Released in February of 2024, the much anticipated live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender premiered on Netflix after being first announced in September 2018. Shortly after the release, it was renewed for a second and third season. There may have been better choices than this as the show received 59 percent rotten tomatoes with most critics giving it a mixed or average review. I, for one, saw many shortcomings from this new live-action.
Avatar: The Last Airbender began as an animated series in 2005 on Nickelodeon. It features a young boy, Aang, who navigates a world made up of four nations: Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Aang is the avatar, the one person in the world who can control all four elements, except his training is far from complete and the Fire nation is raging war on all the other elements.
The last attempt to make Avatar a live-action in 2010 failed horribly, featuring a white-washed cast that was a stark comparison to the culturally rich characters portrayed in the animation. At least the 2024 live-action aimed to use a mostly Indigenous and Asian cast, which was a more accurate representation. Still, the attempts at making Avatar a live-action have yet to come close to the brilliance of the original animation.
I was excited when I first saw Netflix advertising the new show. I watched the first episode the night after it had come out. The CGI was realistic enough and the actors weren’t horrible, however, the show was too cheesy to take seriously. The only redeeming features were the elemental battle scenes and the Fire Nation character, Zuko’s villain arc.
Shortening the three-season show with 61 episodes into an 8-episode live-action meant cutting many crucial plot and character developments. The show became extremely fast-paced and many aspects of the characters’ personalities were lost in the transition. The plot was racing ahead toward a final battle without laying the foundation with the events that led up to it. It got to the point where I couldn’t force myself to keep watching.
Without finishing the last two episodes, I deleted Avatar: The Last Airbender live-action from my watchlist and ate some ice cream for comfort. This live-action missed the mark on creating an accurate and engaging recreation of the dearly loved animation. Many things could have been done to make the live-action more accurate. One would be allowing the creators of the original to make the entire live-action.