My favorite television show of all time, Nickelodeon’s animated, ground-breaking “Avatar: The Last Airbender” (ATLA) has been on a decades-long quest for the perfect live-action adaptation.
Since the show’s end in 2008, fans have followed the sequel series made by ATLA’s creators, “The Legend of Korra,” which aired from 2012-2014 on Nickelodeon.
In between ATLA and “The Legend of Korra,” prolific filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan created a live-action movie adaptation of the first season of ATLA in 2010, titled “The Last Airbender.” The adaptation faced (a fully deserving) critical failure and caused drastic disappointment for fans around the world.
The 2010 film was harshly criticized for many reasons: the whitewashing of the cast in a very clearly Indigenous and Asian-influenced show, horrible plot adaptation and writing, poor special effects and the lazy condensing of 20 episodes of television into less than two hours, to name a few.
While I was personally disappointed by “The Legend of Korra” (I’m sorry) and horrified at the 2010 live-action adaptation of the television series, the thought of yet another botched ATLA adaptation made my skin crawl.
I was even more anxious when the show’s creators – DiMartino and Konietzko – left the Netflix show due to “creative differences,” leaving filmmaker Albert Kim, who did not have a role in the original ATLA series, as the sole showrunner.
Since I was five I’ve watched ATLA. I have always considered the show as the standard in terms of television due to its superior worldbuilding ability through the synthesis of cultures, beautifully written characters and masterful handling of incredibly mature themes for a children’s show that still holds up after decades.
While the show is primarily plot-driven, DiMartino and Konietzko took such care with each character, giving the viewer a deep sense of motives, backgrounds, goals and personalities, and bringing each character to a perfectly-balanced arc by the end of the series. ATLA’s tightly-constructed and beautifully woven script that allowed the time for dramatic plot points, comedic relief and beautiful character development has proven to be almost impossible to recreate.
Going into the Netflix series, I knew that one of my biggest deal breakers would be the diminishing of these character transformations over the course of the series. This also meant that casting was also a high priority.
To prepare for my review of Netflix’s ATLA adaptation, I rewatched all of the original show’s first season – titled “Book One.” After burning the plot into my memory, I took a deep breath, put on a pair of sweatpants, let go of my dream of potentially working at Netflix one day and started to watch the new ATLA.
Length and Pacing
The first thing that struck me was that the Netflix season was only eight episodes, whereas “Book One” in the Nickelodeon ATLA series was 20 episodes long with each episode lasting about 24 minutes, for eight hours of television. However, the Netflix series had eight episodes, each lasting about an hour, for a total of eight hours, just like the original series.
I was immediately apprehensive; to me, it felt impossible to somehow condense the source material by more than half of the episodes and still remain faithful to the story. I knew that meant the pacing would probably be rushed.
My initial hunch was correct – some of the silly shenanigans that kept the Nickelodeon series so lighthearted were cut, as well as the thought-out backstory and exposition that never felt exposition-y.
In the Nickelodeon series, the viewer does not learn about the genocide of the Air Nomads by the Fire Nation until a few episodes in, when Aang discovers that it happened. Additionally, Fire Lord Sozin’s beginning of the war is only told through flashback narrations. The history and state of the ATLA world is slowly revealed to Aang, and by default, the audience, thus raising the stakes of the childrens’ quest and the dramatic nature of these reveals higher.
Another collateral damage of the show’s pacing was the characters’ backstories; much of the characters’ pasts were forced into the first few episodes. This had the effect of knowing too much about each character, leaving no sense of mystery into their motives or reasons for acting the way they do.
In the season finale, Katara masters waterbending — a skill that takes decades of training in the ATLA world — in 20 minutes. What an incredibly lazy writing choice. Katara learning waterbending from Master Pakku of the Northern Water Tribe was a massive part of her original character development, and this expedited “mastery” feels severely less deserved.
