Board 8 > Netflix Avatar Review Zone

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/avatar_the_last_airbender_2024

"...At best, the show serves as a constant reminder of how amazing the original Nickelodeon cartoon was. At worst, it makes M. Night Shyamalans 2010 The Last Airbender film feel like a mercy because at least that poor effort was only 2 hours long."

Its at 61%, mixed leaning positive. Interestingly and perhaps surprisingly the audience reviews are much better at 76%. I watched a bit of the first episode, it was okay. Production quality was excellent (especially the costumes), most of the cast was good, liked the expansions on the story but some of the dialogue was not good. Not remotely comparable to the Shyamalan film, but inessential unless you literally refuse to ever watch an animated show.

I thought this was going to be a throwback topic to when you could use your Avatar on the 360 to watch movies Mystery Science Theater style with friends on Netflix and got a little excited.

Oops.

Gonna watch it tonight. If it's bad I kinda want to cancel my Netflix just to send a message.

The preview that autoplays looks bad

About halfway through. My advice is to give it more than one episode, because it does get better in episodes 2-4.

The show is a homage to the cartoon, but they do add some of their own scenes, especially in relation to fire lord family backstory, which was also lacking a bit in the cartoon series. We get to see a lot of the prominent characters from season 1, and even though it's packed in tightly, I didn't feel like it was rushed.

I am so far satisfied with this live action rendition. It reminds me a little of The Last of Us tv show as far as its closeness to the cartoon, while making some subtle changes.

My cabbages!

LightningStrikes posted...

Interestingly and perhaps surprisingly the audience reviews are much better at 76%

Audience reviews on RT are generally extremely forgiving of franchise content...unless it's specifically something the internet has worked itself up over.

Just my opinion halway through, but I don't see this as a complete flop. Cartoon loyalists were never going to be happy with this live action rendition, so I'm not sure what the point is of holding it up to those impossible standards. While I admit the script is a bit lacking at times, the acting has been a pleasant surprise and the effects have been great.

season 1 of avatar sucked anyway, so i rationally am aware i shouldn't have high expectations, but i nonetheless have my pitchforks ready

Ok, so I just binged the whole series in one day...which, I know, isn't always advisable and can sometimes cloud the perception of the series, but I did it nonetheless.

My vague, unspoilery thoughts: It didn't meet my expectations going into it. I was hoping more for a show that loosely followed the cartoon's plot but was in large part its own story. I wanted that simply because I didn't want just a live action rehashing of the story. Sadly, this turned out to be more or less a retelling of the cartoon, with some minor creative differences here and there. Like I said in an earlier post, it reminded me a lot of The Last of Us live action show in its relation to its source material.

Like The Last of Us, the 8 episode limitation led to some tight packing of content in certain episodes, and episodes 2-4 of the series are certainly tightly packed with various storylines coming together in single episodes. Oddly enough though, looking back, I find those episodes the most enjoyable of the series. They crammed a lot of content in those episodes, but I felt they did it well. The slower paced episodes 5 and 6 were fine, I suppose, but they didn't carry my attention as much. I wasn't a huge fan of episodes 7 and 8, though that may have been Avatar fatigue kicking in.

Overall though, I think they did a good job with the reenactment of the series. I like the additional exposition with Zuko and Iroh and their families. I thought Aang and Katara and Sakka got better as the show progressed, though there was some regression in the final episodes. I was disappointed at how minimal Appa and Momo were, but I suppose it was expensive to CGI them.

I would say I'm cautiously optimistic for season 2, but who knows when or if that comes out.

Episode 1 was solid. Some iffy acting maybe but nothing horrific, it looks great (CGI at the end looked shaky). Obviously a little rushed (Aang's capture and rescue was about 5m total it felt like).

I don't know much about Avatar but I'll watch the rest probably.

i'm two episodes in. episode 1 had some horrific scenes, but i think they (surprisingly?) nailed zuko.

I'm 2 episodes in and it's not good. I think I would call it bad. But not terrible. Some of the costumes are awesome and Zuko is absolutely flawless (he nailed the voice and even the facial and body movements). But the gaang suck, Appa and Momo are lifeless, story is both too conservative and has dumb unnecessary changes.

