My take: the original is the real story. The Netflix is a summary. They skip a lot, but it’s only 8 episodes. The things they skip, I just remember “still happened”. The things they merged/combined are just part of the summary.
You are able to like the Netflix, as long as you know it’s not a replacement. Just enjoy the retelling, and seeing Uncle iroh as a real person!
It’s only eight episodes, but they’re an hour each, so it has exactly the same runtime. Also, the cartoon has the Great Divide, so not adapting that should have given them another 24 whole minutes to work with
The first episode was an hour, but eps 2 and 3 were less, around 40-50 mins. (I haven’t watched 4-8 yet.) So there was some loss of runtime, and I understand the need to change some things to make up that time. However, (and granted I’m only three eps in) I doesn’t feel like the changes that were made were made strictly for runtime reasons.
Gran-Gran giving Katara the scroll instead of her stealing it, yeah, I see that being a time saver. The overall change in Katara’s personality? Not so much.
Everything from the weird addition of Aang being able to fly without a glider to the really placid acting was very hard to watch. The CGI was insanely bad throughout, although the 2-3 second shots of the cities were oddly really well done.
Still, none of the small glimpses of success made up for the overall failure of it for me. The acting was poor, and the cast was widely bizaar (why did Katara not look like Katara, at all?) the facial hair in many cases looked silly… Like, why does Iroh look like a mall Santa? And why was Aang wearing lipstick?
I just don’t get it… I don’t know why they did half the things they did.
All I needed to see was a clip of Aang saying, out loud, in the first episode, “but I’m just a kid who likes playing games and eating food and hanging out with my friends! I can’t fight the fire nation!” Like. The Netflix show has exactly the same runtime as the first season of the anime. There is no reason why they couldn’t have just shown us Aang being a kid and hanging out with his friends instead of telling us, unless they only wanted to save that runtime for flashy CGI fight scenes.
That and instead of Katara opening the series with her famous “water, earth, fire, air” monologue, the show has their grandma recite it word for word directly to Aang’s face
Mind giving a synopsis of why it’s bad? I’ve not seen many people talking about it besides being mad that they changed things (and they said they would)
From what I’ve heard they removed important character traits from each protagonist. They took away Aang’s playfulness, Katara’s maturity and sense of responsibility, and Sokka’s growth arc.
Or for a quicker summary: they combined the Jet episode with the machinist and the secret tunnel.
So Jet invents a blimp that he takes Katara in a wheelchair on, but they get lost, sing a song about giant glowing moles that brainwashed him using hippies, and it’s ambiguous whether the pain of almost but not quite kissing Katara killed him?
It’s not so much that they changed things, if anything it’s extremely faithful in the overall plot progression, it’s mostly just… really shoddy.
Characters are devoid of any personality or life, the dialogue is some of the worst expository garbage I’ve ever had to endure, and they just keep missing the point of critical moments and character beats.
Like just to give an easy example, upon being told that he’s the Avatar, Aang in this version does NOT run away. He just… goes on a little trip on Appa to lighten up, and it just so happens that this is exactly when the fire nation attacks, and he accidentally gets caught in a storm and gets trapped. Running away was key to his character, it’s a crucial, character defining moment. It leads into his genuine feelings of guilt for abandoning the world, and his whole arc in the show is about slowly accepting the responsibility that terrified him back then.
And that just keeps happening, super important scenes like that get butchered for no reason, completely erasing the meaning behind them. It feels like they went about the show in a very utilitarian way, believing that as long as they could get the characters from point A to point B, it didn’t matter what they changed. The original is so good at that, so good at symbolism, so consistent in its characterization that you’re often able to predict how a given character will react because you know them so well.
I think that’s what pissed me off the most, and combined with the goddawful dialogue (seriously I can’t stress enough how bad the dialogue is), and a lot of gratuitous fanservice (lots of characters and scenes appear much earlier just to show them off lol), and you end up with a show that’s extremely hard to sit through if you have any affection for the original.
I watched only the first episode and haven’t watched the original in years. But the acting is really really bad. Totally stilted performance. And there are many instances of people exposition dumping their feelings instead of just showing them. And then these parts are underlined with cheesy flashbacks of bad exposition dumps in case someone didn’t pay attention.
(TL;DR):Even without the context of the original cartoon, this adaptation has a “college project with a high budget” vibe, like they were in a rush to get it to their professor’s desk on time. All of the acting, writing, choreography, and cinematography is mediocre at best and cringe-worthy at worst. The VFX are better this time around at least, but they rarely utilize it where it was needed most and ultimately doesn’t outweigh it’s shortcomings.
