Netflix’s Avatar is starting to get better, past the first episode it has at least become watchable. We still seem to be having a problem with exposition, but at least the dialogue and delivery has gotten better. The other problem this show faces is its tone. For some reason they wanted to make it darker as if the show didn’t already deal with war, grief, and genocide. At its core it was a kids show. Now it was never JUST a kids show, like I said there were always some very heavy themes and the show got plenty dark but this show centers around children. Which means that they are going to be goofy and get distracted easily and that’s why the show is timeless, it’s why it’s multi-generational, it’s why this show is so impactful and so rewatchable. And the Netflix version is gutting the show of its personality and charm.
https://vocal.media/geeks/live-action-avatar-the-last-airbender-0013x01oa
Clearly the writers of Netflix’s Avatar didn’t know how to tell this story in a slightly longer form. Changing the episodes from 30 minutes to an hour should not have caused this much structural disturbance. The production team just had no idea what they were doing or what their end goal even was. I genuinely can’t even see the thought process behind shoehorning in some extra storylines, there isn’t actually a purpose to that. There is no reason that we are seeing things that should be in seasons 2 and 3. And for all of this to happen before we meet Bumi was just truly a terrible decision. That wasn’t a filler episode, Aang going through trials and reuniting with his old friend is so important to the story and so important to literally everyone’s character development. Iroh being captured so early is not just questionable, it’s bad.
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