XIII_Rocks posted...

I don't know much about Avatar but I'll watch the rest probably.

I'm curious about this perspective. It seems like such a ubiquitous show that almost no one is experiencing it for the first time through live action.

But if you're not comparing it to basically the best TV show of all time, it's probably still pretty great just because the story itself is so good.

foolm0r0n posted...

I'm curious about this perspective. It seems like such a ubiquitous show that almost no one is experiencing it for the first time through live action.

But if you're not comparing it to basically the best TV show of all time, it's probably still pretty great just because the story itself is so good.

https://youtu.be/vSJxs8uuv90?si=-7oszPKUXKxekNnL

So it's not as good an adaptation as Netflix One Piece ended up being?

Oda was a critical part of Netflix One Piece's development process and approved everything.

The Avatar team left the Netflix project because they thought it sucked.

I'm still undecided on if I wanna watch it or not.

foolm0r0n posted...

I'm curious about this perspective. It seems like such a ubiquitous show that almost no one is experiencing it for the first time through live action.

Stuff I knew

-There's benders of 4 elements. MC can bend air
-I think I knew that fire were the bad guys
-Character names like Aang, Iroh, and Sokka rang a bell too and I would probably have said Iroh was an older mentor type figure if you made me guess

And that's it, I think

watched through episode 7. it's kinda bad but i'm enjoying it quite a bit. the CGI for the locations is great, but up-close the backgrounds look stale and kinda "netflix"-y as opposed to feeling immersive like game of thrones. think the worst part of the show so far is the direction and how the actors seem to be instructed to deliver their lines. actor for aang seems to struggle with the serious scenes but is decent with lighthearted scenes.

hour-long episodes don't suit this show very well.

I got to Azula and her friends and I kinda like their dialogue and acting. The story changes are weak though.

Why the f did they put secret tunnel in S1.

And Lu Ten. This is so ruined. Absolutely no build up.

I found Wan Shi Tong's appearance to be most jarring

foolm0r0n posted...

Absolutely no build up.

Same with Iroh being passed over as heir apparent

guffguy89 posted...

I found Wan Shi Tong's appearance to be most jarring

Haven't gotten there yet

But what is their actual plan for S2? They used up all their juice here already. Maybe they'll cannibalize S3 for S2? And then S3 will be just 8 episodes of Day of Black Sun + Finale?

Theyre gonna do The Great Divide in s3

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Theyre gonna do The Great Divide in s3

A bottle episode dedicated to the boys playing an hour-long game of redemption

WazzupGenius00 posted...

Same with Iroh being passed over as heir apparent

they might cover ozai actually killing azulon in a later episode. that said you can obviously see how shell-shocked he is after lu ten's death

foolm0r0n posted...

Haven't gotten there yet

But what is their actual plan for S2? They used up all their juice here already. Maybe they'll cannibalize S3 for S2? And then S3 will be just 8 episodes of Day of Black Sun + Finale?

i don't think they particularly cannibalized S2. lots of plot points still.

* trying to weaponize the avatar state (and aang subsequently training for it)

* team avatar vs azula

* zuko alone

* ba sing se and the tales within

* everything with toph and aang learning earthbending

* the library/learning about sozin's comet

* crossroads of destiny

those are the biggest pieces of S2 and haven't really been touched on this season. we'll also almost certainly see more original material of ozai given they need to keep DDK busy.

It's not really the plot points, but the themes and core conflicts. S2 is so different because it's all about earthbending, badass new characters, and Zuko+Iroh turning sympathetic. So far in the live action we've seen all of those spoiled already, except Toph. That's why it's weird to put secret tunnel so early - it's the earthbending origin story, when we haven't even learned much about waterbending yet. They added so many extra sympathetic lines to Zuko and Iroh already, it's obvious that they're going to be good vs Azula and the fire nation.

I guess the original issue is they got rid of S1's core conflict which is Aang's reluctance to be the Avatar and own the responsibility. So then this S1 would have no conflict if they didn't cannibalize some of S2's conflicts.

