My Take on Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender

         

        After finishing the Netflix adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender last night, I wanted to take a moment and share some of my thoughts and feelings regarding this live action revamp of the 2005 Nickelodeon animated series. Many who know me know I am a huge A:TLA fan. The combination of martial arts, elemental magic, and Eastern philosophy as well as amazing storytelling and compelling characters created an immersive world that drew me in and never let go. 

        In 2010, M. Night Shyamalan came out with a cinematic adaptation of A:TLA which failed miserably on every level. The story was rushed, the bending was atrocious, the dialogue was choppy and awkward, and most of all, there was no immersion into the world like there was in the original show. Fast forward fifteen years and we have yet another adaptation, but this time a series comprising eight episodes about an hour each. When it was first announced, I was extremely excited because the co-creators of the original show, Bryan Koniezco, and Michael Dimartino were going to be leading the project. That excitement was deflated soon after when it was announced that Bryan and Michael were leaving the project because of creative differences with Netflix. Disappointed, I lost all hope this go around was going to be any better than Shyamalan’s blunder. Yet optimism slowly grew as more details and imagery of the show began to emerge, though it was a cautious sort of optimism. But now that I have finished the whole season, I’d like to take a moment and give an in-depth review of this show and how I stack it against the original and the ‘10 film.

        In short, this was a fun, visually appeasing series that was not, in my opinion at least, a disaster like the film adaptation. The story goes deeper into the nature of the Avatar, the background of the 100 year war, and explores more into the complexity of the spirit world. This, along with the nostalgic soundtrack, beautiful design of the locations such as the Southern Air Temple, Omashu, and Water Tribe civilizations, as well as the astounding bending action and well integrated hybrid creatures made this show far more immersive and captivating experience on the whole. 

Though I believe it definitely one-ups the film, I will say it also definitely falls short of the original. The dialogue was only a couple steps better than the movie, and nowhere near as natural and fun as the animated show. The dependency on exposition and over abundance of dramatic speeches to explain motives creates a disconnect from the flow of the story. The acting among the kids and some of the adults was strenuous at times, though I will say that I think Uncle Iroh and Firelord Ozai were perfectly cast. They also struggled with the pacing of the series, attempting to cram as many references and plot lines from the original series as humanly possible, which made some of the episodes feel overly busy and disjointed; especially in episode three. There were also additives to the story that were not needed and could have been entirely removed, such as everything to do with Azula, who does not appear in Book 1 until the very end as a lead into the next season. 

Despite the obvious weaknesses the series suffers from, there were still enough fun and intriguing elements that allowed me to reimmerse myself back into the Avatar universe and walk away with a more gratifying experience than I had from the 2010 film. I hope there will be a second season, and that the writers will either learn from their mistakes and do a better job the next go around, or possibly Netflix could hire a new crew of writers who have more experience. The child actors I think will also grow into their characters more if given the chance, along with their skills as actors. 

To conclude, I believe there is a lot of potential here, and the show itself was not half bad. If I were to give it a rank from 1 being the worst and 10 being the best, I would place it around a solid 7 or a gracious 8. Hopefully we’ll see more Avatar coming from Netflix in the following years, but if not, we at least have all new animated projects from the co-creators which will be arriving next year!