The season also relies on a ticking time bomb in an attempt to justify a sped-up timeline; Aang has a “vision” of the Northern Water Tribe being attacked, and he, Sokka, and Katara race there to protect the water tribe. In the original show, Aang journeys to the North Pole to find a waterbending master that can also teach Katara, and the Fire Nation attacks the Northern Water Tribe because they realize that he needs to master water first.
Without the small moments and filler episodes, the storyline becomes plot-driven rather than character-driven. We do not get a full grasp of the characters or their relationships with one another.
Exposition, Destroyer of Worlds
My mortal enemy, exposition. While I understand that exposition is necessary, the writers clearly felt as though they needed to explain everything that happened, its significance, and how it affected the characters and world.
Netflix’s take of ATLA’s iconic intro felt sloppy and slow, as if they were paraphrasing the original intro, yet simultaneously trying to up the word count to allow for more exposition. The writers left the actual script from the original intro up to Katara and Sokka’s grandmother, Gran-Gran, who delivered a cheesy rant that killed the dramatic effect of the worldbuilding.
That is one of my main issues with this show: it relies on verbally explaining everything that happens to the audience instead of showing them, as the Nickelodeon show did, which is interesting considering the target audience of this show is clearly older.
While Nickelodeon’s ATLA had to include exposition due to the intricate worldbuilding and political turmoil, it was revealed mainly through conversational dialogue as characters explained to Aang how his world had changed in the past 100 years. It never felt like exposition, since you were discovering the world along with Aang.
Tone
Right off the bat, the Netflix adaptation marked a large departure from the childlike and playful tone of the original series, beginning with Fire Lord Sozin’s starting of the war and the genocide of the Air Nomads 100 years before the events of the show take place. And my god, was seeing the ambush of the Air Nomads brutal.
Naively, I never realized how graphic bending would be in a live-action portrayal, but seeing the firebenders kill all of the air nomads was incredibly upsetting. This occurred in the first 20 minutes of the pilot episode, instantly leading the viewer to understand that this show is more geared towards adults or teenagers.
While I understand maintaining a more serious tone for a live-action adaptation not on a children’s network, this overarching seriousness made the entire series less endearing and heartwarming.
If you want to watch a heavy show with epic battle scenes completely geared towards adults, “Game of Thrones” is more suitable. While adaptations are not supposed to be carbon copies of the original series, taking the childishness out of a children’s show made the adaptation seem confused, rather than serious.
Casting and Performances
First of all, thank GOD someone finally nailed Appa’s – Aang’s flying bison – look. While he’s pretty noticeably CGI, he’s still as adorable and fluffy as he was portrayed in animation. I was ready to log out of Netflix if he was anything resembling M. Night Shyamalan’s gremlin-like monster Appa. Momo the flying lemur, another one of Aang’s animal companions, was also well-portrayed in the Netflix series, keeping his goofy, inquisitive nature intact. If Netflix got one thing right, it was the animals.
Overall, the accuracy of the casting in terms of race and ethnicity was handled astronomically better than the 2010 adaptation. The casting was appropriate in terms of the cultures that ATLA was inspired by, and it’s refreshing and heartening for me to see a full cast of Asian and Indigenous actors and actresses. A win for Netflix, and for Asian and Indigenous representation.
In terms of casting, looks-wise, I think the casting directors nailed the looks of most of the characters, particularly Sokka, Jet, the Earth Kingdom rebel, Longshot, his warrior, June, the bounty hunter and Suki, the Kyoshi warrior. They looked as if they were literally plucked from the cartoon, “Enchanted” style.
Their performances were also the standouts of the series for me. Suki, played by USC Alum Maria Zhang, was every bit the formidable warrior that she was in the Nickelodeon version, and Sokka, portrayed by Ian Ousley, was still a goofy teenager prone to comedic outbursts, at least, whenever the script *cough cough* allowed him to.
June, played by Arden Cho, and Fire Lord Ozai, casted as Daniel Dae Kim, were also perfect, looks and performance-wise, and I’m actually glad we spent more time with June than we did in the animated series. Cho and Dae Kim, you two can do no wrong.