The CGI is way better than the 2010 movie, but all the hurdles that come with live action still plague the Netflix show. They cut a lot of really good scenes because they’d be too hard to animate, (like Aang’s escape from Zuko and subsequent first use of his avatar abilities) which creates a lot of pacing issues, and what they didn’t cut is plagued by awkward writing and even worse delivery.
Everyone has something missing from their original character that was a key characteristic in the cartoon. Aang is always super serious now, which shows in his fight scenes too and overall removes the whimsical nature of the show… All of the characters in general are now super serious, so the show is pretty devoid of any lightheartedness… Zuko is a lot less measured and he comes across as silly, which is ironic because he’s the one character who’s supposed to be very serious… Sokka doesn’t start out sexist, which removes an entire growth arc from his character and takes away a key dynamic between him and Katara… Iroh doesn’t have his iconic wise/disciplined enigma vibe… I could go on.
Just started it this weekend. Being a hardcore fan of the anime version I was apprehensive going in. But, the show is really good in its own way.
As someone else pointed out - a beloved TV series with most of the audience holding fond memories of it and it being perfect (ahem ahem Season 1 of the anime) does not help. I like that the new show tries to explore the story a bit more and at least tries to extend on the canon a bit. One can only milk the cow so much a number of times.
I’d rather watch the movie, honestly… At least it’s worth a good laugh.
What they did here felt like the ember city players version of the original, but with key world changes like “let’s make all the airbenders fly like superman”.
Is it bad? It’s bad isn’t it. I bet it’s bad.
It’s not bad, it’s certainly enjoyable.
My take: the original is the real story. The Netflix is a summary. They skip a lot, but it’s only 8 episodes. The things they skip, I just remember “still happened”. The things they merged/combined are just part of the summary.
You are able to like the Netflix, as long as you know it’s not a replacement. Just enjoy the retelling, and seeing Uncle iroh as a real person!
It’s only eight episodes, but they’re an hour each, so it has exactly the same runtime. Also, the cartoon has the Great Divide, so not adapting that should have given them another 24 whole minutes to work with
The first episode was an hour, but eps 2 and 3 were less, around 40-50 mins. (I haven’t watched 4-8 yet.) So there was some loss of runtime, and I understand the need to change some things to make up that time. However, (and granted I’m only three eps in) I doesn’t feel like the changes that were made were made strictly for runtime reasons.
Gran-Gran giving Katara the scroll instead of her stealing it, yeah, I see that being a time saver. The overall change in Katara’s personality? Not so much.
I did the math. The Netflix show barely runs 46 minutes less than the original animated series.
It’s only 8 episodes currently, or there’s only going to be 8 episodes? Surely not 8 for the whole thing?
It’s a Netflix joint, so there’s a solid chance the show dies between seasons regardless of what fans want
8 episodes an hour each, and it ends on the avatar moment in the northern water tribe.
Oh man, I disagree completely.
Everything from the weird addition of Aang being able to fly without a glider to the really placid acting was very hard to watch. The CGI was insanely bad throughout, although the 2-3 second shots of the cities were oddly really well done.
Still, none of the small glimpses of success made up for the overall failure of it for me. The acting was poor, and the cast was widely bizaar (why did Katara not look like Katara, at all?) the facial hair in many cases looked silly… Like, why does Iroh look like a mall Santa? And why was Aang wearing lipstick?
I just don’t get it… I don’t know why they did half the things they did.
All I needed to see was a clip of Aang saying, out loud, in the first episode, “but I’m just a kid who likes playing games and eating food and hanging out with my friends! I can’t fight the fire nation!” Like. The Netflix show has exactly the same runtime as the first season of the anime. There is no reason why they couldn’t have just shown us Aang being a kid and hanging out with his friends instead of telling us, unless they only wanted to save that runtime for flashy CGI fight scenes.
That and instead of Katara opening the series with her famous “water, earth, fire, air” monologue, the show has their grandma recite it word for word directly to Aang’s face
They really thought that scene with the grandma was going to be loved by fans. As a fan I physically cringed during that scene…
I didn’t want it to be bad. But it’s bad.
Mind giving a synopsis of why it’s bad? I’ve not seen many people talking about it besides being mad that they changed things (and they said they would)
From what I’ve heard they removed important character traits from each protagonist. They took away Aang’s playfulness, Katara’s maturity and sense of responsibility, and Sokka’s growth arc.
Or for a quicker summary: they combined the Jet episode with the machinist and the secret tunnel.
