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Problem with Avatar adaptations is that even a really good one will be bad in context of a series that has 100% rating (99% audience score!) on Rotten Tomatoes.
You simply cannot improve on perfection.I think the main problem is that they keep inviting the original creators, they sign on, the studio heads explain to the creators how the studio has figured out how to tweak things, creators say “your ideas are horrible and if you execute on them as you’ve described, everyone is going to hate it”. The studio’s refuse to budge, creators depart citing creative differences, studio gets their way. Is a steaming pile of shit. Rinse and repeat.
I heard the reason they left this time was because the showrunners wanted to basically recreate the series, and the original creators were like, “but… we already made that series. Let’s make something new”.
Could be false though, because I don’t understand how they’d get so attached to the project knowing that it was supposed to be a live action remake from the start…
So basically, show runners wanted to make Scott pilgrim vs the world while the OGs wanted to make Scott pilgrim takes off
Haha yeah exactly! Maybe that’s why they got attached originally. Perhaps they thought they could redo parts they were unhappy with or show new perspectives and storylines.
“but… we already made that series. Let’s make something new”.
And I think that was actually the best call possible when adapting an animated show to live action. You know, do something crazy, kill Aang in the first episode. Write an alternate universe where Sokka becomes a cartoon level dictator. Show the story entirely from the point of view of Suki and the Kyoshi warriors joining the war against the Fire Nation, or a prequel from the point of view of the Order of the White Lotus searching for, setting up plots or trying to find the Avatar during the interim 100 years of Aang’s absence. Almost anything else would’ve made for an extraordinary new creative addition to the universe, and would’ve been a more palatable translation from animated to live action. But all Netflix executives are creatively bankrupt.
This is the lifecycle of live action.
That and most come at it with the standpoint of animation is for kids rather than recognizing animation as simply a medium.
If they just took the original series and drew an extra frame between each frame I wouldn’t be surprised if it made more than any of the live action works.
I think another issue is that when telling the Avatar story, all the main characters are necessarily children, and the themes of the show require some really hefty acting chops to deliver lines convincingly.
I can’t fathom why they didn’t tell a new story in the Avatar universe, or at least remake TLoK where the main cast are a bit older.
Precisely. OG show holds up so well, remaking it is waste of time and money.
But there’s gotta be a way to milk it for more money without the risk of a new and original idea!
You simply cannot improve on perfection.
You can weave in more relevant lessons about stuff, also about more current topics. Nothing about the old one is really out of date though so it’d just be additions here and there. You can even roll in plenty of Korra stuff, it’s not that the series doesn’t have anything to say it’s just all over the place.
What any adaption certainly needs to do is start out with a list of lessons, not plot points. Change the plot all you want as is necessary for whatever medium, as long as the lesson aspect is intact people wouldn’t mind, also keep the “reveal the world to the protagonists” vibe. E.g. Sokka doesn’t need to learn his sexism lesson from Suki, it doesn’t even need to be Sokka who learns that lesson, but that lesson needs to be taught. It doesn’t even need to be about Avatar Aang, there’s plenty of others. Earth is next, isn’t it.
I didn’t watch the show when it came out and when I tried last year I didn’t like it. That made me wonder if it’s just not my cup of tea or if there’s a lot of nostalgia behind the good reviews. While I absolutely agree that animation is just a medium and there’s great animation for adults, I didn’t like ATLA’s style. I haven’t watched the movie but I’ll give the new show a try.
The only adaptation I will accept is one where Dwayne Johnson is playing Toph.
All others are inferior.
Unacceptable, he has to play The Boulder.
This and only this is acceptable, but they should still be voiced by the original voice actors.
What If he played the ember island version of her?
I hate how Hollywood thinks live action is the highest form of visual media. Like you want remake avatar? Up the budget for animators, pay the shit out of your voice actors, and pay some writers to add some darker themes. Would be better than any of the live action have been.
The original is pretty dark for a childrens show. Even as an adult episodes like the one about blood bending made me shiver a bit.
Yeah but they weren’t allowed to show or too directly imply death. That’s why Jet’s “death” scene was bizarrely vague. Getting rid of that restriction on the original writers would probably be interesting.
That’s basically what happened with Legend of Korra. It wasn’t TV-MA, but it was definitely a far darker show overall.
And when Korea got into the more obvious deaths they actually pulled it from broadcast and went streaming only.
The Earth Queen’s murder was the one that crossed the line for the Nick execs. There was no way they were showing that on TV.
Nah. Avatar isn’t dark at all for a kid’s show.
Nobody dies. Nobody gets cut. Bending really just amounts to “pushing” in most fights.
Naruto on the other hand is quite dark for a kid’s show.
