Cole Caulifield
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- Apr 22, 2004
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Avatar: The Last Airbender Becoming Live-Action Netflix Series
- Thread starter Cole Caulifield
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Common Sense
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- Dec 29, 2010
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Shareefruck
Registered User
I have no idea why anyone wants to see live action versions of animated things that are already great and still hold up. Can't think of much promising that a Netflix series would potentially improve on. It might be interesting to see a more adult version of that show, but that's kind of taking away a lot of what's impressive about the original.
I'll keep an open mind and keep an eye out for how well reviewed it is, and it's good that the original creators are on board, but personally, I'd be way happier with news about an actual restored high quality blu ray of that damn show. Although maybe if this is popular, that could be more likely to happen.
I'll keep an open mind and keep an eye out for how well reviewed it is, and it's good that the original creators are on board, but personally, I'd be way happier with news about an actual restored high quality blu ray of that damn show. Although maybe if this is popular, that could be more likely to happen.
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Classic Devil
Spirit of 1988
Tawnos
A guy with a bass
Most people, including me, find it difficult to enjoy anything that’s animated and not a comedy. Avatar is no exception to that.
Tawnos
A guy with a bass
It doesn’t qualify as a problem at all. I’m just explaining why they would make a live action version. More accessible to more people.
Shareefruck
Registered User
I have no idea why, though. If anything, fantastical things tend to look totally ridiculous in live action to me (like any costume in a Marvel movie, for example).
Tawnos
A guy with a bass
It's about how relatable the characters are. Our brains aren't really wired to read drawings, animated or not, the way they are to read real human faces.
Even fantastical things have to be about the characters, so however ridiculous they might look in live action, it's still more accessible to most people than animation.
Shareefruck
Registered User
I don't really buy that explanation-- maybe for you specifically, but I doubt that's the reason-- people use their imaginations when they read books, and have no problems identifying with animated characters when they're younger.
I think it's just social conditioning and cultural thing, personally-- Western Culture is so used to animated things being for children that they resist the idea of something animated being for adults. Japan has no problem relating to animated characters.
Tawnos
A guy with a bass
It's a chicken-egg conversation. The vast majority of adults don't watch non-comedic animated content... is it because of the social conditioning or is the social conditioning because of it? Is Japan representative of what you're saying as true or is that a result of social conditioning too?
And books is a terrible comparison, since that involves people imagining things without a visual stimulus, which is totally different. In other words, they're imagining it as live action, whereas the visual stimulus from animation might override that.
Shareefruck
Registered User
I think it's both. Japan being obsessed with animated things sure seems to be a product of cultural influence, and so does America when it comes to being dismissive of them.
Overall, I don't see any actual compelling reason that it SHOULD be rejected. I don't buy the "finding it difficult to connect to animated faces" thing, because that's how most people learn about expressions as children, and I don't think that casual audiences are so observant that they demand more nuanced expressiveness than animations can provide (otherwise, they would favor better actors, which they generally don't).
I would sooner think that celebrity draws and the desire to see attractive people have more to do with the trend than the relatability of characters.
This looks like a huge improvement over the M. Night Shymalan atrocity.
I'm still apprehensive about how water bending and earth bending will look (I think at this point doing CG fire and wind effects really shouldn't be too hard for any production, but water effects is something even the video game industry still labors with), how these actors will perform, and how the inevitable cut downs to the first season will impact the flow of this live action adaptation.
But as to that last point, it really can't be that bad. By adapting a whole season into a movie, Shymalan had to tell a pretty lengthy story with a breakneck pace and soiled it further by having a pretty significant lack of understanding/respect for the source material. Even though there will have to be cuts to parts of the season 1 story, I think there's enough episodes to give us the high points/most important stories.
This at least looks like it will be a faithful adaptation if nothing else.
I'm still apprehensive about how water bending and earth bending will look (I think at this point doing CG fire and wind effects really shouldn't be too hard for any production, but water effects is something even the video game industry still labors with), how these actors will perform, and how the inevitable cut downs to the first season will impact the flow of this live action adaptation.
But as to that last point, it really can't be that bad. By adapting a whole season into a movie, Shymalan had to tell a pretty lengthy story with a breakneck pace and soiled it further by having a pretty significant lack of understanding/respect for the source material. Even though there will have to be cuts to parts of the season 1 story, I think there's enough episodes to give us the high points/most important stories.
