends up being a through line of the show the realization of all the Monstrous villains of the show as just people everyone is trying to get Ang to murder them but he refuses to take a life refuses to accept that people are Beyond saving azula's self-conscious need to be perfect and seen as the best stemmed from a deep anxiety brought on by her father and ozai's cruelty and ethnos superiority is the product of generations of indoctrination it's quite profound and a mark of Ang's heroism that he chooses to see everyone as a person rather than a monster and the show instills the same belief on the audience in the live action show oai is an absolute bastard besides you know continuing the war and setting all those people on fire he gaslights and manipulates his children into competing for his love and burns half of Zuko's face to teach him a lesson but bizarrely Daniel Day Kim's performance is too nuanced it clearly hurts him to injure Zuko and he still goes and gives Zuko a second chance by coming to his room and explaining the lesson he was trying to teach him having Zuko stand up to him here and even after being burned standing by his belief in compassion it diminishes them both it makes oai look comparatively less cruel by being less harsh with Zuko and it diminishes Zuko's Arc of realizing he doesn't need his father's approval because he's already openly disagreeing with him on a slightly unrelated note I don't really get why aula doesn't have blue fire as her default in the show presumably they're saving that as an indication of when she goes Super Saiyan but I never understood it to be an indication of raw strength rather a unique trait of azula's fire bending like ozai and Zuko's fire didn't turn blue when they hit Peak strength under San's Comet taking it away from her character at this stage is just another thing that makes her a bit less interesting to watch beyond those two May and Tye were previously complete opposites being a dead pan knifethrowing semi- sadist and a hyperic chi blocking gymnast respectively it doesn't make them one notee characters they both have hidden depths form meaningful relationships with other characters throughout and equally meaningfully break them in the Netflix show they're basically the same person their only difference is that Tye smiles when she delivers her lines while May stays neutral I don't actually think they move once throughout the show they're just rooted to their marks which would be okay for May but I didn't think it was even possible for Tye to stay still part of this toning down doubtless comes from the move to live action it' be much harder almost impossible even to tell the kind of story The showrunners are trying to tell with ozai and his family would the form a silhouetted throughout every scene it' be Goofy and boring having these extended scenes of dialogue with a static Shadow you might shrug at this and say of course that's always going to happen in this kind of adaptation unconstrained by practical limitations animation allows for far more exaggeration in characters in both their physicality and voice performance and suspension of disbelief on the audience part is far greater to emulate animation style in liveaction tends to slip Straight Into The Uncanny Valley to which I would say don't make a cartoon known for its pure UNM dedicated ADHD characters into liveaction then the spiderverse films are better than every liveaction Spider-Man movie yeah that's right go ahead and leave your [ __ ] comment about Spider-Man 2 you only fuel me with engagement liveaction adaptations of comics and cartoons aren't intrinsically bad it's just that when you constrain something like that to real world physics the tone becomes similarly more grounded gray and muted I think liveaction is the perfect choice for films like winter soldier and Civil War because the tone is matched by the medium it's being delivered through likewise I could definitely see liveaction working for some other murkier time period in the Avatar Universe like a Roku and soen story or a Kyoshi story hell cor would probably work great in live action but this is the story of a bunch of kids rumping across the world with the main character a Whimsical Peter Pan who gradually accepts the seriousness of their quest in time but in the meantime he's going to go penguin sledding godamn it the effect that has is in reducing the most distinctive Fringe characters to seeming just a bit weird sometimes that's less to do with the performance and more down to framing like losing the huge zooms and musical stabs the cartoon was able to easily get away with that results in one of the funniest and most iconic parts of the whole show here yeah I forget the next couple lines but uh then it goes secret T instead hitting with all the humor and enthusiasm of a depressed blobfish in the live action show secret although it's hard to say that that's a liveaction problem when the crash zo um exists without that more exaggerated framing boom's Insanity comes across as more Awkward than anything but you'd still have that issue no matter how you filmed it I honestly laughed out loud when Boomie stripped down and this was meant to be the intimidating figure he was hiding underneath it's still impressive for someone over a hundred years old but the oh [ __ ] that comes from seeing the ridiculously ripped cartoon Boomie emerge doesn't translate to this more realistic version couldn't they have found someone more Hench to play him or stuck odar shamb bukar in a huge muscle suit or something if it's possible to bump Zachary Levi to Shazam levels or make Dwayne Johnson look like he did in Central Intelligence then it's possible to make someone else look like the rock but that reveal of Mumy is just the seasoning on the real meat of the issue God I'm so proud of myself for writing that line no the real issue is that none of the wise old mentors are particularly wise or good at mentoring the White Lotus get absolutely merked by this show take Boomie all of the challenges he gives Ang in the cartoon are to teach him a specific lesson as Ang puts it I had to open my brain to the possibilities the challenge with the key teaches him not to rush head first into everything and instead approach things from a different angle the encounter with flopsy teaches him not to judge a book by its cover even the final fight against him was to teach him not to underestimate anyone especially the elderly which the show fully proves to be Sage wisdom in the live action show they pay lip service to it with this one completely tensionless encounter a word of advice the direct PA