What’s Wrong With Avatar The Last Airbender?

I've never seen Avatar The Last Air Bender, yes, you heard me right, even though my job is literally to watch cartoons and make videos about them. I've spent the

last

19 years completely in the dark on one of the most beloved animated series of all. I can't really tell you why I knew I would love it. Everyone I knew said it was the best cartoon of all time, and considering the shows I love - Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, Shira, Adventure Time - I almost certainly owe a lot to the influence Avatar left behind. behind I was really sure that if I gave the show a chance I would love it, but I don't know, I kept putting it off and got lazy, I guess it was until February, when we got closer and closer to the release of the new Netflix live action adaptation from Avatar, you know, it's not every day that a cartoon gets remade, yeah, well, I was going to say live action, but in reality, remakes of cartoon series just don't happen, yeah, sometimes you might get a movie adaptation or a reboot. takes things in a new direction, but a completely new show meant to retell the same story is a bit new as far as I know and in the entire lead-up to this show appearing on Netflix, I had a sneaking suspicion that They were I'm going to spoil it, I don't know how to call it a hunch, but I felt like this was all going to go

wrong

, like there was some kind of big lesson from a past mistake that just wasn't being learned, but it was the only way I did it.

What I will know for sure is if I watched the original series, so after almost two decades of being behind, I finally sat down to watch Avatar and damn, everyone was right. Avatar is an absolutely amazing show, basically perfect and I'm not saying that. lightly, I don't even consider Steven Universe to be basically perfect and that's my favorite show, but first I have to say a huge thank you to the sponsor of today's custom video post, you guys have heard me talk about the custom post before the custom post be. the freeo jooin monthly membership club that will send you one of their exclusive boxes filled with top-notch products from under-the-radar brands.

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avatar

The Last Airbender is a Nickelodeon cartoon that aired for three seasons between 2005 and 2008 and is about people who can control the elements through something called bending there is fire Benders Earth Benders water benders and air benders and then there is one person, one singular person in the entire world who can bend all four elements, that is the Avatar, the show follows the

last

Avatar, an

airbender

named Ang, that wording sounded familiar as you learn to master the other elements to stop.

This 100 year war waged by the Fire Nation against everyone else Ang has a flying bison named Daa, a strange little lemur named Momo, and two best friends named Saka and Qara. Most episodes follow this group traveling around the world helping Ang. on his mission and escaping persecution from the Fire Nation, particularly Fire Nation prince Zuko and his uncle Iro. I don't want to go too deep into spoilers for the original series so we'll leave the summary there, this show pretty much does the impossible and provides something that literally everyone can enjoy, the story is obviously beautifully written and while it may may not be the most strikingly original plot you've ever heard, compared to everything else on Nickelodeon or even children's television in general at the time.

It might as well have been and it's executed perfectly, plus the show has tons of comedy, action, romance, drama, suspense, and even a little horror all wrapped up in a package that always feels consistent and one of the show's biggest draws. , especially when The first release was its art style and animation, as seen in the early 2000s, anime was already very popular among children. I know I was there. Baby Fofi was about Pokémon Dragon Ball Sonicx Boba B Bobo and especially Yu-Gi-Oh, but all these shows. they were like real anime produced in Japan and localized for an American audience and naturally, as a response to the growing popularity of the genre, other Western shows began to incorporate influence from anime and it really took some shows to a whole new level.

I mean, some were Kappa Mike, but others were childhood favorites like Cartoon Network's Teen Titans and of course Avatar, the show took heavy influence from anime for its art style of storytelling, fight scenes, everything. and fun fact, I lied, I actually watched a handful of episodes of Avatar when the show was new. I loved anime back then and was obsessed with Teen Titans mainly because of its anime influence, so obviously Avatar caught my attention. I just lost interest quickly because Baby Fofi liked stupid shows like Spongebob, Zim, and Mr. Mey more. but while I never stuck with Avatar, Avatar definitely stuck with me with those character designs and that art and animation being so instantly iconic that decades later I could still have told you who everyone was despite having barely interacted with the show, now I want you to you do it.

