Netflix’s live action Avatar: The Last Airbender series never seemed like a good idea. Why even try to remake one of the most beloved animated series of all time, especially after someone else had already attmpted once and did it so badly the fandom agreed to erase it from its collective memory?
Well, Netflix is seemingly addicted to this live action remake concept, so here we are. They want a megafranchise, drawing from multiple seasons of the original show and potentially even more from Korra, and it all starts here. And despite a mountain of skepticism, including from myself who counts the original as one of my favorite shows ever, I have to say Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender is much better than I thought it would be. By the end, I genuinely enjoyed it.
Throughout the show, you can tell this is made by a cast and crew that have a lot of love for the source material. Yes, yes, I absolutely read all the interview quotes that made it sounds like they were changing, subtracting or adding stuff that sounded bad. It seemed like a lot of red flags to me. But in practice, I don’t think those changes overwhelm the whole, and the entire thing is very much an attempt at a love letter to the animatied series. There are countless scenes and lines that are identical to the original, even if some structural changes are made for the sake of the adaptation. I didn’t find anything especially damaging.
It is not as good as the animated series. Of course it isn’t. This is painting the Mona Lisa with colored pencil, where it may be great in its own right, but it’s just an entirely different medium that could never live up to the original masterpiece. So I think you have to grade on a bit of a curve here. I don’t know how superfans will react to the series, and I’m sure many of them will not be forgiving of aspects of it. I also don’t know what this will do for “onboarding” new fans who haven’t seen the original, which is how I approached Netflix’s One Piece adaptation (which was good!). Here, all I can say is that as a fan, I thought they did a solid job.
The biggest success here is casting. Many remarked how eerily similar the casting choices looked to the animated characters, but in terms of channeling those characters, it really works. Right off the bat, I have to say the most impressive performance is Dallas Liu as Prince Zuko, who portrays rage masking rejection expertly throughout the entire series. He is joined by again, another perfect casting choice in Paul Sun-Hyung Lee’s Iroh, whose only fault is that he’s…tall.