Watched E2. Whole show has some fairly questionable acting + rushed (Sokka's little romance subplot was like 5 scenes of being hit over the head with a hammer that these guys are going to get it on)

Looks good though

Spirit world episode was kinda good? Great visuals and a good way to develop Katara and Sokka without changing too much. But is Aang really flying all the way to Roku's temple on his glider? That makes no sense lol

His airbending flight has looked like full-on Zaheer level a few times

To be fair, the original cartoon was also guilty of travel continuity errors like that. Taking weeks/months to travel to some spots, then later on traveling the same distance and back in one night.

I tried watching this and got a few episodes in but what they did to Iroh's character here killed it for me. Don't think I can watch the rest.

It's not the only thing I dislike, but they just fundamentally seem to not understand the original series.

guffguy89 posted...

To be fair, the original cartoon was also guilty of travel continuity errors like that. Taking weeks/months to travel to some spots, then later on traveling the same distance and back in one night.

I don't think anything took weeks in the original. The whole show was like 9 months total, and that includes the explicit time skips like Northern Tribe training and several in S3. They traveled in days usually.

But yeah I guess the timeline was pretty ambiguous. The key thing though is they always used Appa to go far distances. It was clear that Aang's glider was far slower with shorter range. Sometimes Appa could teleport but that's ok, since it's clear that Appa is the way they traveled far (and made his absence way more impactful). If Aang can just fly across a huge ocean to Roku's temple, why should he care if he loses Appa?

i thought they explicitly noted that the forest was near the fire nation?

tcaz2 posted...

I tried watching this and got a few episodes in but what they did to Iroh's character here killed it for me. Don't think I can watch the rest.

It's not the only thing I dislike, but they just fundamentally seem to not understand the original series.

i'm sad about iroh because i really like this actor from kim's convenience too. but i hate the way he talks here, which is why i feel like the direction very specifically must be way off

SeabassDebeste posted...

i thought they explicitly noted that the forest was near the fire nation?

They did mention that, but how near?

I just read that Ken Leung (Zhao) thought he was auditioning for a James Cameron Avatar thing when he got the part

and yeah Rokus shrine is the easternmost point of the Fire Nation and He Bai forest is right across the sea from it. Aang using his glider is actually somewhat believable.

Never seen the original cartoon show but binge watched this over 2 days and I enjoyed it. Nowhere near as much as One Piece (which I also had never seen) but it was definitely enjoyable at least

It just ain't clickin for me. I haven't found a particular problem but I think it's just too.......Netflix-y. It looks nice but just doesn't appeal to me most of the time.

I just started One Piece and it's pretty awesome. Never saw the cartoon though. Don't know why Luffy is Mexican and black either.

Yeah this is fine but it's so clearly not as good as One Piece was

By no means a disaster or anything but I'm trying not to think about One Piece while watching it

WazzupGenius00 posted...

I just read that Ken Leung (Zhao) thought he was auditioning for a James Cameron Avatar thing when he got the part

love this. also loved leung as zhao!

Also One Piece's sets and especially the environmental combat is really noticeable compared to this show where you can tell they're mostly in an empty room. Also I feel like Mandalorian didn't look this obviously "green screen" did it? Or have we already hit the diminishing returns on this fancy new projector tech already?

I feel like you can see brighter light bleeding around the edges of the characters, causing an effect similar to the green halo of a green screen. The spirit world looked pretty good though. Might just be poor usage of the tech in many scenes.

yeah the CGI distance shots look great, but often when characters talk the backgrounds do not look good at all. rooms in particular look empty and bland.

i watched 5min of OP and it looked fun!

foolm0r0n posted...

Don't know why Luffy is Mexican and black either.

supposedly the actual character's real world ethnicity counterpart would be brazilian

pjbasis posted...

supposedly the actual character's real world ethnicity counterpart would be brazilian

I read that, and the kid does look pretty Brazilian, but the adult is soooo Mexican

He doesn't look Mexican or black to me...

Anyway, I watched Jesse Gender's video on the show and it was good and very informative. Would recommend.