this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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It's not bad. Stop perpetrating this clickbait.
Edit: I was wrong y'all. It's trash
It is though and I've watched the entire thing. Dialogue lines are trash, they constantly "tell" instead of "show," timelines don't make any sense, Team Avatar has no Chemistry, Katara learns to waterbend at a master-level from a single scroll, Aang never waterbends, there's no obvious through-line for the plot (it's just assumed you know why Aang is going to these places), Aang literally has no passion, and the show is trying to straddle the line between shot-for-shot remake and a retelling, but failing at both. There's ZERO character development. I could go on with things that are wrong with this new series.
I think the young actors and the special-effects crew have been failed by the writers, directors, and producers.
One weird decision was to rewrite Aang's disappearance. Originally he ran away and got frozen, and no one made a huge deal of his "running away". In the new series they explicitly change it to a brief flight to just think on things. Then they leaned hard a few times in shaming him for running away, when they expressly changed that detail..
Wait didn't he also get blamed for running away in the original show? Or at least for not being there for the war?
Yeah, but:
a) He did technically run away at least, though obviously way more than he intended
b) In the original, while there was some blaming, the Netflix went much harder on berating him. Basically Netflix took the angst dial and cranked it up across the board for as much as possible. Which is the general trend of a lot of shows lately, which disappoints me broadly that everything has to be so emo.
I watched an episode. It's really bad. I rewatched the series this last year so I could compare it. Just because someone agrees with the popular sentiment doesn't mean they're perpetrating (perpetuating?) click bait.
You watched an episode. That's not representative for all episodes. Simple as that.
I gave a show an hour of my time to get me to watch a universe I already like and know. If it can't "get" me in an hour, and THAT'S your front facing first episode? Nah, not worth my time
Oh, I absolutely understand that and it's reasonable. But please dont go around saying that the series is bad, because the truth is that you have not seen the series. Just tell people that the first episode is bad.
I think it's fair to judge the show by the first episode. This is all subjective, of course, but the changes they made to the story and to the universe will tell many fans all they need to know.
They made pretty massive changes. Aang has none of his childlike wonder, he can fly unaided like a Marvel superhero, and he's seemingly now a victim of a joyride gone wrong, rather than the boy who ran away from the world.
And the CGI... it's really rough in my opinion. There are entire scenes like the intro that are clearly 100% computer generated. If they passed that's one thing, but they look really goofy and uncanny.
These are all good reasons to judge the show, and you do see them in that first episode.
If you can't comment on shows you haven't watched the entirety of, and having only seen 1/8th-1/10th of the show, then most reviews are entirely out the window, all nominations for awards shows (which watch one, maybe two episodes for deliberation), and pretty much half of all comments related to a show are all moot, is that what I'm to believe your point is?
I didn't watch the second episode, so I can't tell them it gets any better, so let me rephrase it. Based on the first episode, which by all means should be the most catching and the most engaging of the series if only to push viewership, the show misses the mark on the characterization and story-development originally set by the animated series, regardless of the decent visuals and respectfully done outfits. Not only does it change existing characters' personalities, emotional maturity, and overall story arcs, it does so for reasons that seem to resemble "because new". Why change how Appa is released, why change katara's grandmother to include a poorly delivered word for word of the original intro, why have Aang address his running from his destiny and want to be a child so early when that's a key part of him visiting the air temple? I'll never know, because they lost me in the first episode. They had an hour to get me to give them the benefit of the doubt, and they missed the mark
Aang flies like Superman in the first minute of his first appearance in the first episode. I rolled my eyes so hard that my brain reset to zero expectations mode. It's good enough to be background noise, specially if you don't watch or ignore the actors faces most of the time (except Sokka, he kills it). But it is nowhere near anything that can be called good.
Haha oh man, I just said this exact thing a little ways up! I'm not the only one who thought of superman! Too funny...
But for real, why did they do this? It bothered the hell out of me that they made such a weird, massive change like this.
It particularly shows the show-runners null knowledge or at least contempt for the original material. It was a big plot point on The Legend of Korra. Flying that way was a mythical and highly advanced airbending technique, confined only to the most enlightened sages. It was the whole point of Zaheer as an antagonist. But Aang just goes up and down in the air. And I just realized that Aang didn't waterbend a single time in the whole season, not even in that training scene when Katara practices with the scroll. Which is funny, because reading this thread's positive praise, rather than improving my opinion of the adaptation, it is actually making me like it slightly less.
Episode 2 is good. Episode 6 is good. Haven't seen 7 and 8 yet.
The other episodes are definitely mid.
I watched 1 and 2 back to back and couldn't help but laugh at the fact that Aang learns how to cry in between episodes, or they applied fake tears for Gyatso's funeral or something. Bless their child actor's hearts, they tried very hard. But I don't think even Oscar winners could've done much with some of the atrocious dialogue that plagues some episodes. But yeah, mid would be a rather apt descriptor.
there's plenty of steps between bad and good. let's call it mediocre, or mid,or meh or, whatever flavor you want. I really don't think that flight moment was as bad as people are making it out to be. he uses tornadoes to push himself up in various ways in the animated series. this was that, but a bit longer. he didn't fly around like super man. he hovered on top of a vortex of wind for like 10 seconds at most.
I agree that the acting isn't great. good child actors are actually really rare. that said, people are overreacting calling it trash. especially since no one I've heard call it that actually gave it a fair shot.