They also seem to have removed all meaningful interaction between aang and katara in favor of exposition.
What kind of interactions are are going to be interesting between characters whose important traits have been removed?
None, of course, but it’s through those interactions we learned about their personalities in the original. There’s neither in this.
Wow, these studio guys are absolute geniuses!!!1!
Hangs head
So Jet invents a blimp that he takes Katara in a wheelchair on, but they get lost, sing a song about giant glowing moles that brainwashed him using hippies, and it’s ambiguous whether the pain of almost but not quite kissing Katara killed him?
It’s not so much that they changed things, if anything it’s extremely faithful in the overall plot progression, it’s mostly just… really shoddy.
Characters are devoid of any personality or life, the dialogue is some of the worst expository garbage I’ve ever had to endure, and they just keep missing the point of critical moments and character beats.
Like just to give an easy example, upon being told that he’s the Avatar, Aang in this version does NOT run away. He just… goes on a little trip on Appa to lighten up, and it just so happens that this is exactly when the fire nation attacks, and he accidentally gets caught in a storm and gets trapped. Running away was key to his character, it’s a crucial, character defining moment. It leads into his genuine feelings of guilt for abandoning the world, and his whole arc in the show is about slowly accepting the responsibility that terrified him back then.
And that just keeps happening, super important scenes like that get butchered for no reason, completely erasing the meaning behind them. It feels like they went about the show in a very utilitarian way, believing that as long as they could get the characters from point A to point B, it didn’t matter what they changed. The original is so good at that, so good at symbolism, so consistent in its characterization that you’re often able to predict how a given character will react because you know them so well.
I think that’s what pissed me off the most, and combined with the goddawful dialogue (seriously I can’t stress enough how bad the dialogue is), and a lot of gratuitous fanservice (lots of characters and scenes appear much earlier just to show them off lol), and you end up with a show that’s extremely hard to sit through if you have any affection for the original.
I watched only the first episode and haven’t watched the original in years. But the acting is really really bad. Totally stilted performance. And there are many instances of people exposition dumping their feelings instead of just showing them. And then these parts are underlined with cheesy flashbacks of bad exposition dumps in case someone didn’t pay attention.
(TL;DR): Even without the context of the original cartoon, this adaptation has a “college project with a high budget” vibe, like they were in a rush to get it to their professor’s desk on time. All of the acting, writing, choreography, and cinematography is mediocre at best and cringe-worthy at worst. The VFX are better this time around at least, but they rarely utilize it where it was needed most and ultimately doesn’t outweigh it’s shortcomings.
The CGI is way better than the 2010 movie, but all the hurdles that come with live action still plague the Netflix show. They cut a lot of really good scenes because they’d be too hard to animate, (like Aang’s escape from Zuko and subsequent first use of his avatar abilities) which creates a lot of pacing issues, and what they didn’t cut is plagued by awkward writing and even worse delivery.
Everyone has something missing from their original character that was a key characteristic in the cartoon. Aang is always super serious now, which shows in his fight scenes too and overall removes the whimsical nature of the show… All of the characters in general are now super serious, so the show is pretty devoid of any lightheartedness… Zuko is a lot less measured and he comes across as silly, which is ironic because he’s the one character who’s supposed to be very serious… Sokka doesn’t start out sexist, which removes an entire growth arc from his character and takes away a key dynamic between him and Katara… Iroh doesn’t have his iconic wise/disciplined enigma vibe… I could go on.
Little Joel has a video that slaps about exactly that.
Here’s the video
edit: fixed the link
Netflix is attacking bad reviews on more than just IMDB, it seems…
https://youtu.be/4i8quw7cDFE?feature=shared
They took his videos down, and now he’s only hosting them on his Patreon. Shame… I wanted to see them.
Yeah I know, I saw! I’m glad I’ve got a nebula sub
Just started it this weekend. Being a hardcore fan of the anime version I was apprehensive going in. But, the show is really good in its own way.
As someone else pointed out - a beloved TV series with most of the audience holding fond memories of it and it being perfect (ahem ahem Season 1 of the anime) does not help. I like that the new show tries to explore the story a bit more and at least tries to extend on the canon a bit. One can only milk the cow so much a number of times.
It’s acceptable if you don’t have strong emotional ties to the original source material. Which I do.
Which is to say it’s not good, but it’s better than the movie that never happened.
I’d rather watch the movie, honestly… At least it’s worth a good laugh.
What they did here felt like the ember city players version of the original, but with key world changes like “let’s make all the airbenders fly like superman”.
It’s good