I’ve only seen 1 episode so far, but IMO the format shift is worth it for the visual effects. Like, Sozin just straight up incinerating that guy would not have worked so well in the anime. And the actors seem quite good (the leads at least). My only real complaint is with the writing. And I mean, it’s not as if the original didn’t also have some pretty badly written lines in the first episodes. Adding in an actual 100 years earlier segment at the start is a big improvement, and it also gives us a taste of the kickass action scenes that are to come. At least for the intro to the show, live action seems significantly better than animated was.
Japan makes shit lots of live action adaptations of anime. they just don’t usually make it to the west.
And the manga fans don’t watch them.
Besides, a lot of those movies aren’t actually meant to be watched. They’re made by Yakuza owned company that have to do some production to “prove” they aren’t just laundering money.
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The problem is you have the literal actors shilling their bullshit to the masses.
Alex Meyers has a good video on this, he has this exact same opinion. I think maybe you would like it.
I’d watch that
The Netflix show wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t better than the original.
It had some really rough moments intertwined with some really well done moments. Overall it’s fine. The shots of the cities and some of the fights were beautiful. I also really liked some of the zuko and iroh backstory that wasn’t in the original show. Some of the dialogue was very clunky and they mashed up a bunch of stories into the same episode which felt weird and didn’t totally work. I enjoyed watching it for the most part. It was never going to be as good as the original so I think going in with that expectation helped.
Which isn’t really possible so I don’t know why they keep investing money into trying. Just make more animated shows set in that universe.
Well… Paramount, which owns Nickelodeon, allows Netflix to make an adaptation and makes a fat check off the IP. They don’t really lose any money either way. The good news is that they’ve given the creators of Avatar their own studio now and tons of new animation projects are in the works.
Which makes it more obvious that this was a cash injection to boost the Avatar-verse.
I loved it. And I was (am) a fan of the animated show. I think the adaptation was creative, approachable, and overall excellent. Fans forget that there’s a big potential audience that isn’t interested in watching a cartoon, just the fact that it’s live action gives so many more people an opportunity to see this world.
First episode was shit though
Yeah first episode was shit.
I liked how they bypassed Sokka’s sexism and made it more about his insecurities with his dad and what it means to be a man.
I liked how Katara’s fight with Paku and her ability to lead all of the female waterbenders made her a master in his eyes which lead to him telling the teens to find Master Katara.
I like how all the previous Avatars have baggage about doing things alone or being vicious. It forces Aang to find his own path instead of following someone elses path. He no longer needs to live up to the previous Avatars, he just needs to be his own Avatar.
Dude, Sokka’s sexism was not even a plot point and it was touched upon BARELY in two episodes in the animated series. And they did touch on it in the show when he was mansplaining how to throw his boomerang and Suki showed him up.
It’s the entire plot point of the Kyoshi Warriors. Take out Sokka’s sexism and there’s no need for a group of female warriors. Nothing would have been lost from the episode that pushed Aang further along his path.
How Netflix addressed it was about Sokka feeling inadequate as a man and seeing all these women who could do the things he wished he could. So he shyly and politely asked to be taught.
It’s a good change.
Oh man, I thought it was incredibly bad. Netflix is aware of this as well, since they’ve been writing thousands of fake reviews on IMDB since it released.
This adaption, while not perfect due to nothing coming close to the show in terms of perfection, is not bad at all. It’s shorter than the show so of course they had to make things flow quicker and things were cut out. But for a 7 episode take on season 1 I was impressed.
Yeah it’s not the best thing since sliced bread, but it was a decent TV show (in a vacuum.) Which was about the best we could hope for when they said they want to appeal to Avatar fans AND Game of Thrones fans.
I just don’t get it. Who wants a live action avatar. The show holds up just fine.
Only 1 episode in, but I already love it for how cool the bending looks so far. The second Sozin incinerated a guy while holding him, I was sold.
maybe they regard it as a separate revenue stream, so they can doubledip into what their demographics and marketing departments tell them are two completely independent audiences, cartoons vs live action. There’s gotta be some reason because there’s nobody who wants this, nobody who thinks it’s a good idea, and nobody who is not filled with trepidation and a vague nausea at its release, who is also a fan of the original show.
I also don’t believe it can be true that there is a subset of people who are too manly/serious and “absolutely will not watch cartoons” that overlaps with “would watch this obvious adaptation of a children’s show”.
But yeah, they don’t think that way I guess. Anyway I’m just glad it’s not another butcher job. Gonna give it a while before I watch it, I want them to understand this is nobody’s priority. (An Earthbender Avatar, however… that’s day 1 binge territory)
People with brain rot that think that animation is a lower art form, so they would’ve never even gave the original show a second glance.
