The Good, The Bad, The Pointless: Avatar the Last Airbender Netflix Review

okay so this is officially my first unscripted video hopefully this doesn't go too bad but I just had to get my thoughts out and there was no way I was going to write an actual script for this I have a script an avatar script that's in the works but yeah I had too many thoughts and I had to get them out especially because we're like 72 hours into the live action being out right now as of time of recording and I'm very close to overwhelmed with the amount of just discourse but yeah hopefully this uh works out and it doesn't sound terribly hopefully nothing interrupts me while I'm recording this and hopefully I don't have too many takes or too many filler words or stumbles or moments that make me want to not put this video out so yeah here goes uh here goes something so recently I watched the atla live action on Netflix and yeah it was it was something I lowkey live tweeted myself watching these episodes and you can still see that on my Twitter where I kind of go through my uh most significant hits and pretty much anything I blurted out while watching I just had to go and uh get it out somewhere but yeah my overall thoughts basically I'm kind of 50/50 about this it's just sort of okay from what I've seen there is a bunch of different like sides to the discourse and I don't know I feel like everyone's kind of missing the point of it or maybe not missing the point but just missing the mark there are the people who just want to hate it because they didn't feel comfortable with it coming out in the first place we hate liveaction adaptations we're not comfortable with that and cool I respect that I guess then they're the side of people who want to love it and they're like oh my gosh it looks so beautiful everything this series this adaptation has been like hyped for like maybe five six years pre pandemic so for us to finally get it now I'm sure that there's a lot of just I don't know unbridled Joy I guess like just people just enjoying what they watching and I respect it and then they're the people who are in the middle what's baffling me the most is the people that are in the middle aren't really in the middle the middle just seems to be a lot of people arguing from what I've seen the live action dropping just kind of regurgitated a lot of atla talking points that I just it's just not even fun to engage with so first I would like to you know lead with love and talk about the things that I actually loved from the series so the first thing I have written down is Zuko and Xiao like I feel like that is how you adapt something putting Xiao on Zuko's ship makes it more believable or makes it for a more interesting twist or Direction on the angle of why Xiao is amassing so much more troops when I was a little kid it was there were multiple stages of like residence because I watched this show for the first time when I was in like between like second and fourth grade I think but when I was a kid there were like multiple waves of realizations like Zuko was kind of sent on a wild goose hunt like he was never supposed to come back home that was one realization I had after watching the first season on rewatch I also realized that um there was a specific pointedness to Xiao getting more troops or getting more resources to look for the Avatar seeing him get more resources and seeing Zuko in this very despondent and also like desperate situation made it for made an interesting look at things especially like in season one of the cartoon when xia eventually tries to take his or takes his crew actually that was a very humbling and very like emotional for me moment for Zuko to feel like wow I'm really about to lose everything but in the live action blurring that line and making it so that those two are together makes it so that you can't really understand whether or not oai wants Zuko to find the Avatar or whether or not Xiao is really pulling the strings I feel like in the cartoon xia was very kind of mustache twirly villain I I think he was complex enough as a person person I definitely feel like he is a person that is just trying to move up the ranks in his real life but to make him this kind of snide conniving smileing your face kind of villain in the live action I feel like works even just it works so much better and creating this fake respect this fake like honor he just had to pretend to play the part of a fire nation Admiral or Commander or whatever and then just putting them together kind of creates a situation where once he gets the advantage over zuka who is technically a superior to him he's going to take it and he's going to use that to progress himself it makes it even more of a knife in the heart when Xiao blows up Zuko's ship and Zuko survives and confronts him like that was I felt like that was beautiful um and I felt like Dallas he did a pretty good job as far as casting went I felt like Dallas Lou and Ken Le young like they played off of each other well and Ken he acted his butt off like I I believed him I believed he was this kind of person I felt like Dallas played the part of Zuko being kind of sniveling kind of of a punk kid he played that aspect of it well the angry and rash hot-headedness I didn't feel like came across all the way like it was almost a little too emotional for me I think it would have been better if we could have seen some more like a Steely kind of representation of Zuko even in his headedness I I feel like making him so kind of twerpy it AED in some sense but it hurt in other scenes some of the emotional beats really hit for me another emotional