Keep all that in the back of your head for later, as it may or may not be important, but with Avatar now finally off my list and sitting comfortably in the back catalog, no, that's not

what

the catalog means above, waits sitting comfortably on the pile of facts. The hole started forming as usual, after finishing a show I just go back to YouTube and start watching silly videos like Rubik's cubes or something, I don't know, but with Avatar I was wondering what, what, what, what , what, what, should I do, I need to start my own journey now, what do I do with these emotions?

Fortunately, unlike many other shows I talk about, there is no shortage of Avatar content to watch. I don't even have to get into things like video games, toys, comics. or today's cards, all of which are real and there are tons of them, but I can save them for another day because Avatar has actually had a long life outside of those initial three seasons that the show ended in 2008 only to see a film adaptation of live action only 2 years. Later in 2010, Nickelodeon made a brand new sequel series in 2012 called The Legend of Kora that ran until 2014. Things cooled down for a while after that in terms of new releases, but people never stopped talking about Online

avatar

, his reputation was only growing. all the time, especially considering that the Kora movie and sequel series were not highly appreciated, let's put it that way.

I'm just starting the legend of Kora so I can't say if I agree with the mixed negative response. I mean, some of my favorite shows are the ones that people say are absolute garbage, so for all I know I might love the legend of Kora, but that doesn't change the fact that it inspired some pretty mixed opinions and the movie that I can. I can't see it, it's lost in the fog, the point is that attempts to continue the Avatar Legacy had failed for a few years, which only made people think more highly of the Original Series, so when Netflix came along and made With the show becoming widely available for streaming in 2020, people flocked to Avatar as if it were new once again the wave of nostalgia people felt upon watching Avatar again the reputation it had earned over the last decade of awesomeness.

What was it and you know it was 2020, we didn't have much to do, all of this led to a massive resurgence and popularity of the series. I mean, I couldn't spend a minute on any social media site without seeing posts or references to Avatar and Netflix. I definitely realized this, which is how we arrived at today with the first new Avatar show in over a decade in Avatar The Last Airbender, Netflix's live-action adaptation. Yes, I have seen it, in fact, as I write this video, I literally just finished watching. season finale, Al, a couple of seconds ago, so I have some new thoughts to express and a fair warning.

I'll probably start spoilers here. This program was very frustrating for the context. The first season of the original series is 20 episodes long, that is, 20 30 minutes. Long stories and the main story is that Saka and qara find Ang on an iceberg one day and start their journey to help him. Mastering the other elements starting with water bending because qara is also a water bender, it makes sense in the way they have to fight. from Prince Zuko, who tries to capture Ang and bring him back to his father, the Fire Lord oai, because he was banished from the Fire Nation after facing his father in something called Agony Kai and is trying to regain his honor, but the gang flies around the world on the back of Ang's Flying Bison Opa and visits several different places through which Ang learns about all the horrible crap that happened while he was chilling on the iceberg and it all culminates with the gang heading to the northern water tribe and fight a giant. fire nation attack where a guy kills a sunfish that was actually the real moon and Ang becomes the final boss of Sonic Adventure.

Once the day is saved, the gang heads off to help Ang learn his next element, Earthbending, and again this is all handled in the span of about 20 episodes, the first season of the new Avatar attempts to tell the exact same thing. story in eight episodes, yeah, hm, I mean, I admit they are longer episodes, each one is about an hour long, but it's still a lot to squeeze in. in only eight stories and this ruins everything instead of starting the show from the perspective of qara and Saka randomly find The Last Airbender avatar only on Nick Tunes.