Im only 4 episodes in so I can’t give a full review but I think the problem is there were some choices that were made that ruined the heart of what was good about the show. Uncle iroh and saka are not funny at all. I just saw the 4th episode which has the caves of omashu and the singing hippies were hilarious but got mostly removed. It’s like they think laughing would cheapen then shows seriousness or something. There is no love connection between aang and katara. And they added a bunch of storyline from season 2 for some reason.
Obviously there is no love connection between Aang and Katara, that simply does not work between a 12 and a 15 year old.
12 and 15 year olds can have crushes. Why do we have to act like children don’t experience love between friends? It’s part of growing up and part of the human experience.
They could have included crushes, yes. But I still think that in current societal climate Netflix would have wanted to avoid that
But the Fantastic Four had a great movie called “The Incredibles”.
I like that in the netflix version they added scenes that weren’t in the original. My favorite is the scene of Lu Ten’s funeral. Iroh is just sitting there silent but you can see on his face that is he is broken inside but everyone comes up to him and congratulates him that his son died a hero. No one says it but for me it felt like in the fire nation culture you’re not allowed to mourn the death of those who died in battle, which is a crazy concepts but fits with the Fire Nations fascist ideology.
I couldn’t find the whole scene, but here is the last part of it (https://yewtu.be/watch?v=hwPn2gJ1B_U). For context, Zuko has gone up to Iroh and said that Lu Ten’s death is great honor. But when he was about to leave he comes back and thats when the above video starts.
These scenes add so much to the character of Iroh, Zuko, Lu Ten (whose character we did know anything about in the original) and to war-time Fire Nation culture. It’s amazing!
My favorite part of that scene is that the background music is the tune of “Leaves From The Vine”
That was brilliant.
They managed to touch on one of the most emotional moments of the beloved series, recontextualize it on its own grounds, and tie it back to the original in a subtle and respectful way. The series doesn’t come close to capturing the magic of the original, but it has a little magic of its own if you let it.
Zuko’s crew being the soldiers he saved is also a great change. As is getting more Gyatzo.
The biggest issue is a lot of the acting and writing. The actors for Aang and Katara just were not the best, though I’m more apt to blame showrunners that don’t know how to deal with kids, as most older actors are great. And the whole series of episodes in Omashu and then the forest/spirit world were convoluted and stupid.
The other issue is changing characters completely. Bumi going from a fun loving crazy old man trying to teach Aang important lessons is now a crazy bitter old man attacking his childhood friend. The past Avatars, rather that being loving mentors, are just useless at best, mean at worst. And with Suki no longer being a foil for Sokka’s sexism, they turned her into a horny flirt.
I agree with you on all of this except the point on Bumi. I think the change to his character is great and makes him feel more realistic! It felt like the live action Bumi was trying to be as fun loving as animation Bumi but can’t hide how deeply the war has changed him for the worst, which makes sense since he is probably the only one (or only handful of people) to have lived and fought through a hundred years of war. He’s also trying to be a good friend to Aang but can’t help but feel resentful towards him for abandoning his role as the avatar.
Eh, they took it too far. He literally became an asshole. He didn’t seem like he was trying to be a friend at all.
They also needed to give him more backstory. We see young Bumi for what, a minute? Show us the kid Aang had fun with.
Small spoilers ahead: making Zuko’s crew the 41st division that he refused to sacrifice was a great addition to the story.
This was great addition as well!
I agree and also thought they did a pretty good job. Not perfect, but perfection is never attainable and for having to squeeze everything into 8 episodes, they did well!
Yeah this scene is great. There are a few more good additions, I have written about it at !avatar@lemmy.world already. My favourite episode is “Masks” with the blue spirit.
For a fraction of the cost, Netflix could have instead just frame remastered the original show into 16:9 (not lazy cropping) and spent most of the effort into marketing it properly to gain a much wider audience.
But that would involve talent, critical thinking, and accepting that animation is a format not a genre. So naturally they just bought the rights so they could have their version of Star Wars/Harry Potter.
I could go on an entire rant about how even thinking making an animated show into a live action is a stupid idea, no matter how much money you throw at it, but I think I’ll just wait for E;R’s 2 hour youtube special instead lmao.
Has this ever been done? Taken an entire TV series animated in 4:3, and just adding content to the sides of the screen on every single frame?
God I hope they never try that.
The best visual artists are extremely effective in their use of space. A 4:3 image expanded to 16:9 would just look weird, as the framing would simply not look right.
The alternative is some amount of expansion and cropping but it would still not look nearly as good as leaving the artwork in it’s original aspect ratio.