point that really hit for me was uh Zuko and iro I felt like again I have to stop comparing I guess but iro wasn't as jovial or as warm of a character in the live action as he was in the cartoon but I felt like he did a serviceable job I I think that it was I'm going get to I'm going to get to some other parts of the I guess the structure the structural bits of the show but it was good I felt like in terms of writing and representation or his presentation it came across pretty well one scene that struck me like hard was within the the flashback scenes to iro coming home when Zuko and iro kind of share that little moment and the music started I didn't even recognize him I just started feeling like really emotional I was like wow this this scene is hitting and then and then in my head I was just like wait a minute is this like an orchestral Brave soldier boy this is crazy like I the emotion really hit in that scene and I felt like they did a great job portraying that and in a few other of the more touching scenes between Zuko and iro I felt like they really stuck the landing on those some of the other scenes not so much but we're leading with love another thing that I really liked was the 3D rendered scenes I don't know what to call them there were some scenes that were either majority or entirely CG rendered I don't have the vocab for it and hopefully I don't sound like too much of an idiot because this isn't my field but there were just some scenes where I could recognize that I'm like oh this is like some Cinema 4D you can see it especially in the the beginning of the first episode when they have the uh uh elements like that first display of the elements it's it's very quite obviously a computer graphic rendering of a model moving but I liked them I I liked it especially in the end with the giant like Co Kaiju like seeing that in CG and seeing him destroy the boats and people were jumping overboard I would rather that than some like of the really weirdly composited and Blended scenes of people jumping off of some CG Cliff like that that stuff kind of felt a little more Awkward watching things cut from some live action real people into the CG render scenes it it struck a little weird at times but again I personally liked it I think it looked pretty smooth it looked pretty cool and I watch Like blender reels on YouTube all the time so stuff like that is always just going to be cool to me um another thing on I guess this is more production stuff I guess I I'll knock those out really quickly so some of the Fire Nation scenes and hopefully I I have the time to grab some of those and show it to you on screen but some of the scenes in like the Fire Nation bunkers or just in Darker settings when they had to bend they would throw like a harsh grain over the the video and not not only a harsh grain they would kind of like extract like create a little more depth where the highlights were pushed a little higher and there was just like I guess less exposure to the scene and I thought that looked perfect like especially for the fire bending obviously it's going to pop off the screen but just a lot of the bending there was a few scenes where like qara was water bending in a cave and there was just like a heavy grain to it like it it just looked cool as hell to me especi like especially when you take some of those scenes and then you compare them to some of the washed out scenes of them like flying on Opa or something there are some scenes where I'm like wow this is really lacking some color and I felt like that on top of those scenes where some of the bending just looked really just orary I guess is the word I would use like just it just stood out I felt like if you slap some of that Grain on there and then you just have a little more contrast to your scene it would look cooler it would look cooler it gave me like John wo Kung Fu flick Vibes whenever they did it and I felt like leaning away from that or especially having such like visceral difference in that was very jarring to me like that first scene with that dude messenger running away it's so it's just it looks so good some of the color choices in this show really baffled me because from shot to shot it was just very uh uncomfortable I guess that's just just happens when you have to shoot some scenes on location some scenes on a green screen some scenes in like those weird like mechanical rooms where they can move the green screens around like I guess some of that is just what's bleeding over to making it feel making it or leaving them with a lot of restrictions in terms of how they can color their scenes but yeah and then after that I guess last thing on the production thing amashi was beautiful I think the idea to intertwine uh jet the mechanist and Boomie into omashu was chef's kiss like omashu is the is the second to last stronghold of the earth Kingdom like obviously there's going to be mad stories to tell in this city right especially with how it looks and it's so teared it gave me like that was the point where I had some like Game of Thrones Vibes you know it it just gave you kind of King's Landing anything can happen around any Corner kind of feel and I thought that that was really dope like it really it stuck out to me as like a really I won't say ingenious but inspired decision it felt like something that had a point and it felt like it was conveying something to especially with all of these different opinions or different actions or motives in terms of interacting with the Fire Nation or perspectives on inter or living after the war in this war time period it was perfect like