We now start 100 years in the past with Ang learning that he is the Avatar in the first place and seeing how he ran away from home and got trapped in the iceberg, all of which was shown in flashback in the original show over multiple episodes. , so we are immediately erasing almost all of the mystery surrounding it. From minute one, the intrigue that we as an audience had to learn more about how this strange little guy could be an all-powerful being once in a generation and how he got trapped 100 years ago, was all answered before Ang even meet Saka and qara and speaking of Saka and qara, they barely like doing anything on this show, honestly, neither does Ang, really this super truncated story means that a lot of their agency is taken away from them, basically, they don't have time to do things because the program only has time for things that can happen to them, sinceyou know what I mean, for example, omashu omashu is a large city in the Earth Kingdom that Ang and the Gang head to near the beginning of the show, while there they meet the Earth king Boomie, who is a Crazy old gezer who subjects Ang to a lot of treacherous tests before Ang realizes that he is actually an old friend from 100 years ago, after that, they leave Omashu and go off to do other things, like meet to a gang of Freedom Fighters led by this guy named Jet, who turns out to maybe be a little bit I don't know if I can say this word on YouTube Terrorist Boy or later when they go to the Northern Air Temple and find a kid named Teao and his father Sai who invent all these cool machines out of garbage. three things are separate episodes episode 5 episode 10 and episode 7 in the new show all this happens only in omashu almost everything in the same episode yes, the gang arrives in omashu they meet jet and the Freedom Fighters Teo and Sai, they also fight with Zuko all together In just one episode, then the next we finally get to the topic with Boomie only for it to get loaded next to the episodes story where Uncle Iro gets captured by earthbenders and then they start telling stories that don't even happen until the season. 2, like the secret tunnels in Omashu, you know the only secret in the same episode, so not only is everything happening out of order, not only is everything happening at the same time, but it also means that none of these individual stories are happening. they are allowed to breathe or develop properly, like I said, things keep happening to Ang and the gang, leaving them no time to do anything, a prime example of this is how everything is exposition in the show, the vast majority of the show, up to the end, it's just people sitting and talking, just talking.

Exposition so that people can be told what's happening instead of seeing what's happening, even when the show breaks out in some sort of cool fight scene, it's interspersed with too many exposition dump scenes too long stretches of one character just talking to another, it's very revealing and doesn't show much, plus H Ang doesn't even learn to bend water this season. Learn the story of the book called Water. Ang spends so much time dealing with things that appear and then running around asking previous avatars what he's supposed to do, that he barely ends up doing anything and doesn't manage to do the singular thing. what he's supposed to do in this story, which is learn to control water, leaving the poor guy with little purpose in the show and unfortunately, by extension, qara is even worse.

The original Katara is a smart and motivated character that you know even if she likes him. follows the rules, knows when he needs to be rogue for the sake of the mission, and shows a real drive to want to help fight the Fire Nation, meanwhile this new qara is written with basically none of that personality or agency seen in the original. Qara learned more advanced water bending through a scroll she stole from a group of pirates. The show treated this as actually a big moment for Katara's character, like she's coming out of her shell or something and we see her gradually get better at bending. over the course of the season, even if Ang is learning all of this more quickly, so that when the group lands at the northern water tribe and qara is told that he will not be allowed to fight nor will the tribe's control master It will teach you water control. and she gets rightfully angry, we as the audience know that she will be able to fight back, prove the Control Master

wrong

, and be allowed to train with him, all because she put in the effort herself and we saw her do it in this completely slutty way. different story, she doesn't steal the scroll to control water that her grandmother gave her in episode 1, so there's no agency or character building there, great and once we see her master move with the water whip in omashu, the program simply decides that we don't do it.

I need to see her practice her bending more, a few episodes later she just randomly pulls out these extremely advanced bending moves that we've never seen before for a singular scene before being written out of the show for two episodes in a row, when she fights the control teacher. water in the north, she suddenly goes back to being a total pro and does things we've never seen her try until this point, she mastered waterbending on her own off-screen and then after the fight it was decided that neither You don't even need to train. with the Waterbending Master, she already got it and apparently we didn't need to see any of that progress.

Who cares if she could barely do water whip four episodes ago and in two of those episodes she was literally unconscious the entire time trapped in the spirit? world where bending doesn't work, yeah, so not only does Ang not learn a lick of waterbending this entire season despite traveling with a waterbender who is clearly a child prodigy and despite meeting a waterbending master in the north, but the entire trip is learning. bending is not even considered worth showing a big hooray, you're starting to see what I'm talking about here, this show is absolutely devoid of character and personality, the characters have no agency, we can barely spend time getting to know them, the show has a strange obsession with breaking them up and each individual episode is too packed with stories from three original episodes to have room to breathe like this sentence.