This at least looks like it will be a faithful adaptation if nothing else.
Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Unveils First Trailer and Premiere Date
Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series has gotten a trailer and premiere date.
www.cbr.com
Watched all of it and it about matched the expectations above. It's imperfect but reasonably competent and enjoyable. There's some lore decisions that I wasn't crazy about but there's some new stuff you don't get in the OG series that I'm going to consider my head canon when I inevitably rewatch the animated series. Miles better than the dogshit movie but still well below the original.
Non-Spoilery thoughts:
The overall tone of the show is fine if you consider this a reimaging of the same story but there's still something a little too gloomy about the proceedings here. Part of the original series' charm was how the kids could still find room to goof off and live life in spite of dire circumstances they're facing. The adaptation seems to forget that.
Somehow the Zuko-Iroh dynamic from season 1 or "Book 1" is better than the original series. Not by a lot but there's some really strong new moments for the two.
I was exactly right with the bending. Earth and Water work well enough to not be cringe inducing but both are still somewhat janky. Earthbending the rougher of the two.
I can give the actress playing Katara a pass because she's young and inexperienced and considering those factors, she could've been a lot worse. The problem is the show has really not done a good job with her characterization. She seems so timid and lifeless, while the original Katara was energetic, nurturing, defiant, snarky, and determined. Katara was right up there with Zuko among my favorites and this season was a disappointment. If there's a second season, I hope that's a focus.
The pacing is not ideal but considering how bad it was in the movie and considering they only had a budget for 8 episodes, I think they did a decent enough job telling as much story as they did. It just did come at the cost of natural flow at times.
The visuals aren't perfect, but considering how often the show employs VFX and digitally rendered locales, most shows that attempt this much in that department usually end up looking awful. This show was a lot more hit than miss when it comes to the visuals. But there were some misses here and there.
The Great Mighty Poo
Thank You 59.
It will never be as great as the M. Knight Shabbalabbadingdong cinematic masterpiece that swept every awards show and made him a directorial god amongst kittens.
maclean
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- Jan 4, 2014
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I'm three episodes in and I'm determined to keep giving it a chance trying to find at least something positive in it... The fact is though, with a couple exceptions, the acting is fairly atrocious. Kids are always a bit hit and miss, but the adults are just as bad if not worse. Though to everyone's credit, it's primarily the writing that is absolutely terrible. It is plodding and heavy-handed, spelling out everything as if the audience were two years old. Every now and then it makes an attempt to remind us that the original was actually hilarious with the kind of joke that makes you think they actually got children to write it.
As for the visuals, some are nice, but the overall feel is that kind of a Disney live-action movie, very CGI sound-stagey, everything way too well-lit and clean. It makes you imagine what could have actually been done if they'd allowed the tone to darken a little and truly show us a war-torn world. Instead it's just a lot of empty pageantry, sucked of any of the soul of the original.
Also, why TF can Aang fly??? In the first episode, we don't see his staff until the very end, yet he's actually flying-flying in a way that only Zaheer ever figured out how to do. It legitimately feels like they just forgot about the staff entirely and then had invested too much to re-film it.
As for the visuals, some are nice, but the overall feel is that kind of a Disney live-action movie, very CGI sound-stagey, everything way too well-lit and clean. It makes you imagine what could have actually been done if they'd allowed the tone to darken a little and truly show us a war-torn world. Instead it's just a lot of empty pageantry, sucked of any of the soul of the original.
Also, why TF can Aang fly??? In the first episode, we don't see his staff until the very end, yet he's actually flying-flying in a way that only Zaheer ever figured out how to do. It legitimately feels like they just forgot about the staff entirely and then had invested too much to re-film it.
You really are nitpicking and he does not fly, I am assuming you are talking about the early sequence in the first episode when he comes down from the towers, he is more falling gracefully and controlled but not really flying.
6 episodes in and I'm really enjoying it. The plot is the same even if they get there a bit differently. As someone else said, the Zuko Iroh stuff is somehow even better than the original. The stuff with Zuko and his legion is also better than the original imo. The show feels like Avatar but a bit more serious. Some of the two episode arcs have elements from like 6 different original episodes and somehow it works pretty well. I would agree the acting can be not so great at times, but overall they did a great job imo. Looking forward to these last two episodes.