I also on top of that whoever uh the actor was forette he was dope as hell like I felt like he played his character crazy well like he was dope I think Tao's character was a little skewed hard away from what he was supposed to be but again I got to give them their you know artistic creativity to try something different my biggest crime against that episode I guess is just that I felt like it it they should have stayed in omashu for longer okay and last last last thing on the love um I really liked sasa's portrayal I'm aware of the controversy regarding Ian's uh casting and I'm not going to try and speak over that but I do think that he portrayed Saka pretty well um he he had like this goober energy but he still had this like I want to be tough I want to be a leader kind of situation going for him and I felt like a lot of his lines perfectly portrayed the conundrum that is Saka and then beyond that I think that episode 6 masks was genuinely a really good piece of Television writing like I I feel like from start to finish that episode it did a lot of cool things but I really like the the the read of qara and Saka being stuck in the spirit world with Co and how that kind of then parlays into episode 8 with uh Avatar krik I feel like that was actually some really good uh TV writing where you're connecting like episode four or five with episode six and then episode 8 in terms of inclusions or decisions in changing change UPS in the story that was one of the more inspired decisions in in terms of the Saka guar thing and the way that they were brought in the blue spirit Spirit episode so I really like that and I kind of really like the double cross of Xiao with Zuko so those two things played hand in hand for me I felt like that was the standout episode of the Season like there was just a lot to like right there so yeah I guess that's all I have for love things that I didn't like my biggest I have not rewatched this episode yet I only rewatched episode one and that was to just try and like cleanse my palette or cleanse my like view of it when I first watched it I was having a hard time cuz I was expecting it to do what the cartoon did but once I put that aside I could I could experience it a little better episode two though I haven't rewatched but that was not my Suki that was not my Suki at all I don't know what the hell was going on with her that girl was a robot now I don't want to be mean to the actress that was playing her and I don't even think she did a horrible job playing the character as it was written my big thing with this entire entire live action is the dialogue is horrible like some of the lines and deliveries hopefully again I probably am not going to be looking for examples to be putting up here but y'all know y'all know what I'm talking about some of the lines were just so clunky man Suki I felt like qara was she was just cheesy line after cheesy line Aro had some like it just so many moments where it's just like wow this writing the the dialogue writing and then also the actual like story writing like the Beats of how we were trying to get from point to point was just so clunky man and it really undermined a lot of the scenes that I felt like had some actual like impetus and some actual like weight to them I felt like in that second episode Suki had no reason to talk to Saka like there was no reason set up at all Saka does not prejudge the Kyoshi Warriors for any reason in this live action so for him to then be sneaking and watching them train for some reason isn't well uh played out I guess in this story right they're playing up the fact that uh Saka wants to be a warrior but okay why wouldn't he just go in and ask then I feel like it was just so telegraphed a lot of these uh uh character interactions like now is the point where Suki's character is supposed to have dialog like that scene with uh Saka throwing his boot umang why did Suki come to talk to him and why is Suki talking to him like a robot why is she like oh is this what you do and throws her uh like there is no banter there is no like playfulness there's just nothing that's going on here it's just characters repeating lines of dialogue to each other and that happens throughout this whole live action and that is just that's the point where I'm so confused as to whether it's the undertaking of having so many episodes to uh to condense or if it's just a a misunderstanding of the tonality of the series or if it's just a lack of ability of construing some of these themes and ideas which are very like are a little like Puritan e views like I don't know what's a good word to describe it as but there are like some of the Notions and some of the themes of Avatar are pretty hokey and cheesy so I can understand how that being a task of trying to make that feel natural but natural this did not feel like at all uh so going off from the just I guess overall dialogue writing and some of the choices from the script I think I'm going to try and like quick hits this these two points right so when adapting a piece of media you're bound to have to make cuts to try and fit it towards your uh medium so that I understand we had to cut a lot of stuff from this live action which is understandable there's only a episodes whatever I know people want to talk about minute times and run times but we can see like in one of my videos I kind of alluded to it but you can see the difference between a two 112 episode cartoon and a 22 minute cartoon if you watch fion and cake and watch Adventure they feel like two different entities and that's because of that mid roll and those the different