After a successful animated movie or show, many studios attempt to bring the magic back to life, and to do so, they make live-action adaptations. This has been especially true for Disney over the past few years, bringing back classics like The Lion King, Cinderella, and countless others. However, if you look at the ratings, these live-action remakes just don’t make the cut, with the originals outweighing the new versions by a wide margin. This begs the question: are these genuine attempts to make content that people will love, or is it just a cash grab?
Earlier this year, Netflix came out with the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is a remake of the Nickelodeon animated series of the same name, which debuted back in 2005. The animated series was a hit for Nickelodeon and even went on to have a sequel series, The Legend of Korra. In 2010, the director M. Night Shamalan made the first attempt at making this series live-action with his movie, The Last Airbender. The movie was widely regarded as a flop due to poor writing and even mispronouncing of main character names. As a result, many fans did not have high expectations for this new show that had the same premise as Shamalan’s failed movie.
Unfortunately, for many fans, this new live-action show fell short of expectations the same way the movie did. In making adaptations, it’s unrealistic to expect the adaptation to be a scene-for-scene replication of the source material. It doesn’t make sense to have sets where characters won’t spend a lot of screen time because it can be a waste of money. As a result, scenes need to be more drawn out. To remedy this, writers had to move around the story to make it faster-paced and fit into fewer, but longer episodes. As a consequence, the series is just not the same and pales to the original, and the people who like this show the most are the ones who haven’t yet seen the original series or just have a general dislike for animation. Not only have there been critiques of the way the plot has changed, but people have also complained about the acting. In the show, the actress who plays Katara, Kiawentiio Tarbell, is regarded as a bad actress due to her flat acting. What’s difficult about filmography is that even if you’re a good actress, how you will eventually appear on screen is up to the discretion of not only the director but also the editors. However, some people have been misplacing the blame and unjustly posting on Tarbell’s Instagram about how they felt about her portrayal as Katara. Ultimately, you can’t lay the blame of an entire production on one person, and it goes to show how many different elements go into a good television show.
Ultimately, you probably won’t like this show that much if you’ve seen all of the original series and loved it. If you’re looking for a show to binge for the weekend, this might just be for you, or you might even consider getting into the animated series, which is also on Netflix, without having to wait for the next season to come out.