is not always the best p it doesn't really come across to me like Boomie was fighting Ang out of any reason except Revenge the trolley problem he presents him with at the end feels more like an improv instead it feels like boomi is angry at Ang for abandoning him in the world and wants to take out his resentment on him in a fight here's the thing out of context I like this particular scene I think the lesson Boomie is trying to teach Ang is genuinely resonant that the burden of wielding power is having to make sacrifices to continuously make choices between one group and another as the other he'll be faced with the hardest choices of all and he needs to be prepared to make them it's great setup for the Ark in book three where he debates the morality of killing oai with his friends in the previous avatars the trouble is Boomie is wrong I want to be clear here I don't think it's a problem that boom's argument is wrong Ang's value in the world is his mercy and his unwillingness to sacrifice his morals for the sake of practicality his victory over Boi here is a microcosm of his final decision to spare oai although the method of relying on his friends to sort it out is fairly odd like will the final showdown end with soccer coming in to throw a [ __ ] Boomerang at the head of this fire god it's arguably better that this question is raised earlier than later my problem is that Boomie is wrong we've seen these kinds of artificial trolley problems in film and TV many times before but not from heroic characters this is a classic super villain move Green Goblin Joker Riddler Joker again doc HW Thanos flag Smashers Thanos again aie mandas Spider-Man 2099 there's a dozen examples and more of a Kookie costume baddy saying let this one person die to save another who are you going to choose Mah that's not to say that Heroes don't often debate the relative morality of killing and sacrifice but the difference between a hero and a villain in this scenario is the hero keeps it hypothetical until it's absolutely necessary to make the choice they don't drop a rock on someone and go quick quick are you a moral absolutist or more of an act utilitarian oh my God I neglect did to talk about the hero's journey earlier but one element I want to point out now is the often vital role of the mentor they guide the protagonist on their Journey setting them off on the right path before usually tragically dying Obi-Wan Gandalf Brum any other gray bitted wizard Mentor Avatar is absolutely stacked with gray bearded Wizards it even establishes a secret society out of them by the end and they pretty much single-handedly end the war those wise mentors don't need to be perfect gandal for instance is a massive Stoner so he keeps forgetting things and he can be snippy on occasion though that's Justified because Pippen is a [ __ ] [ __ ] but the vast majority of the time and especially when it's time to impart some wise words he's kind patient and forgiving to all even fulls of Tes likewise iro in the cartoon wasn't this perfect being of infinite wisdom he had a tendency to get distracted by hot food hot tea and hot women but he had a tremendous amount of empathy for people who by all accounts should be his mortal enemies and was fully Dev voted to helping Zuko actualize his best self I think the live action iro is mostly there but he had to go and Sass that one dumb earthbender after his monologue about how iro is responsible for his brother's death this is someone he should have the utmost empathy for they essentially had the same experience of loss in war except it led the earthbender down a path of hatred and led iro to Enlightenment but rather than offering some kind of condolences or apologies or nuggets of wisdom that might set the guy on a better path he just goes yeah war made you into a real piece of [ __ ] didn't it he ultimately shows mercy and Spares the man which is solid iro but he immediately gets stabbed in the back for it I feel like that would have been a good time to teach Zuko the value of Mercy but if anything it has the opposite effect that's what you get for showing an earthbender compassion if you don't mind pulling things in from book two why not lay some groundwork for Zuko's Redemption losing some of io's goofy fun is also harmful to the story in my opinion cartoon iro grew to see all life as precious after his son died in the war he takes the time to enjoy The Simple Pleasures and in doing so he shows Zuko that he has room in his life for more than just hunting the Avatar he has room for friendship love and community in the live action show all his joviality is reframed as pretense to avoid expressing his grief and concern for Zuko everything I need is on this boat like I said all the tea I need that is an absolutely heart-wrenching scene I agree but couldn't he have also made some tea at some point I think I saw him with t like once throughout the whole show this is another downside to losing Jong Jong from the story without him we lose yet another opportunity for Ang to learn something imagine taking Yoda out of the story of Empire Strikes Back Luke isn't cautioned against recklessness and impatience he FASTT tracks to cool swishy Jedi tricks and he doesn't [ __ ] up so badly he learns the lesson the hard way it's just Luke going off to rescue his friends which he succeeds at without any loss because he and they are perfect it seems to me like they took the single story of the gang coming in with fresh ideas and teaching paku not to be sexist and made it the theme of every old man encounter there's nothing for them to learn from those that came before in fact every one of the lessons they try to teach are rejected by the gang the Avatar doesn't need to make difficult choices or face certain battles alone just believe in the power of friendship and everything will work out the avatars themselves are a whole other bag correct me if I'm wrong but avatars are meant to be at one with the universe right they embody balance and Harmony amongst all things and are the bridge between all peoples and all worlds it involves a good deal of thoughtful meditation and sober reflection on the moral use of power their journey in mastering themselves and the elements of the world is long and arduous but eventually every Avatar reaches Enlightenment so why the hell is Kyoshi such a dick we're not talking about some kids in the middle of their paths here still a bit rough around the edges and frankly having more trouble with puberty than manipulating the energies of the universe this is a a fully actualized Avatar who lived a whole life more than a whole life Koshi was over 