approaches to storytelling so obviously a live action is going to have a completely different approach to storytelling regardless of the minutes per episode right or the minutes total whatever I don't have a problem at all with making cuts what I do have a problem is and I don't know I still I'm struggling to figure out if this is just the Uber fan in me or if this is just like real like this is actual like forehead logic why are we bringing up so many things from season 2 into season 1 like the cave of Two Lovers the cave being there I thought was genius like yes go through the cave great way to to lead into that appearing in season two if you you guys get to a season two great do that the Secret Tunnel of the song is a great song so yeah you kind of want to allude to it you could just you could have just had an OST sting of that song there to have those guys there wasted time for no reason if you want to keep going further on into these episodes the owl being there made no sense like again some of the changes that were made into the series are Hit or Miss for me right I think having and only being able to speak to the avatars at different uh Avatar shrines it's a little video gamey but I get it it's a way to not have to have him going into the spirit world as often and it helps you streamline the pacing of your show supposedly it helps you streamline it he needs to get to this one then this one then this one then this one then finale cool I get it right I feel like doing that already creates a bit of a marker at least for me right of a situation where of three different situations with an going to these uh Avatar shrines where he would go into the spirit world so understand that we can have those three moments makes it makes it feel like there is a little less of a shock or at least it makes an going into the spirit world not unbelievable it kind of D stigmatizes some of an going into the spirit world and I'm I know I'm rambling I'm yapping but I'm going try to land this so having to jam-pack the one real like straight into the spirit world trip that the gang takes with 75 different spirits that you're going to see through the series feels like it just feels so disrespectful to the way that the series itself lays out its lore I I do not think that um W Tong had to be there like it he didn't serve any purpose other than to look there I honestly don't even think haot needed to be there because what was the purpose I don't even think they turned him back into a panda like it what was the purpose again I do think that the way that they looked was amazing but we didn't need to see them like it just I felt like we under we we lowered the stakes of going into the spirit world or at least we lowered the the toll of going into the spirit world just to have a million things happen in the spirit world for no reason I think the UA uh Fox thing was again a choice I don't hate it though I kind of like it it sets up a precedence for other things to happen like that in the spirit world cool subversive storytelling I'm all for it but then to show all of these other Spirits just for shock value it felt like it undermined the point and to go back to just that season 2 experience like I I felt like so many things were just kind of unnecessarily compounded on because at the end of the day you are trying to catch in on Nostalgia but it just doesn't work if you aren't if you aren't giving narrative purpose for them and my last point on things that I didn't like um and my biggest point right I just don't understand how we wanted to create a more a series that adults could watch whatever blah blah blah blah blah I hate animation takes from the Netflix writers cool I got that but to me from a writing perspective I also understand that when you're doing these interviews you kind of have to sell your show and you have to try and like say the most blanket statements that will it increase Intrigue but also not kind of completely turn people off so I could understand Maybe trying to walk that thin line and then misspeaking and saying the Game of Thrones quote whatever but man you you have multiple people being burned alive throughout the course of the series we have people being you know stabbed or whatever cut whatever thrown off of bridges we have blatant onscreen not even Illusions just straight up like portrayals of death but we can't have sexist characters we can't have abusive and um controlling or like un unrelenting fathers it it just it baffles me it baffles me to what degree to the to the degree that they sanitized all of these cultures they sanitized these the characters and they removed of them a lot of the uh a lot of the idiosyncrasies and a lot of the like character traits that made them like such endearing people to try and make them as I don't even like saying safe you've just sanitized these characters of any types of flaws or just complexity or anything and that to me is the most egregious thing about this live action it's one of it's the thing that I feel like is unforgivable to a certain extent like that qara paku fight was so undercooked you know like I don't think it looked undercooked at times some of it looked good some of it looked sloppy which is kind of the whole take of the whole series but why are they fighting again it doesn't make any sense to me that ozi who would potentially usurped the throne from his older brother somehow right we haven't seen how they're going to explain that in in the live acent but ozai who did that has this weird kind of loyalty and like uh respect of family within his two kids to the extent where he's pitting