Oh my god, also, because this is the dark, mature, adult version of Avatar, no one is having fun. As always, Ang, the fun-loving kid who likes sledding on penguins, spends most of this season just moping and being overly serious, not looking for anything fun because the show has no time for that nor interest in This is because This is the avatar for all the adults who think they are too mature to watch cartoons now, so we have to spend more time showing people on fire with real, realistic morbid energy and film almost every scene as if lights had never been invented.

I can't see anything on this show, they are literally holding flashlights, why does it still look like my TV is off on that note? uh, the special effects here are difficult, when everything is animated like in the original, it's not really necessary. suspend your disbelief in the slightest, the background and effect of each character creature are all on the same playing field, except for that episode with floating firebenders, what are they standing on? But once you start mixing live action with green screen, CGI and other specials. effects, suddenly you're asking a lot more of your audience when it comes to suspending their disbelief and immersing themselves in this world because when the focus is on realism and then things like this happen, you're going to lose a lot of people.

I don't really have anything in mind to show here, but I'm sure I can find one. I mean, I was just complaining about how dark everything is, but most of the show was filmed in low light, probably because when you see the green screen effects in full screen it doesn't look very good and opa, oh god, what? what are they doing to my boy? All those poor artists and animators, I can tell they are doing their best here. I mean, the flex looks pretty good, but it's noticeable. that they weren't given the proper time or budgets to make this not look like a music video from 2002.

I guess that explains why Opa and Momo are barely on the show to begin with, yeah, apaa, basically home base of the gang, absolutely right. they get to travel in the first place and he's not really on the show, I mean technically he is but only when it's absolutely 100% necessary, probably because it was too expensive to include them but take away the gang's base of operations like that . It's another reason why a lot of the stories feel disjointed and rushed and like we never get to spend time with the characters, but okay, let's slow down for a second, if I go deeper into this, we'll have to get started. bringing up the sound of the sins of cinema after every sentence, so let me be honest as an Avatar fan, this show may be frustrating to watch, but it's far from the worst thing in the world.

There are a number of things that I think the show actually is. doing very well, Zuko is basically perfect here, his character, his arc, his story, in my opinion everything is handled very well, which makes sense if this version wants to focus more on the drama, then Zuko's story is the most dramatic part of the original series. It's actually going to be hard to spoil this part, and in that sense, this version of the show introduces us to the series' big bad Fire Lord Ozai much earlier, which I think is a good choice. Ang's entire goal in the series is to dominate everyone. four elements in order to beat oai, but he doesn't actually meet oai at all until maybe the last few episodes of the original series, if I remember correctly, yeah, there's actually not much rivalry between these two outside of Destiny and because Because we, the audience, also don't get to know Oai much until much later in the show, so the fact that they're developing how evil and manipulative this guy is a little earlier, I think will make Oai more attractive. villain to invest in, even if this story just adds to the mess here and when the show finally reaches the end of the season, I think they succeeded in almost every aspect.

I think they handled the northern battle perfectly. Which is great, but the whole show isn't really earned when it's based on a show with no real character or substance. Overall if you want to watch Avatar just watch the original in my opinion and in most people's opinion I think it's much better. that what we're seeing here in live action, however, I don't think the live action show is completely terrible, it has some merit even if it's mostly spectacle and novelty, and one thing it does have right now It is the potential to improve. Over time, I have no idea if anything will actually come of this, but a lot of people have made their opinions about this show known as soon as it came out, so maybe they'll take the feedback, maybe the show will improve, maybe they'll add some more fun again, I don't know, I mean it's only season 1, we could see a lot of improvements in season 2 or three or I have no idea how long they wanted this to last, but it has that potential to improve. unlike the movie, no, this is Avatar, The Last Airbender, the movie infamously directed by Mite Shamalan and released in 201. 10.

I've never seen this movie, but I've seen several videos about the reputation this thing has had in the last 14. years, I think it is abysmal. I may not have seen Avatar until recently, but I've known how hated this movie has been for years and I don't think we can finish a video about Avatar turning into a real boy without seeing the first attempt, huh? Well that was interesting, I'm not sure if this will be enough of a popular opinion that it's not so much worse than the Netflix series. Let me explain that the Avatar movie is bad, it's disrespectful to the source material, it's too serious and boring and in some cases it's downright embarrassing, but having watched this and the Netflix show back to back, I was surprised at how little I was offended by this one. movie, as if I didn't know, how it had been touted as such a shameful embarrassment to the franchise for the last decade plus I was hoping for a bigger betrayal of the original story, but no, this is still Avatar season 1, catch up with everyone the major plot points with little to no changes, plus, you know, changes in quality like on Netflix. showing that it feels rushed relies too much on telling rather than showing, sucks all the fun and personality out of both the story and the characters, and is ultimately a bit boring.