200 years old when she died and yet run away from your responsibilities again and even more will be hurt being the Avatar means putting your duties above all else even your life that doesn't sound very at balance with the universe to me I like that all the avatars have unique qualities partly dictated by their culture and partly by their individual personalities I'm not sure I like that Roku was a bit of a jokester now given his best friend kind of murdered him and his inaction led to 100 years of war and the genocide of the Airbenders but hey ho I like goofy iro and that guy [ __ ] up like most of his life so I'm down with kuki Roku I'm also down with Koshi being more of a police brutality vibed Avatar who has a policy of break the law and I drop you into a pit of lava that's exactly what she was like in the cartoon but I don't think that justifies her being so impatient and rude to Ang and how many have already been hurt because you haven't been here once again Ang didn't run away way and he's been trying his best to find out how to be the avatar ever since the end of the first episode which Koshi should know as an immortal spirit and also a pre- incarnation of Ang cartoon Koshi made mistakes of her own in life she created the DI who end up being arguably the biggest threat of book two she of all people should know better and surely all of these wise mentors should know that this isn't the most effective way to convey their wisdom but all the other avatars are the same snapping at Ang when he asks very basic questions I'd expect of a confused 12-year-old anything you need it has to do with Co anything but that you don't understand no you don't understand that is not possible yes it is Koshi did it I'm not Koshi but you still could no I can't Koshi was an absolutist and believed in using her power to bring about Justice by any means necessary including killing that's the belief of people like oai and soan who were willing to sacrifice anyone and anything to achieve their goals an attitude that led to this world being the way it is ang needs to disagree with her to be this world's hero but tone is important I think the Kyoshi of the cartoon sounds like someone who's made peace with her values and the consequences of action and inaction but I assure you I would have done whatever it took to stop chin I offer you this wisdom H only Justice will bring peace her methods worked for her time so those are the anecdotes she draws wisdom from liveaction Kyoshi sounds like someone who's never questioned herself once in her life a mighty merciless Warrior much like Boomie she sounds like a [Music] villain it was when I had this thought that it clicked for me why they kept certain things the same and made the changes they did they're trying to appeal to gen Z Ang and the Gang have emerged into this [ __ ] up world where all the previous generations are either actively perpetuating systems of Oppression or so jaded and hopeless that they're doing nothing but trying to stay afloat while the world gradually burns the kids have got all this passion and will to write wrongs but they've got no idea how to actually do anything about it just like the characters it's a skill issue you had it harder than him even the sympathetic Side characters are teenagers chafing at the restrictions placed on them by their parents from a certain point of view that makes sense it's certainly difficult but in the past I've been able to rationally accept that the thing isn't bad simply because I'm not every target audience that I don't have any right to claim authority over a piece of media simply because of my attachment to a version of it I think stories should change and adapt just as Society should change and adapt there's a great tradition dating back to the dawn of civilization of telling and retelling stories making changes and embellishments that speak to the truths we wish to express and impart on each other and our children to inspire and to ask questions about the world we live in but storytelling conventions aren't isolated to a particular time or generation they're wrapped up in the essential Human Experience the journey Heroes go through mirrors our own journey through life from childhood to adulthood which is why we keep telling it over and over again and have done for thousands of years we'll always have internal struggles as long as we're human we'll have to question our beliefs admit our faults and yes struggle against the prejudices of those that came before but to also struggle to know ourselves along the way I think the showrunners fundamentally misunderstood the concept of a hero and thought that it means someone who is always right who leads the way and shows everyone how to live they clearly weren't afraid to tackle topics like sexism but only as external forces that the heroes need to defeat never as an internalized issue their characters are aspirational but they're not relatable if heroism isn't a choice if it doesn't take work to be better how heroic can it really be they took this story of Ang and the team going out into the world and growing up asserting themselves when they see inj jce but learning from their own mistakes and the wisdom of those that came before and they flattened it flattened it into the story of perfect Ang and as perfect friends going out into the world teaching everyone else right and wrong through the power of Hope and friendship and you know what it's funny the cartoon characters feel more real thanks very much for watching I hope my post cold voice isn't too weird to listen to I will admit this one ran away from me a little bit and it might have been a bit too rambling in places I wasn't kidding when I was talking about my attachment to this show and I hope that the points I was trying to make are actually valid and not the unstructured ranting of a butt hurt Fanboy with that in mind I'm quite curious to hear if other people share this sentiment or disagree with it so sound off in the comments if you've got any thoughts on the subject or you know if you just want to rant about shitty Avatar adaptations I absolutely won't hold you to the same standards I hold myself to so feel free to go off on one this is a safe space for you subscribe if you'd like to see more from me and the Gang at UDS and check out our sister channels UD UDS gaming and UDS music if you're an absolute [ __ ] for Content my name's Drew and I'll see you in the next one Water Drive

Channel: UDS Films

Views: 52,288

Keywords: UDS Films, Upside Down Shark

Id: ZVWs8OLYchg

Length: 66min 3sec (3963 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2024