A great example is Seinfeld which looks frickin terrible in 16:9:
https://consequence.net/2021/10/seinfeld-aspect-ratio-netflix/
it can be done well. off the top of my head, a couple good examples are south park and marvelous misadventures of flapjack
I only know South Park, but from what I remember most of the shots there weren’t particularly cinematic, most of it was pretty “matter of fact” with the main action/focus to the middle of the characters with everything else around just being eye-candy non-important filler. I could imagine it then working much better.
That’s why you have it done by an actual animation studio with actual artists who can redo the composition if necessary. Way easier to do with animation than with anything else, technically speaking, e.g. you can crop out characters, reconstruct the matte and move the characters elsewhere without having to account for fancy realistic lighting.
The alternative is to be Babylon 5 which was shot on 16:9, framed for 16:9 but making sure a 4:3 crop doesn’t cut away important bits, in anticipation of the new format, alas the CGI was done in 4:3 and quite low res and noone has ever bothered to prepare a proper 16:9 release (and with the remake on the horizon that ever happening becomes more and more unlikely). There’s a version out there in acceptable 16:9, though: Most of the footage doesn’t include CGI and so is fine as-is, arguably better than the 4:3 crop, and the panned/zoomed CGI parts aren’t too jarring. Definitely blurry, though. I’d actually recommend it over the original release, imperfect as it is.
I’ll just wait for E;R’s 2 hour youtube special instead
Didn’t that guy get revealed to be a
nazi sympathizerstraight up neo nazi that peppers propaganda into his videos “”“as a joke”“” and got pewdiepie in a lot of shit for shouting him out?edit: yeah I just went back and watched a reupload of one of the videos (the SU fusion video) that I actually enjoyed before I really understood what fascist propaganda looked like or how to consume media critically and… wow. Even “censored” to get past youtube’s filters, it’s much worse than I remembered.
It’s not bad. Stop perpetrating this clickbait.
Edit: I was wrong y’all. It’s trash
I watched an episode. It’s really bad. I rewatched the series this last year so I could compare it. Just because someone agrees with the popular sentiment doesn’t mean they’re perpetrating (perpetuating?) click bait.
You watched an episode. That’s not representative for all episodes. Simple as that.
I gave a show an hour of my time to get me to watch a universe I already like and know. If it can’t “get” me in an hour, and THAT’S your front facing first episode? Nah, not worth my time
Oh, I absolutely understand that and it’s reasonable. But please dont go around saying that the series is bad, because the truth is that you have not seen the series. Just tell people that the first episode is bad.
I think it’s fair to judge the show by the first episode. This is all subjective, of course, but the changes they made to the story and to the universe will tell many fans all they need to know.
They made pretty massive changes. Aang has none of his childlike wonder, he can fly unaided like a Marvel superhero, and he’s seemingly now a victim of a joyride gone wrong, rather than the boy who ran away from the world.
And the CGI… it’s really rough in my opinion. There are entire scenes like the intro that are clearly 100% computer generated. If they passed that’s one thing, but they look really goofy and uncanny.
These are all good reasons to judge the show, and you do see them in that first episode.
If you can’t comment on shows you haven’t watched the entirety of, and having only seen 1/8th-1/10th of the show, then most reviews are entirely out the window, all nominations for awards shows (which watch one, maybe two episodes for deliberation), and pretty much half of all comments related to a show are all moot, is that what I’m to believe your point is?
I didn’t watch the second episode, so I can’t tell them it gets any better, so let me rephrase it. Based on the first episode, which by all means should be the most catching and the most engaging of the series if only to push viewership, the show misses the mark on the characterization and story-development originally set by the animated series, regardless of the decent visuals and respectfully done outfits. Not only does it change existing characters’ personalities, emotional maturity, and overall story arcs, it does so for reasons that seem to resemble “because new”. Why change how Appa is released, why change katara’s grandmother to include a poorly delivered word for word of the original intro, why have Aang address his running from his destiny and want to be a child so early when that’s a key part of him visiting the air temple? I’ll never know, because they lost me in the first episode. They had an hour to get me to give them the benefit of the doubt, and they missed the mark
Aang flies like Superman in the first minute of his first appearance in the first episode. I rolled my eyes so hard that my brain reset to zero expectations mode. It’s good enough to be background noise, specially if you don’t watch or ignore the actors faces most of the time (except Sokka, he kills it). But it is nowhere near anything that can be called good.
Haha oh man, I just said this exact thing a little ways up! I’m not the only one who thought of superman! Too funny…
But for real, why did they do this? It bothered the hell out of me that they made such a weird, massive change like this.
