Hi guys from Movies & TV shows, this past weekend I watched all the episodes of the new Avatar: The Last Airbender live action series. So here is my opinion about it.

First of all I have to say that generally I don’t put my faith in these types of remakes or adaptations based on animated TV series or movies, mainly because the people making them often don’t know how to translate the essence of the source material into a new format with living actors, not to mention that not everything can work in a live action format and sometimes is best to leave things as they were, some examples of this are the lackluster live action remakes of the Classic Disney animated films.

Now, to those of you who don’t know anything about this series, this show is based on a very successful cartoon from the early 2000s. The plot is inspired by different Asian and indigenous cultures, it has fantasy elements in a universe where characters can manipulate elements like water, fire, earth and air and there’s always an avatar in existence, an individual who can manipulate all elements and bring peace and balance to the world.

Anyway, as a fan of the original series I can say this Netflix version is not horrible like the infamous Dragon Ball live action movie or the Death note one, in fact this series can be considered entertaining, but it doesn’t capture all the magic of the animated series, it needed more of that spark that makes you go “Wow, this is so cool”. I say this because some months back I saw the One Piece live action series, and it really captivated me, even though I’ve only seen a few episodes of the anime.

At the beginning, the first issue I had with the remake was that it wants to explain everything that is going on with too many awkward dialogues that feel unnatural and not with visual tools, the famous: show, don’t tell principle. I noted this more with the three main protagonists. It’s obvious the creators of this show tried to cram everything about these characters’ arcs in a number of episodes that just wasn’t enough.

Due to this, I felt that their personalities and some other parts were kind of bland in comparison with the animated series. The worst is that many of the traits that defined their characters, specially their flaws, were watered down, or simple taken out entirely to make them more palatable, is stuff like this that makes think Netflix didn’t want to cause discomfort to the modern viewers with sensible topics, to avoid causing controversy on social media, but from a creative point of view, this is simply not good.

Another thing I didn’t like was that the pace at times felt too fast, the friendship the main cast creates felt rushed and shallow. They don’t spend enough time together to let the audience feel like the bonds they form are genuine and strong, unlike the animated version.

The only characters whose arcs I did like without complain were Zuko and Iroh, since their dynamic and development felt close and had a better build up. In fact, I like many of the new scenes that added up more interesting details to their relationship that the animated version never explored.

Talking a little bit about the aesthetic of the series, I think the sceneries, landscapes and photography were nicely done, I like the way they recreated the bending techniques of the elements, and how good most fights looked, still there were some moments where the backgrounds looked somewhat fake, some CGI that wasn’t as refined and the outfits looked a little too clean and perfect for what the characters were going through.

In conclusion, as a series and adaption, this version of Avatar looks like a final product that manages to be decent enough but is not something I would watch again since it didn’t’ really hook me, I wish that for a next season they creators behind it work on making it better, specially the writing and narrative nuance, the emotional tone and the characters’ arc, because despite all of its flaws I do believe it has the potential of being really good.

As a final comment to those who liked it and know nothing of this universe, I recommend you to watch the animated original series to have a better context and a more detailed understanding of the plot and the characters, since I honestly think it’s a wonderful work that is worth watching at least once in your life, whether you are a fan of cartoons or not.