It lasts 40 seconds and he is in Superman pose flying for the most of it. I didn't call it that out of spite, I actually enjoyed the whole series. But it is mid. Sure, maybe not trash like the Shyamalaladingdong movie, but I don't want to have to sit through it ever again.
Was he flying like this?
No, he was more flying like this.
Like with a wingsuit (which ironically do appear in The Legend of Korra) but without the suit. There are videos of the scene on YouTube. I don't know why they did it, when they could've used the glider staff. Specially since in a later scene he is shown being unable to fly without the staff.
Ok I definitely saw that pose but when people talk about the superman pose the one I showed is the superman flying pose or the one with 2 hands extended.
That's fastidious nitpicking. You understood what I meant. He made several feet across as if he had wings and floated around as weightless in ways that it's established that airbenders shouldn't.
Ok, while I agree that was super cringe and there is definitely some more throughout, it's pretty short sighted to deem the entire remake bad when the first episodes are generally never the best in the seasons. They had to cram a lot of back story in and only had 8 episodes. I found the first episode to be the weakest out of the entire season. Overall, it's mid, but not bad and has some really enjoyable moments.
Also, I assume the flying is due to budget constraints, and it would have been too expensive to cgi a ball of air to fly on.
To each their own, though. Everyone's got their opinions ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, good call, I will do the math. The 8 live-action episodes last between 48 and 63 minutes each, in total they are 434 minutes of runtime. Roughly about the same as the whole animated season 1, which was 20 episodes that last 24 minutes each, so total 480 minutes. They only had 46 minutes less than the animated show to tell the exact same story.
Right but it's easier and cheaper to tell a story through animation vs live action. Just because the live action run time is close to the original animation run time, doesn't mean it's practical or feasible to do the same in live action.
I don't think animation and live action can pace the same for something like this. Things that feel rushed in animation feel rushed ten fold in live action. I'd think episodes would at least need to be expanded to a solid half hour for pacing when it comes to a live action.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a perfect adaption. But, I think that would require a HUGE budget and would have to be a billionaires passion project for all the cgi and general costs it would need to properly make an ATLA live action that perfectly follows the animation.
Since that's never going to happen, I appreciate the live action we have for what it is, and between budget and time constraints, I think they did a good job.
Nah, its bad writing. Rushing in film usually means that characters spent way too much time talking doing exposition. Also the fact that time passing is never represented, so it all just feel like one long day that never moves forward in time.
On my part I don't want a perfect adaptation. Or a frame to frame adaptation. That would be boring and would never work on live action. I want good writers to do creative adaptations of the world that use the strengths of the medium to produce high quality entertaining new stories. If I want to see Aang story again, I will prefer the original animation instead every single time.
I appreciate this adaptation for what it is, and it is rather mediocre. Not bad, not good. It just exists.
I 100% agree the writing was bad, and I blame netflix pushing out the original writers. I'm more impressed that the kid actors did what they did when the script gave them so little to work with. Kataras character was butchered. But on the flip side Sokka, Zuko, and Iroh killed it I thought.
This could have been great like the One Piece live action, but settled for mid. I think it was at least good just because I did have some very enjoyable moments through out, mostly in the second half, and I also loved a lot of the visuals and animals.
I agree. I stopped watching after the first episode. It was extremely bad. I would understand if it's worse than the show, but it's just bad in general. The best comparison I could give is a really bad CW show. It not only fails as a remake, but fails a lot of basic television fundamentals. I understand people have different opinions, but it was so bad that it was almost objectively awful.
To be fair, I haven't gotten to more than Ep1 yet, because ep.1 was so bad I lost all excitement. The visuals are nice, and I personally don't mind little lore inconsistencies like flying that much, but the dialogue was really really bad, and I did not like frontloading the whole airbender genocide plot. Yes, 90% of the viewers probably have seen the original and know the plot, but it still robs me of the experience of discovering the truth and learning about Aang together with sokka and Katara. Idk, I just really like the structure of the original show, and I didn't appreciate the swap.
In general, the approach of the show seems to be averse to the "big reveal" technique of the original. They do the same with the death of Iroh's son, Zuko's conflict with his father, King Bumi, etc. The philosophy seems to be to lay everything out for the viewer and watch it develop.
Yeah, but for me as a kid, seeing those kids grow up, discover and learn more about their world, while I was growing up, discovering and learning about my world was what made the show so relatable and good. And I still watch the original to get back that sense of wonder and surprise even today. Because even as adults, we can be so sure something is right, wrong, important, impossible, worthless, etc. And be totally wrong, right, anything in between and, most importantly, totally focusing on the wrong thing and missing the bigger picture.
It showed me that evil people sometimes just are senselessly evil, but mostly have just different convictions, beliefs, upbringing or information that makes them think they are the good guy. And they think we are the bad guy. But while what they do may be not senseless evil, we still must try to stop them. There can be logic to evil, but it's still evil.
For me as a small kid, that was a big thing to learn. And obviously I understand that as an adult, I can't get that from the show now, but I want the feeling that if I watched this show as a kid, i would have gotten both of those things.
And honestly, the first episode didn't give me much hope for either of these. That, plus the cringy writing just killed all my enthusiasm. I will probably try episode 2 some time. But, I'm not excited anymore.
How am I going to feel better about myself if I'm not shitting on stuff online? How do you expect me to feel superior to people who enjoy something without whining about how bad a show is?
I thought it was really bad.
After watching it all, it was really bad