them against each other and he's just trying to make them strong it's just so it's such a weak motive I feel like it doesn't make any sense to me that oai would gently and temperately burn Zuko's face and then walk up into his room the next day to see if he learned a lesson like what who does that like and how is that how is that less of a bad portrayal of a father than just just having him be the hateful and abusive like and like viscerally abusive person that he is I just don't understand again like a part in a continuation of things that are brought up from season 2 that didn't make any sense to me why Zula was even here didn't make much sense like I understand the idea of trying to be like oh they've always been pitted against each other and which is why they hate each other I think that's perfect I think that's a great idea in some extent like you could have some of those or AC and that alludes to the fact that maybe maybe publicly oai shames Zuko but privately he he shames aula as well like I could see that but to make this weird thing where he he brings up that Zuko actually found the Avatar like what is the point of that like how does that even how does that make him a less divisive figure I guess to me than if he was just the hateful person that he was in the in the cartoon again some of these writing decisions the writing itself is clunky but then the decisions there is just like a disconnect that's happening there with the task that you're taking on with this series versus what you think is best to portray like those two things without being in alignment is really what sunk this series all in all but lastly this is an addendum so the last thing I guess I wanted to talk or at least get on record right is I think another sign of the clumsy writing for me is just the inclusion of the other avatars in general right so there is a lot of external or like supplementary lore about the uh avatars from the Avatar Universe there are the comic books there are the uh the Yang Chen novels the Kyoshi novels so there is a bit more knowledge about these avatars there something that I really liked about this series was the inclusion of these other avatars and their stories like the uh Avatar CK story is actually a really really important thing for I think Avatar fans at large to know and I wish more people would would have picked up the uh Yang Chen books to know about more about it but that it's it's just another sign of confliction for me I think some of the ideas included for Koshi was really dope I think some of the ideas included for Kirk was really dope but again I I felt like Kirk was just such a a cardboard cutout of the character that he's supposed to be it's almost like as if somebody read the spark notes of the Kyoshi novels and then just tried to like quick hits get him to say it and say his entire life story in as few lines as possible because it just didn't it didn't draw any sympathy from me and I know his actual story I felt like they undermine their point by having such rushed and such like diminished sanitized storytelling it's like one thing that you do is good but then you do something bad right after it's very it's very awkward man so I felt like that point really needed to be said because again like the Avatar universe is amazing I love it I I've been saying to my my sister sister since I was like in elementary school I was like this should be the next St Star Wars like I I I couldn't understand why so many other kids loved other Medias but were just kind of content on Avatar in those first three seasons and as it's expanded I've Loved a lot of the expansion but this is the first time where I've been like wow I'm actually like very conflicted because again some things that I've seen from this series were actually really beautiful I think that like the the take Xiao and Zuko I felt like was great I felt like the take on omashu was great I even enjoyed the take on Boomie I'm not going to get too far into it I know a lot of people rather him be like the kooky happy old man but I think trying to take a more uh quote unquote realistic darker tone to him it makes sense if you want to put that somewhere in the series you just can't do that and then do the rest of everything else you did you just can't do that and then make it so that the UA betral was actually called called off because cultural pressures don't exist in this universe it's just it just it doesn't add up I I don't know but yeah man I think I've talked for like probably over an hour I did not expect to do this hopefully I actually edit this but I really I really don't want to and there is music playing outside my house right now that I'm hoping isn't getting picked up out on the mic so so yeah all in all I'm still at a net positive with this show I'm still also kind of excited for what it season 2 could look like my only fear is I'm not sure how the writers can take some of the criticisms that's going around in and Implement that back into the story but it's possible a lot of the errors I felt like were not circumstantial it was more so a misinterpretation of how you can connect with your audience so I hope they can Rectify that and come back with something better anyways if you like what I said you know leave a comment if you don't like what I said leave a comment but if it's me I'm not going to respond and I guess I'll catch you guys in the next one peace

Channel: Cords

Views: 7,198

Keywords: Avatar, Atla, atla netflix, avatar sexism, Corduroycrook atla

Id: riPX6nQW3Mk

Length: 29min 6sec (1746 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 26 2024