It particularly shows the show-runners null knowledge or at least contempt for the original material. It was a big plot point on The Legend of Korra. Flying that way was a mythical and highly advanced airbending technique, confined only to the most enlightened sages. It was the whole point of Zaheer as an antagonist. But Aang just goes up and down in the air. And I just realized that Aang didn’t waterbend a single time in the whole season, not even in that training scene when Katara practices with the scroll. Which is funny, because reading this thread’s positive praise, rather than improving my opinion of the adaptation, it is actually making me like it slightly less.
there’s plenty of steps between bad and good. let’s call it mediocre, or mid,or meh or, whatever flavor you want. I really don’t think that flight moment was as bad as people are making it out to be. he uses tornadoes to push himself up in various ways in the animated series. this was that, but a bit longer. he didn’t fly around like super man. he hovered on top of a vortex of wind for like 10 seconds at most.
I agree that the acting isn’t great. good child actors are actually really rare. that said, people are overreacting calling it trash. especially since no one I’ve heard call it that actually gave it a fair shot.
It lasts 40 seconds and he is in Superman pose flying for the most of it. I didn’t call it that out of spite, I actually enjoyed the whole series. But it is mid. Sure, maybe not trash like the Shyamalaladingdong movie, but I don’t want to have to sit through it ever again.
Was he flying like this?
No, he was more flying like this.
Like with a wingsuit (which ironically do appear in The Legend of Korra) but without the suit. There are videos of the scene on YouTube. I don’t know why they did it, when they could’ve used the glider staff. Specially since in a later scene he is shown being unable to fly without the staff.
Episode 2 is good. Episode 6 is good. Haven’t seen 7 and 8 yet.
The other episodes are definitely mid.
I watched 1 and 2 back to back and couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that Aang learns how to cry in between episodes, or they applied fake tears for Gyatso’s funeral or something. Bless their child actor’s hearts, they tried very hard. But I don’t think even Oscar winners could’ve done much with some of the atrocious dialogue that plagues some episodes. But yeah, mid would be a rather apt descriptor.
Ok, while I agree that was super cringe and there is definitely some more throughout, it’s pretty short sighted to deem the entire remake bad when the first episodes are generally never the best in the seasons. They had to cram a lot of back story in and only had 8 episodes. I found the first episode to be the weakest out of the entire season. Overall, it’s mid, but not bad and has some really enjoyable moments.
Also, I assume the flying is due to budget constraints, and it would have been too expensive to cgi a ball of air to fly on.
To each their own, though. Everyone’s got their opinions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, good call, I will do the math. The 8 live-action episodes last between 48 and 63 minutes each, in total they are 434 minutes of runtime. Roughly about the same as the whole animated season 1, which was 20 episodes that last 24 minutes each, so total 480 minutes. They only had 46 minutes less than the animated show to tell the exact same story.
Right but it’s easier and cheaper to tell a story through animation vs live action. Just because the live action run time is close to the original animation run time, doesn’t mean it’s practical or feasible to do the same in live action.
I don’t think animation and live action can pace the same for something like this. Things that feel rushed in animation feel rushed ten fold in live action. I’d think episodes would at least need to be expanded to a solid half hour for pacing when it comes to a live action.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see a perfect adaption. But, I think that would require a HUGE budget and would have to be a billionaires passion project for all the cgi and general costs it would need to properly make an ATLA live action that perfectly follows the animation.
Since that’s never going to happen, I appreciate the live action we have for what it is, and between budget and time constraints, I think they did a good job.
Nah, its bad writing. Rushing in film usually means that characters spent way too much time talking doing exposition. Also the fact that time passing is never represented, so it all just feel like one long day that never moves forward in time.
On my part I don’t want a perfect adaptation. Or a frame to frame adaptation. That would be boring and would never work on live action. I want good writers to do creative adaptations of the world that use the strengths of the medium to produce high quality entertaining new stories. If I want to see Aang story again, I will prefer the original animation instead every single time.
I appreciate this adaptation for what it is, and it is rather mediocre. Not bad, not good. It just exists.
I agree. I stopped watching after the first episode. It was extremely bad. I would understand if it’s worse than the show, but it’s just bad in general. The best comparison I could give is a really bad CW show. It not only fails as a remake, but fails a lot of basic television fundamentals. I understand people have different opinions, but it was so bad that it was almost objectively awful.
It is though and I’ve watched the entire thing. Dialogue lines are trash, they constantly “tell” instead of “show,” timelines don’t make any sense, Team Avatar has no Chemistry, Katara learns to waterbend at a master-level from a single scroll, Aang never waterbends, there’s no obvious through-line for the plot (it’s just assumed you know why Aang is going to these places), Aang literally has no passion, and the show is trying to straddle the line between shot-for-shot remake and a retelling, but failing at both. There’s ZERO character development. I could go on with things that are wrong with this new series.
I think the young actors and the special-effects crew have been failed by the writers, directors, and producers.
