‘Avatar’ Review: Everything Changed When the Streaming Services Attacked
A thoroughly inoffensive adaptation of the animated series keeps the elemental spectacle, but loses its charm along the way.
Like most of the world, I opened Netflix on February 22 with a huge amount of apprehension. Fans of the Avatar world had been promised a live-action adaptation before, and then been subsequently burned worse than the Southern Air Temple by M. Night Shyamalan’s universally panned disaster. Netflix’s new series, covering the animated series’ first season (Book 1), looked to be headed in the same direction when the original Avatar team left the project in the early stages of development due to creative differences. However, I am very pleased to be able to say that while it is not anywhere near the original series in terms of quality, this new adaptation is inoffensive at its worst, and thrilling at its best.
The animated series’ first season was twenty 23-minute episodes long. In an interesting format shift, the Netflix series is comprised of 8 hour-long episodes. A little bit of math reveals that this really isn’t far off from a 1:1 runtime; all they had to do was compact 2–3 of the animated episodes into one live action. Thankfully, that’s not exactly what happened. Instead, events are restructured in a way that supports a longer-form narrative within the episodes and follows more of a chronological lineage. For example: before we even meet Katara and Sokka, we see Aang in his previous life at the Southern Air Temple, and the subsequent attack by the Fire Nation (shown in flashbacks in the animated series), and we’re introduced to Azula through a sequence where she poses as a sympathizer to a group of Fire Nation rebels (a totally new construct). The majority of the series is a beat-for-beat match, but these few changes, and others like them, give this remake more of a distinct personality. Bending is really well done here, and choreographed very closely to how it is done in the original series; it’s fast, splashy, and a little more violent than its animated counterpart. The CGI is generally fine, though there are really glaringly poor moments (Aang entering the Avatar State for the first time, the Spirit Realm and previous Avatar meetings, most of their interactions with Aapa). Most of the special effects budget almost certainly went into Episodes 7 and 8 for the battle at Northern Water Tribe, and it shows — it’s a huge spectacle. It’s also undeniably fun to watch Aang transform into a gigantic water Kaiju and wipe out an entire fleet of Fire Nation ships in live action; I almost wish I could have watched that episode in a movie theatre.
The cast is thankfully much more accurately filled out this time, with racial representation that reflects the intent of the original series. (The elemental nations are each tangentially representative of real-world nationalities, though they often cross and mix: Fire from Japan, Earth from China, Water from Inuit Nations, and Air from Tibet.) Netflix, in an inspired stroke of production design, gave the Earth Nation an Indian cultural aesthetic, and it works like a charm.
Unfortunately for the Earth Nation, their leader, King Bumi, gave what is undoubtedly the worst performance in the series. Utkarsh Ambudkar, covered in a comically poor makeup job to make him appear over a century old, reaches none of the giddy highs or scary lows that Bumi needs to accomplish, and halfheartedly commits a performance that was telling of the actor’s opinion on the material. The rest of the cast is passable, and they fill their roles with a vague earnestness, if not with incredible acting. Broadly speaking, the comedy that most of these characters deliver in the animated series is wiped out here; while it’s difficult to be too animated on screen without crossing into inappropriately camp territory for the material, the clear direction here was for subdued performances. The absolute highlight of the personnel here is Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Iroh. Both his physical and his performance types were bullseyes for the role. Dallas James Liu (Zuko) and Daniel Dae Kim (Ozai) were also strong contenders, bringing their characters to life faithfully and, in Kim’s case, bringing a cruel humanity to a role that we didn’t get to see much of in the animated series. The three of them combined, along with Elizabeth Yu’s Azula (who I am looking forward to seeing go crazy in future seasons) make for a strong family dynamic that anchors the drama of the show far better than anything going on with Team Avatar.
There’s a brief tag at the end of Episode 8 that teases the arrival of Sozin’s Comet (a celestial phenomenon that amplifies firebenders’ powers). The comet was the ticking time bomb on the original series; a deadline of its arrival gave all of the events a sense of urgency with this massive threat looming just months away. The live action series makes a smart decision to introduce the threat, but keep the timeline no more specific than “soon”. This gives them leeway on production with young actors that will quickly appear older than intended. It also makes sense in-universe; Aang has three other elemental bending skills to master. It’s alright for his training to take slightly longer if the comet is not coming at the end of the summer.
I just hope that leeway doesn’t turn into a series cancellation before it even gets off of the ground.
What: Avatar: The Last Airbender - Season 1
Where to Watch: Now streaming on Netflix.
