SPOILERS - What did you think of Netflix's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" Adaptation?
Personally I'm disappointed. Just finished watching it and literally every single change or addition Netflix made weakened the story and took away time that could have been given to awesome things from the cartoon. On top of that a lot of those changes were made for bullshit DEI reasons, primarily in how every single female character was given a girlpower plot rather than the really cool progressions shown in the original.
Aang never learns waterbending in the whole season! The whole point of season 1 in the original story is ignored. Why? So that Katara can instantly go from a novice to being called a waterbending master by episode 7. In the original Katara struggled to learn waterbending beyond the basics, she doesn't fully level up until Master Pakku begins teaching her and Aang near the end of the season. In Netflix's version Katara teaches herself nearly master level skills almost completely off camera, going so far as inventing new moves just from watching Earthbending while Aang literally shrugs off even practicing waterbending. There was a whole plot in the original about how easily Aang picks up waterbending while Katara gets jealous for how slow she's learning. That makes it awesome when she's leveled up by the end of season during the big battle. And even then she loses vs Zuko. Here she doesn't lose but instead the fight gets stopped by an outside force before that can happen, why because a master-level girlboss can't lose to a man. JFC I'm actually getting angry the more I think about things they fucked up.
It's almost worse than the M. Knight Sham abomination since they get so much stuff almost right and there's a lot of good things in there. But then they fuck up storylines for the same bullshit Hollywood DEI themes that have been ruining films and tv shows for like a decade now. They cast Mai, a tall skinny, downright lanky character with a damn near body positive actress (who attempts Mai's gloomy deadpan delivery but comes across as bad and bored), Azula is also horribly miscast and should not have been in season 1 nearly as much as she was. I understand completely now why the original creators bailed on this show. I tried not to get my hopes up but I guess I failed there.
Not looking forward to them miscasting Toph in season 2. Damn this was so disappointing.
Edited 8 months ago
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I mean, was anyone really expecting a different outcome?
Now that I've had some hours to mull it over I can at least appreciate that it didn't make me hate it and its creators like say Rings of Power or Halo season one. But yeah I was expecting better. The original sets an insanely high bar to reach.
Is it worth torrenting then?
Despite my rant above I'd say it's worth a watch. Like I said there is a lot of good stuff in there and maybe the things that bothered me won't be a big deal to you. I don't regret watching it, just a number of creative and casting choices (also the VFX can be bad sometimes and the obvious LED wall can be obvious sometimes). But yeah give it a watch.
I've seen all episodes now. It's not terrible (but not that great either..). Original show is clearly better.
Just as I've heard before, they tried to rewrite an S tier writing with B tier writers.
That's maybe the best description of the whole thing I've heard yet. Do you think it'll get better in season 2? Me I'm thinking it'll take so long to film that the kid playing Aang will almost look like a grown ass man by the time it comes out. Quality wise unless they magically get the original creators back on board it'll be more of the same.
I don't think that much will change or get any better tbh. They already made a good number of mistakes and fixing all of them is simply impossible at this point.