Netflix’s new series, Avatar The Last Airbender is just the latest in a trend of live action adaptations. From Disney classics Beauty and the Beast and Mulan to anime sensations One Piece and Death Note, it’s safe to say that studios are obsessed with remaking animated stories into live action, despite them often losing the charm of their source material.
As a massive fan of the 2005 Nickelodeon series Avatar: The Last Airbender, I can’t say that I was necessarily excited for the live action remake that came out last Thursday. I’m generally not a fan of live action remakes because they never have the same effect or feeling as the original. There are many things that you simply cannot recreate when you go from animated to live action, especially in fantasy and magical genres like Avatar. Animation is a valid, serious artform. It feels like studios don’t understand this and have a nasty habit of recreating great art into live action films which end up being a worse, and ultimately, unnecessary rendition of the original.
Now, there has already been a previous attempt to remake Avatar the Last Airbender into a live action film in 2010 with M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender”. This film is one of the worst I’ve ever seen and was a huge disservice to the incredible animated series. The film was a whitewashed mess, the acting, CGI, and writing was absolutely terrible, and it was borderline unwatchable. So bad in fact, that Paramount Pictures scrapped the two planned sequels. This terrible film led me to have absolutely no faith in the Netflix remake, but at least I knew it couldn’t possibly be worse… could it?
I’m here to tell you that the new Avatar The Last Airbender remake is definitely not as bad as the 2010 live action attempt, but certainly nowhere near as good as the original animated series. I really wanted to like it and made sure to go in with an open mind but ultimately, my earlier point of live action remakes being unnecessary, worse versions of its animated counterpart still holds. The magic of the animated series was completely wiped out by the dull colors, lackluster acting performances, and how much of the story, and more importantly, character development was left behind. This is most likely the reason why the original creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko exited the project early on due to creative differences. I believe that their exit is what ultimately doomed this series.
Netflix’s Avatar The Last Airbender saw the return of all our favorite characters: Katara, Sokka, Uncle Iroh, Prince Zuko, Azula, Appa, and of course the Avatar, Aang. While most of these characters were very average interpretations, I was particularly impressed by Dallas Liu who played Prince Zuko. I thought his portrayal of the original character was by far the best. He brought the same intensity and naivety to the character, but added in even more dramatic flair and teenage angst which I thought was an incredibly good decision. One character who I did not like the changes to was Katara as she felt like a very watered down and tame version of arguably the best character in the original. The show ignored her fierceness and bravery and chose to make her simple and quiet, which was a terrible decision. All of the characters were ultimately missing their childish nature, which is important to the story. The writers completely missed the mark on reminding us that these are children who are being forced to fight a war, one of the most significant aspects of the series.
One of the main things that I was worried about going into the show was that the CGI bending would be terrible like it was in the 2010 film. The element bending in the show actually looked fantastic, especially the fire bending! There is no way to copy the fluidity and scale of the animated bending, but the Netflix show did a really good job of recreating it. That being said, the fight scenes definitely could’ve utilized the bending more, to make them more interesting. The CGI creatures also looked pretty good, but were lacking the personality of the animated characters, especially Appa. They also cut out many of the scenes of Aang interacting with and playing with other interesting creatures that could’ve been cool to see in live action.
The story itself followed the original pretty well but left out many of the best details of the original show. I agree that these live action versions shouldn’t be an exact scene to scene remake, but it was disappointing to see how much of the fun of the original was completely cut out. The Netflix rendition was trying too hard to turn their show into a very serious, dark, and dramatic story and almost eradicated all the humor and charm of the original. What made the original so special is how it balanced out the humor with the dark story. The writers flew through the narrative and ultimately focused on many of the wrong aspects of the story, which made the whole series fall flat.
Ultimately Netflix’s Avatar The Last Airbender live action remake wasn’t terrible. The special effects, few stand out performances, and nostalgia are enough to make a semi-faithful adaptation and an interesting watch. However, the rushed story, lack of humor, and one-dimensional characters mean that the show missed out on the very best aspects of the original and left me unimpressed. My opinion that live action remakes are unnecessary and should stop being churned out remains the same. Animated stories deserve to be taken seriously and be left in all their glory. Avatar The Last Airbender is no different. Hopefully this will be the last remake of the already perfect original series, but with three different versions in the short 20 years of the series’ existence I highly doubt it.