One weird decision was to rewrite Aang’s disappearance. Originally he ran away and got frozen, and no one made a huge deal of his “running away”. In the new series they explicitly change it to a brief flight to just think on things. Then they leaned hard a few times in shaming him for running away, when they expressly changed that detail…
Wait didn’t he also get blamed for running away in the original show? Or at least for not being there for the war?
Yeah, but:
a) He did technically run away at least, though obviously way more than he intended
b) In the original, while there was some blaming, the Netflix went much harder on berating him. Basically Netflix took the angst dial and cranked it up across the board for as much as possible. Which is the general trend of a lot of shows lately, which disappoints me broadly that everything has to be so emo.
How am I going to feel better about myself if I’m not shitting on stuff online? How do you expect me to feel superior to people who enjoy something without whining about how bad a show is?
To be fair, I haven’t gotten to more than Ep1 yet, because ep.1 was so bad I lost all excitement. The visuals are nice, and I personally don’t mind little lore inconsistencies like flying that much, but the dialogue was really really bad, and I did not like frontloading the whole airbender genocide plot. Yes, 90% of the viewers probably have seen the original and know the plot, but it still robs me of the experience of discovering the truth and learning about Aang together with sokka and Katara. Idk, I just really like the structure of the original show, and I didn’t appreciate the swap.
In general, the approach of the show seems to be averse to the “big reveal” technique of the original. They do the same with the death of Iroh’s son, Zuko’s conflict with his father, King Bumi, etc. The philosophy seems to be to lay everything out for the viewer and watch it develop.
Yeah, but for me as a kid, seeing those kids grow up, discover and learn more about their world, while I was growing up, discovering and learning about my world was what made the show so relatable and good. And I still watch the original to get back that sense of wonder and surprise even today. Because even as adults, we can be so sure something is right, wrong, important, impossible, worthless, etc. And be totally wrong, right, anything in between and, most importantly, totally focusing on the wrong thing and missing the bigger picture.
It showed me that evil people sometimes just are senselessly evil, but mostly have just different convictions, beliefs, upbringing or information that makes them think they are the good guy. And they think we are the bad guy. But while what they do may be not senseless evil, we still must try to stop them. There can be logic to evil, but it’s still evil.
For me as a small kid, that was a big thing to learn. And obviously I understand that as an adult, I can’t get that from the show now, but I want the feeling that if I watched this show as a kid, i would have gotten both of those things.
And honestly, the first episode didn’t give me much hope for either of these. That, plus the cringy writing just killed all my enthusiasm. I will probably try episode 2 some time. But, I’m not excited anymore.
I thought it was really bad.
After watching it all, it was really bad
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That play was pretty solid though, I’d watch it live.
HONORRRRRRrrrr
Avatar state, Yip Yip!
So much HOPE!
Is it bad? It’s bad isn’t it. I bet it’s bad.
It’s not bad, it’s certainly enjoyable.
My take: the original is the real story. The Netflix is a summary. They skip a lot, but it’s only 8 episodes. The things they skip, I just remember “still happened”. The things they merged/combined are just part of the summary.
You are able to like the Netflix, as long as you know it’s not a replacement. Just enjoy the retelling, and seeing Uncle iroh as a real person!
It’s only eight episodes, but they’re an hour each, so it has exactly the same runtime. Also, the cartoon has the Great Divide, so not adapting that should have given them another 24 whole minutes to work with
The first episode was an hour, but eps 2 and 3 were less, around 40-50 mins. (I haven’t watched 4-8 yet.) So there was some loss of runtime, and I understand the need to change some things to make up that time. However, (and granted I’m only three eps in) I doesn’t feel like the changes that were made were made strictly for runtime reasons.
Gran-Gran giving Katara the scroll instead of her stealing it, yeah, I see that being a time saver. The overall change in Katara’s personality? Not so much.
I did the math. The Netflix show barely runs 46 minutes less than the original animated series.
It’s only 8 episodes currently, or there’s only going to be 8 episodes? Surely not 8 for the whole thing?
It’s a Netflix joint, so there’s a solid chance the show dies between seasons regardless of what fans want
8 episodes an hour each, and it ends on the avatar moment in the northern water tribe.
Oh man, I disagree completely.
Everything from the weird addition of Aang being able to fly without a glider to the really placid acting was very hard to watch. The CGI was insanely bad throughout, although the 2-3 second shots of the cities were oddly really well done.
Still, none of the small glimpses of success made up for the overall failure of it for me. The acting was poor, and the cast was widely bizaar (why did Katara not look like Katara, at all?) the facial hair in many cases looked silly… Like, why does Iroh look like a mall Santa? And why was Aang wearing lipstick?
