Just finished watching the live action and i absolutely loved it. This is best in quality and Albert Kim (program creator) proved he’s a fan. This show got everything and felt bit of rushed from the cartoon. But they beautifully condensed the story we saw on 20 episodes into 8 episodes. Gordon Cormier portrayed Aang so well. I felt him like Aang because he had the responsibility(convince the fans) to carry out this role at this young age. This show doesn’t have fun elements as like in animation, but it felts so realistic to the new audience. Hopefully this series could bring more viewers to the original series. There are many sequences which are only on the book are shown and it makes more sense to the story. Netflix should bring the next season soon before the cast gets more old. I know the creators of this show left Netflix due to creative differences, but Netflix did a good job.
I guess I’m in the minority here, I’m like 2 or 3 episodes from the end and can’t stand it more each episode. Outside of the people getting toasted, this feels like a g rated cartoon, WAY more than the og ever felt like a cartoon. The og was mature, and was all about showing, not telling. This show i feel like there’s at least 10 minutes each episode of Aang talking about his feelings on being the avatar, or how he doesn’t want to hurt people. And that’s just Aang! My buddy and I literally started groaning loudly every time a monologue started lol, saying “here we go again!” Like, we get it kid, you’ve got issues, we got it 8 episodes ago, 7 episodes ago, 6 episodes ago… Like how many times do we have to hear the same thing. They cut out so much just to have them explain every little fucking thought going through their head. There’s nothing wrong with having characters say what they’re feeling, but when it’s EVERY episode and you’re only TELLING US, never showing us, it gets old quick. And when they aren’t telling us, it’s because the way they’re showing us is by having the camera linger on whatever character just stopped talking for way too long while their lip quivers and they tear up. Every time.
I do appreciate that it’s not a shot for shot remake and we’re getting new sokka jokes, but it’s super weird that they keep coming back to do certain scenes and dialogue shot for shot. This makes it incredibly obvious that they didn’t want to tell their own story using the avatar, but makes it seem like they saw the show and wrongfully thought they could do a thing here and there better.
The characters deliver almost every line with the same monotonous drone, the only exception being Roku which was so jarring it took me out of the show completely. And every character arc has been wiped and our main trio is flawless. Sokka isn’t sexist anymore, him getting “humbled” by Suki meant fuck all. Katara didn’t steal the scroll or get jealous of Aang’s water bending, and Aang isn’t goofy. At all. No mentions of penguin sledding, Unagi, marbles, riding the carts… We lost the charm and the humanity of the cartoon. Everything exists to get to the next point, with no room for anything extra. It’s so jam packed and forced and rushed and it’s only to advance the plot, or to exploit nostalgia. But I can see these being the reasons the creators backed out. Just because we have the “good guys” doesn’t mean they aren’t people with flaws. Sokka’s sexism is a prime example. He doesn’t get humbled, katara only has to get over “feeling the water” to bend instead of also wrestling with the fact that she’s a girl in a sexist village, but then it makes the fight with Pakku SO MUCH MORE insignificant. There was NO build up to that, it was instant sexism issue, then instant resolution. We didn’t see struggle and growth but a deus ex machina. I know the creators like being controversial and pushing subjects like that to teach a lesson, and our main gaang is pretty flawless character wise. I hate it.
If this was the only avatar show we had, it’d be pretty good. BUT, we already have perfection, the cartoon already exists, it already did everything perfectly. The little differences the live action makes are simply… Not worth it. All this show did was really drive me to start a rewatch of the cartoon. The entire time I kept thinking how unnecessary it was. I think the best comparison I can make, is if there was an Eragon TV show that followed the books perfectly, that would be the cartoon… And the live action feels like the movie.
Maybe I’m just getting cynical, but I found the whole thing to be unnecessary, forced, rushed, goof-drained nostalgia bait.
However I do like seeing Azula’s goings-on
After thinking over it for a while, I think my biggest problem with the show was that it’s boring. I like some of the changes but not all of them. For example, showing more of how azula was manipulated is good, I kind of like that she was in kahoots with Zhao, but I didn’t like how goofy they made Zhao. I don’t like that they made Sokka not be a Renaissance man, and instead he just cries about not being a good fighter even though we’ve seen him fighting. I’ve got tons of other examples but I just feel like the series is incredibly superficial in nature, and the characters don’t have any depth. They also seem to shy from the ugly parts of personality in our good characters, like Sokka’s sexism (didn’t have to make him sexist but could’ve given him another flaw), Katara never gets angry even though I always thought those were some of her best fights in the animated show, Zuko doesn’t mention his honor once, etc. Just felt a lot like a kids show trying to be “grown up” in the worst way possible. In the end, again, my biggest problem with the show was that it’s boring.
Oh and I also really dislike that nothing feels earned. Like Katara became a master because…??? She learned from 1 scroll? Her inner strength eventually convincing Pakku to teach her, and then her training really hard and progressing quickly to become a master felt much more earned in the animated show, than the live action where they just started calling her a master. It felt so dumb.