The live action remake of Avatar the Last Airbender is following in the trail made by its predecessor, the live action movie, and disappointing fans all over the world. There are great things about this show, so before I go all in on attacking this show, let me highlight the best parts so far. 1: the casting, the casting for this show is incredible. The original show takes huge inspiration from Asian and Inuit cultures, primarily Tibetan culture, especially the monks for Airbenders, Inuit cultures for the water tribes, the fire nation is primarily inspired by Imperial Japan, and the earth kingdom is mainly based on Ming and Qing Dynasty China. The casting reflects this and the cast is almost entirely people from those cultures and most of them are incredible in their roles. In the same vein of the actors, the costuming department is perfect. Each costume looks exactly how they should, accurate to the cartoon but more complex and with more detail and personality. Finally, the CGI isn’t perfect but it is leaps and bounds better than the movie that shall not be named. This show requires a huge amount of CGI for all of the bending and it looks pretty good.

Now onto the negatives. The main problem I and many others have with this adaption is that they have to explain EVERY. SINGLE. THING. The original show was so great because despite being a kids show, they let things unfold throughout the series and everything did not have to be immediately revealed. Despite the new show trying to appeal to adults, the writers treat their audience like toddlers and have to explain everything exactly as it is immediately and won’t let any questions hang in the air. Hopefully this improves now that they have been renewed for the other 2 seasons and do not have the looming threat of leaving the show hanging with unanswered questions.

My next problem with the show, although some people enjoyed it, is that they are much too heavy handed in their dose of violence. The first half of the pilot is simply a massacre. In the show, the fire nation committed genocide of the Airenders using the power of Sozin’s comet. The original it is told from Aang’s perspective so it did not show the massacre in all of its bloody detail, instead showing bits and pieces in flashbacks and the after effects of the massacre and the shock Aang faces discovering he is now truly the last Airbender. This (in my opinion) had a much higher emotional impact and discouraged such violence by showing the aftereffects and grief. Instead, in the reboot they open the show with someone being killed and continue that way. This show is so determined to be chronological and never leave anything up in the air that they made the show incredibly violent to spell out to viewers how the fire nation is evil instead of letting people figure that out through the effects of their actions and the rest of the show.

My final problem that, admittedly, is not their fault, is that many beloved features of the original series simply don’t translate to live action. The cartoon features slapstick humor in order to lighten up and make difficult and complex problems digestible for young audiences and more fun for older audiences. Unfortunately, slapstick does not read well in live action, especially in their new “adult” version of this show. For example, Sokka’s sexism was done through slapstick humor that made people see that was unacceptable bit still laugh at it until he developed and grew as a character, instead they made it much more subtle. Another inevitable issue we see with all live action remakes starring children, is aging. It can be see in Percy Jackson where in one episode there are clear changes in heights in different scenes depending on when they were filmed. Because of the inevitability of the child actors aging, they have decided to remove major plot points of this show in order to make it take place over a longer period of time instead of the original one year timeline. Removing things like the eclipse and the comet will require major rewrites to the story. Albert Kim, the director of the show has said that they will at the very least be removing the comet. This is an idiotic decision that could have been avoided by simply stretching the timeline out; it would remove some urgency but not all of it like removing the comet completely does.

Life isn’t just about brute force and fighting, what makes life worth living despite these things is love. Avatar perfectly showcased this in the cartoon but instead the reboot has decided to focus the show on violence and despair in order to make the show more “adult” they have taken all of the humor and joy out in exchange for despair and fighting. There are countless shows that follow the premise of “oh no, the world is ending, will this unlikely chosen one save it?” the thing that made atla special was the heart and humor in it.

If you would like a much more in depth analysis of the cultural inspirations behind avatar, Xiran Jay Xiao has an incredible video series here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8MD8U1Ilwc&list=PL_lgdYf3demTh8ZRcKyCQb0kqgjo-y1Mb