I just don’t get it… I don’t know why they did half the things they did.
All I needed to see was a clip of Aang saying, out loud, in the first episode, “but I’m just a kid who likes playing games and eating food and hanging out with my friends! I can’t fight the fire nation!” Like. The Netflix show has exactly the same runtime as the first season of the anime. There is no reason why they couldn’t have just shown us Aang being a kid and hanging out with his friends instead of telling us, unless they only wanted to save that runtime for flashy CGI fight scenes.
That and instead of Katara opening the series with her famous “water, earth, fire, air” monologue, the show has their grandma recite it word for word directly to Aang’s face
but i mean who needs character development to be applied to the correct character so it makes sense, as long as it happens
but i’m just here to bitch, hain’t watchin it.
They really thought that scene with the grandma was going to be loved by fans. As a fan I physically cringed during that scene…
I didn’t want it to be bad. But it’s bad.
Mind giving a synopsis of why it’s bad? I’ve not seen many people talking about it besides being mad that they changed things (and they said they would)
From what I’ve heard they removed important character traits from each protagonist. They took away Aang’s playfulness, Katara’s maturity and sense of responsibility, and Sokka’s growth arc.
Or for a quicker summary: they combined the Jet episode with the machinist and the secret tunnel.
They also seem to have removed all meaningful interaction between aang and katara in favor of exposition.
What kind of interactions are are going to be interesting between characters whose important traits have been removed?
None, of course, but it’s through those interactions we learned about their personalities in the original. There’s neither in this.
Wow, these studio guys are absolute geniuses!!!1!
Hangs head
So Jet invents a blimp that he takes Katara in a wheelchair on, but they get lost, sing a song about giant glowing moles that brainwashed him using hippies, and it’s ambiguous whether the pain of almost but not quite kissing Katara killed him?
It’s not so much that they changed things, if anything it’s extremely faithful in the overall plot progression, it’s mostly just… really shoddy.
Characters are devoid of any personality or life, the dialogue is some of the worst expository garbage I’ve ever had to endure, and they just keep missing the point of critical moments and character beats.
Like just to give an easy example, upon being told that he’s the Avatar, Aang in this version does NOT run away. He just… goes on a little trip on Appa to lighten up, and it just so happens that this is exactly when the fire nation attacks, and he accidentally gets caught in a storm and gets trapped. Running away was key to his character, it’s a crucial, character defining moment. It leads into his genuine feelings of guilt for abandoning the world, and his whole arc in the show is about slowly accepting the responsibility that terrified him back then.
And that just keeps happening, super important scenes like that get butchered for no reason, completely erasing the meaning behind them. It feels like they went about the show in a very utilitarian way, believing that as long as they could get the characters from point A to point B, it didn’t matter what they changed. The original is so good at that, so good at symbolism, so consistent in its characterization that you’re often able to predict how a given character will react because you know them so well.
I think that’s what pissed me off the most, and combined with the goddawful dialogue (seriously I can’t stress enough how bad the dialogue is), and a lot of gratuitous fanservice (lots of characters and scenes appear much earlier just to show them off lol), and you end up with a show that’s extremely hard to sit through if you have any affection for the original.
I watched only the first episode and haven’t watched the original in years. But the acting is really really bad. Totally stilted performance. And there are many instances of people exposition dumping their feelings instead of just showing them. And then these parts are underlined with cheesy flashbacks of bad exposition dumps in case someone didn’t pay attention.
(TL;DR): Even without the context of the original cartoon, this adaptation has a “college project with a high budget” vibe, like they were in a rush to get it to their professor’s desk on time. All of the acting, writing, choreography, and cinematography is mediocre at best and cringe-worthy at worst. The VFX are better this time around at least, but they rarely utilize it where it was needed most and ultimately doesn’t outweigh it’s shortcomings.
The CGI is way better than the 2010 movie, but all the hurdles that come with live action still plague the Netflix show. They cut a lot of really good scenes because they’d be too hard to animate, (like Aang’s escape from Zuko and subsequent first use of his avatar abilities) which creates a lot of pacing issues, and what they didn’t cut is plagued by awkward writing and even worse delivery.
Everyone has something missing from their original character that was a key characteristic in the cartoon. Aang is always super serious now, which shows in his fight scenes too and overall removes the whimsical nature of the show… All of the characters in general are now super serious, so the show is pretty devoid of any lightheartedness… Zuko is a lot less measured and he comes across as silly, which is ironic because he’s the one character who’s supposed to be very serious… Sokka doesn’t start out sexist, which removes an entire growth arc from his character and takes away a key dynamic between him and Katara… Iroh doesn’t have his iconic wise/disciplined enigma vibe… I could go on.