The most obvious and egregious problem is this baffling thing where they get like half of the main characters' names wrong. Ang is now Ang iro is now iro and Saka is sooka. That's the one that really gets me. At one point they mentioned Zuko's agik Kai, but the character called it agik key. Sometimes they don't even say Avatar, right? They pronounce it Avatar, are you the avatar? like they think the word Avatar has to have the same voting sound as Ang's name, so when they decided to call him Ang they were like oh shit whatever and of course that's annoying, it immediately gives the movie away. this really off-putting energy like it actively doesn't care about honoring the original and that continues into the characters themselves, many of them don't look like Zuko at all and don't look like the cartoon at all.

I would say they act. Pretty much the same thing, but the appearance is so strange that it's just distracting. Fire Lord oai doesn't look threatening at all, he just looks like your boss and then there's Saka and qara and yeah, the only thing I'm going to do. to say here is just finding the difference, yes I will give the movie, this qara is a little closer to the original character here, it is still not therewritten particularly well, but he actually has that drive to fight and takes action a decent amount of times in this. movie that makes her feel a little more like qara than what we get on Netflix however the trade off here is Saka OMG honestly it's probably a good thing she got her name so wrong because this is basically a whole new character .

With the names, this is the most infamous failure of this movie. Saka, our goofy, energetic comic character is now the most stoic, serious, angst-filled character you can imagine, just a complete 180, he doesn't even crack a smile and why would he live the action? it's for adults the adult jokes would just make this funnier and it's for babies funny I'm so cool and look I get it Saka can't be easy to translate to live action a lot of his jokes and a lot of his voice acting is informed for the fact that he's an exaggerated animated character, you can't really translate that to live action without it being extremely embarrassing.

Netflix Saka is not great, but he still has his moments and in the end he feels more or less like Saka. boring version of Saka, but that's okay, the movie Saka really is a completely different guy, so I get it, you can't really do Saka in live action, but if you can't do it, why are you doing it? And what's worse, no. At this point in this movie, Saka and qara feel like Ang's friends, they feel more like Ang's disciples. I don't know, especially with that really weird last scene where everyone bows to Ang, including Saka and Katara, and then Ang just makes this really weird awkward face. like this is the amazing digital circus or something.

I do not know I do not like it. It feels a little strange to dwell on special effects for a movie as old as this YouTube channel, but I thought it was interesting that Opa was seen. terrible in both adaptations, but the green screen was better in the movie than it was on Netflix. It's strange that bending looks good from a technical level, but boy, is it disappointing every time someone bends. It looks so small and weak, you've probably seen this clip before. but it's such a perfect example of what I'm talking about, it's like six or seven earthbenders really giving it their all to gently float a singular rock to the right, a rock that I don't know, it feels like you could have done it.

You simply picked it up with your hands considering how the curvature is supposed to look. This is just embarrassing, but I mean, other than that, like I said, this is still the Avatar.Story, the only major difference for you to like the sequence of events is that once the battle in the water tribe of the north and kill the Moon Spirit, Ang doesn't enter the Avatar State to form that giant water monster that he just wanders around with. a headache for a minute while the problem is fixed immediately like a minute after it started. Ang enters the Avatar State a little later, but all he does is just slowly and calmly raise this big wave and then just as slowly and calmly set it down. backs off and for some reason that makes the Fire Nation go dumb, boring, bad change, bad movie at the end of the day Avatar is just lightning in a bottle, it was the perfect story told in the perfect medium for said story made in perfect timing and any cynical attempt to recapture that magic is doomed to never live up to the original, especially in live action, just look at the cartoon man, but the only thing I'll say about the Avatar movie is that at least Ang Learn to bend in water.

God, I can't get over that.