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Finished the live action adaptation this past weekend. It had some positives for sure, but was also burdened by quite a few negatives:
1. Not enough episodes. Trying to condense a 20 episode season down into 8 episodes, even with a longer episode length, was a mistake. We ended up with storylines from multiple episodes combined into one episode in out of place ways, several episodes cut entirely (including Aang's first attempt at learning firebending from Jeong Jeong, and the episode where the gang ran into Bato of the Southern Water Tribe). We even ended up with storylines from Book Two in season 1 for some reason, for instance the Lover's tunnel from Book 2 was incorporated, Wan Shi Tong the owl was encorporated early, even Aang contacting Kyoshi and Kuruk was done earlier than in the animated show.
2. Unnecessary character changes. The removal of Sokka's early sexism took away some of his best character growth, and his father being disappointed in him was also an odd change from the original. The removal of Aang's hyperactivity made him alot less fun of a character. The attempt to make Azula more relatable is part of a recent and annoying trend of a writers refusing to have characters that are evil just for evil's sake, and attempting to rationalize their evil instead. The near total removal of Aang-Katara romance setup was rather annoying. Aang not supporting Katara when Pakku refused to teach her waterbending was also an odd character change, in the animated show he was willing to not learn waterbending at all just to support Katara, but Netflix had him saying "maybe he's right, maybe you shouldn't fight". Even Iroh's and Sokka's goofiness were toned down for some reason.
3. The fights, while a notable step-up from M Night Shyamalan's movie, were still slower and less impressive than the animated show, particularly Katara's battle with Pakku stood out to me as noticeably worse.
4. While not so much an issue with the first season, the Netflix strike went on for way too long, and prevented season 1 from being released for way too long. Over 2 years have passed since season 1 filmed, so the characters are going to look oddly older in season 2 considering book 2 starts just 3 weeks after Book 1 ends. Aang's actor is already 14, Katara's and Ty Lee's actresses 17, and the rest of the young cast now over 20 I believe. I guess they can try and write in a larger time skip, but unless I'm mistaken they already revealed that Sozin's comet will return later the same year as season 1, so maybe they can't write-in a larger time skip now. Either way, season 2 and 3 need to be filmed back to back, or else we will end up with Aang's actor being like 16 or 17 by the time season 3 films. Season 4, if they decide to adapt the originally planned but cancelled 4th season of the show (with the early reconstruction efforts, and the search for Zuko's mother and such), they can always film later, won't matter as much if the actors are all adults then, but 2 and 3 need to be filmed back to back and asap.
Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 07 March 2024