Little Joel has a video that slaps about exactly that.
edit: fixed the link
Netflix is attacking bad reviews on more than just IMDB, it seems…
https://youtu.be/4i8quw7cDFE?feature=shared
They took his videos down, and now he’s only hosting them on his Patreon. Shame… I wanted to see them.
Yeah I know, I saw! I’m glad I’ve got a nebula sub
Meh. I’m enjoying it. It’s extremely similar to the show, and they’re really try to adopt a lot of the same jokes, scenes, and concepts from the cartoons.
I mean it’s a kids show, a kid will absolutely love this. If you go into it expecting Avatar for adults you’re going to be a bit let down.
I think this is why I take issue with these attempts at remaking the show. Even if it was a completely perfect recreation of the original, then why make it? I’d much rather see a different angle, something new. We already have so much substance in the original that trying to adapt it doesn’t make sense to me.
I always ask myself what a reboot is adding. And there’s just not a lot to add to Aang’s story that wasn’t already very well said in the original series.
I think aiming for something that’s just in the same universe could work really well, though. Maybe a focus on the other nations? Or follow one of the minor character paths that briefly cross with Aang? But trying to bring characters that we all know deeply and have a very specific expectation of just has such a low chance of hitting right that it baffles me they’ve tried twice now.
6 part docu-series about Omashu cabbage man and how Team Avatar has ruined his business
follow one of the minor character paths
Cabbage seller spinoff!
I would assume that if you are a big fan of the original, then a 1:1 live action remake is just not for you. It sounds like it would be more for the people who could not get into the original because of the animation.
Those people aren’t worth appealing to.
I don’t think so, either. The types of people that are against “cartoons” (their word, not mine) are all old people that grew up with the idea that anything animated is for young children. What a sad state of mind to be in…
I watched Avatar originally as an adult, and I loved it.
Yup. I know a couple of people who can’t get into it, or it depends on the exact animation style. My partner’s mom can’t take animation seriously even when we recommend good shows. She just can’t get past the media. And another friend only likes certain animation styles (not messy ones like Rick and Morty, or too anime, or 3D like Arcane).
It’s probably just meant to be for people that wouldn’t watch the animated series under any circumstance.
I’ve never watched One Piece the anime (yet) and I keep putting it off because of how fucking long it is. I don’t know how faithful the Netflix adaptation is, but I enjoyed it a lot; so much that I might finally start watching the anime.
I don’t expect those of us who like the animated Avatar to enjoy the live-action adaptation as much, but there are surely people who will, and they’re probably the ones this is for.
It would have been awesome to see this show as not focusing on Aang. You could follow the Kyoshi warriors, perhaps, and then some episodes might include crazy moments seemingly out of nowhere where Aang goes into the avatar state at the other end of a scene or city.
That would have been AMAZING.
You say it’s a kids show but i felt like the fight/war scenes were much more violent and graphic in the live action version. Like there’s a bunch of times where you just watch people burn to death. I enjoyed the adaptation but one of my complaints wild definitely be that they didn’t stick with one tone.
Yeah, I’ll give you that one. It’s definitely a bit more graphic.
Because now every show-runner wants their show to be the next Game of Thrones. But they don’t understand what made GoT work.
Yeah, the guy being burned alive in the first few minutes was way more graphic than anything in the original show.
Just started it this weekend. Being a hardcore fan of the anime version I was apprehensive going in. But, the show is really good in its own way.
As someone else pointed out - a beloved TV series with most of the audience holding fond memories of it and it being perfect (ahem ahem Season 1 of the anime) does not help. I like that the new show tries to explore the story a bit more and at least tries to extend on the canon a bit. One can only milk the cow so much a number of times.
It’s acceptable if you don’t have strong emotional ties to the original source material. Which I do.
Which is to say it’s not good, but it’s better than the movie that never happened.
I’d rather watch the movie, honestly… At least it’s worth a good laugh.
What they did here felt like the ember city players version of the original, but with key world changes like “let’s make all the airbenders fly like superman”.
It’s good
Haha as a German I am lucky and can just switch to the German synchro. The voice acting is directly 300% better… Still that leaves the bad visual acting… As a bonus I get the old voices though. Somehow they where able to get the original voice actors for katara, sokka, suko, azula, Ty lee, Zhao, jet (I think), and suki
I enjoyed Netflix’ Avatar so much that I finally started the anime. The acting from basically all the children actors is atrocious but I just love the realism and animation of the worldbuilding that an anime just can’t give me. Any plot points with minor characters are great and with the exception of Azula, the fire nation actors are great.
I really hated the Netflix show, but I’m very happy it’s getting some people to watch or rewatch the original. Enjoy!
"Did Jet just die?!*
“It’s not clear.”