I was also pleasantly surprised by Dallas James Liu’s Zuko, who far exceeded my expectations. I think his performance was noticeably better than most of the other child/young adult actors and actresses in the series, and I’m excited to see more of his acting skills develop as Zuko does.
However, many of the performances left much to be desired, which was mostly due to the writing; actors and actresses can only do as much as the script allows them.
I won’t even dive into King Bumi, Mai and Ty Lee. Just know that I’m disappointed.
Gordon Cormier’s leading role as Aang was a promising start, but definitely suffered from the effects of the writing. His character lacked a lot of the childish naivety that made everyone fall in love with Aang, and it seemed as though the directors wouldn’t let him use any other facial expression than perpetually concerned. Hopefully in the future, the directors will give Aang more room to be a child, as Gordon Cormier is a great casting choice. After all, he is only supposed to be 12.
One noticeably flat performance was Kiawentiio Tarbell’s Katara who lacked so much of the spunk and fierceness that her animated character possessed. Her character relied too heavily on her emotional and maternal qualities. She is not a force of nature in this series but a byproduct of circumstance, who politely asks for things rather than fighting for them. Justice for Katara.
Azula also suffered the effects of a poor script. Nickelodeon’s Azula is truly a wild card – neither the characters nor the viewer knows what her next move will be, but one thing is sure, she is relentless. Elizabeth Yu’s Netflix portrayal of Azula was more innocent and vulnerable than Azula in the original series, who never shows a shred of weakness until the very last episode. Maybe the writers wanted to humanize Azula more than the cartoon did, but Azula wasn’t as terrifying as her character should have been. In Nickelodeon’s ATLA, you keep having to remind yourself that Azula is a child, but in Netflix’s ATLA, Azula’s childlike anger and vulnerability is at the forefront of her character.
Visuals
I’ll give it to Netflix; the visuals of the show, for the most part, far exceeded my expectations.
The bending looked surprisingly good in the live-action, and the world was generally visually appealing. Firebending in particular looked incredibly realistic; however, there were parts of the show where the waterbending and earthbending could have looked more realistic. The airbending, probably the hardest element to visually represent, actually looked pretty realistic as well.
It’s near impossible to bring an animated fantasy world to life, and I think that Netflix actually did a fine job with the visual world building – especially the Fire Nation palace, which looked even better than the cartoon, and the Northern Water Tribe and Southern Air Temple, which looked incredible in scale and detail.
The Earth Kingdom stronghold, Omashu, was stunning from an aerial view and looked straight from the cartoon, and I appreciated that Netflix added an element of gritty realism to the city that was not quite captured in the animation. However, the oversaturated color palette made the CGI a little more obvious.
The epic battle at the Northern Water Tribe that ends the first season was the visual standout of the entire season to me, especially when the moon spirit takes over Aang in a water-formed, Godzilla-esque creature. Seeing the actual scale of that battle in live action, and executed well, fulfilled my inner child.
While they were accurate to the original show, some of the costumes bordered on cosplaying territory, and I would have appreciated a different or more realistic take on some of them. But I digress. There definitely needs to be a new wig designer, but that’s another issue.
Rating
In summary, I’d rate the show a solid 5/10. While it sporadically managed to capture some of the magic of the original series, lazy writing and sub-par dialogue, serious pacing and exposition issues, and altering of the characters – which will surely affect their future character arcs – were hard to overlook, especially after watching Nickelodeon’s first season the day before I watched Netflix’s.
This adaptation seemed to be the product of a larger issue in the film industry right now: studios and streamers are pushing shorter seasons of television shows that force their writers to over-explain everything that happens to the audience.
While the adaptation was not a total failure, it was a muddled compression of too many intricate, moving parts mixed into eight episodes of television.
The show hasn’t been renewed for a second season yet, but hopefully the down time will give showrunner Albert Kim, the writers, and the producers more time to formulate a better direction for the series.
Oh Netflix, how I love to hate you. Maybe some things are better left untouched.