10mo ago

Avatar is cursed for remakes like Fantastic Four

177 comments

Problem with Avatar adaptations is that even a really good one will be bad in context of a series that has 100% rating (99% audience score!) on Rotten Tomatoes.
You simply cannot improve on perfection.
- I think the main problem is that they keep inviting the original creators, they sign on, the studio heads explain to the creators how the studio has figured out how to tweak things, creators say "your ideas are horrible and if you execute on them as you've described, everyone is going to hate it". The studio's refuse to budge, creators depart citing creative differences, studio gets their way. Is a steaming pile of shit. Rinse and repeat.
  
  I heard the reason they left this time was because the showrunners wanted to basically recreate the series, and the original creators were like, “but.. we already made that series. Let’s make something new”.
  Could be false though, because I don’t understand how they’d get so attached to the project knowing that it was supposed to be a live action remake from the start…
  
  This is the lifecycle of live action.
- That and most come at it with the standpoint of animation is for kids rather than recognizing animation as simply a medium.
  If they just took the original series and drew an extra frame between each frame I wouldn't be surprised if it made more than any of the live action works.
- I think another issue is that when telling the Avatar story, all the main characters are necessarily children, and the themes of the show require some really hefty acting chops to deliver lines convincingly.
  I can't fathom why they didn't tell a new story in the Avatar universe, or at least remake TLoK where the main cast are a bit older.
- Precisely. OG show holds up so well, remaking it is waste of time and money.
  
  But there's gotta be a way to milk it for more money without the risk of a new and original idea!
- You simply cannot improve on perfection.
  You can weave in more relevant lessons about stuff, also about more current topics. Nothing about the old one is really out of date though so it'd just be additions here and there. You can even roll in plenty of Korra stuff, it's not that the series doesn't have anything to say it's just all over the place.
  What any adaption certainly needs to do is start out with a list of lessons, not plot points. Change the plot all you want as is necessary for whatever medium, as long as the lesson aspect is intact people wouldn't mind, also keep the "reveal the world to the protagonists" vibe. E.g. Sokka doesn't need to learn his sexism lesson from Suki, it doesn't even need to be Sokka who learns that lesson, but that lesson needs to be taught. It doesn't even need to be about Avatar Aang, there's plenty of others. Earth is next, isn't it.
- I didn't watch the show when it came out and when I tried last year I didn't like it. That made me wonder if it's just not my cup of tea or if there's a lot of nostalgia behind the good reviews. While I absolutely agree that animation is just a medium and there's great animation for adults, I didn't like ATLA's style. I haven't watched the movie but I'll give the new show a try.

The only adaptation I will accept is one where Dwayne Johnson is playing Toph.
All others are inferior.
- Unacceptable, he has to play The Boulder.
- This and only this is acceptable, but they should still be voiced by the original voice actors.
- What If he played the ember island version of her?

I hate how Hollywood thinks live action is the highest form of visual media. Like you want remake avatar? Up the budget for animators, pay the shit out of your voice actors, and pay some writers to add some darker themes. Would be better than any of the live action have been.
- The original is pretty dark for a childrens show. Even as an adult episodes like the one about blood bending made me shiver a bit.
  
  Yeah but they weren't allowed to show or too directly imply death. That's why Jet's "death" scene was bizarrely vague. Getting rid of that restriction on the original writers would probably be interesting.
  
  Nah. Avatar isn't dark at all for a kid's show.
  Nobody dies. Nobody gets cut. Bending really just amounts to "pushing" in most fights.
  Naruto on the other hand is quite dark for a kid's show.
- I've only seen 1 episode so far, but IMO the format shift is worth it for the visual effects. Like, Sozin just straight up incinerating that guy would not have worked so well in the anime. And the actors seem quite good (the leads at least). My only real complaint is with the writing. And I mean, it's not as if the original didn't also have some pretty badly written lines in the first episodes. Adding in an actual 100 years earlier segment at the start is a big improvement, and it also gives us a taste of the kickass action scenes that are to come. At least for the intro to the show, live action seems significantly better than animated was.
- Japan gets it.
  
  Japan makes shit lots of live action adaptations of anime. they just don't usually make it to the west.
- Alex Meyers has a good video on this, he has this exact same opinion. I think maybe you would like it.
- I'd watch that
- The problem is you have the literal actors shilling their bullshit to the masses.

But the Fantastic Four had a great movie called "The Incredibles".

The Netflix show wasn't bad. It just wasn't better than the original.
- It had some really rough moments intertwined with some really well done moments. Overall it's fine. The shots of the cities and some of the fights were beautiful. I also really liked some of the zuko and iroh backstory that wasn't in the original show. Some of the dialogue was very clunky and they mashed up a bunch of stories into the same episode which felt weird and didn't totally work. I enjoyed watching it for the most part. It was never going to be as good as the original so I think going in with that expectation helped.
- Which isn't really possible so I don't know why they keep investing money into trying. Just make more animated shows set in that universe.
  
  Well.. Paramount, which owns Nickelodeon, allows Netflix to make an adaptation and makes a fat check off the IP. They don't really lose any money either way. The good news is that they've given the creators of Avatar their own studio now and tons of new animation projects are in the works.
- I loved it. And I was (am) a fan of the animated show. I think the adaptation was creative, approachable, and overall excellent. Fans forget that there's a big potential audience that isn't interested in watching a cartoon, just the fact that it's live action gives so many more people an opportunity to see this world.
  First episode was shit though
  
  Yeah first episode was shit.
  I liked how they bypassed Sokka's sexism and made it more about his insecurities with his dad and what it means to be a man.
  I liked how Katara's fight with Paku and her ability to lead all of the female waterbenders made her a master in his eyes which lead to him telling the teens to find Master Katara.
  I like how all the previous Avatars have baggage about doing things alone or being vicious. It forces Aang to find his own path instead of following someone elses path. He no longer needs to live up to the previous Avatars, he just needs to be his own Avatar.
- Oh man, I thought it was incredibly bad. Netflix is aware of this as well, since they've been writing thousands of fake reviews on IMDB since it released.

I like that in the netflix version they added scenes that weren't in the original. My favorite is the scene of Lu Ten's funeral. Iroh is just sitting there silent but you can see on his face that is he is broken inside but everyone comes up to him and congratulates him that his son died a hero. No one says it but for me it felt like in the fire nation culture you're not allowed to mourn the death of those who died in battle, which is a crazy concepts but fits with the Fire Nations fascist ideology.
I couldn't find the whole scene, but here is the last part of it (https://yewtu.be/watch?v=hwPn2gJ1B_U). For context, Zuko has gone up to Iroh and said that Lu Ten's death is great honor. But when he was about to leave he comes back and thats when the above video starts.
These scenes add so much to the character of Iroh, Zuko, Lu Ten (whose character we did know anything about in the original) and to war-time Fire Nation culture. It's amazing!
- Zuko’s crew being the soldiers he saved is also a great change. As is getting more Gyatzo.
  The biggest issue is a lot of the acting and writing. The actors for Aang and Katara just were not the best, though I’m more apt to blame showrunners that don’t know how to deal with kids, as most older actors are great. And the whole series of episodes in Omashu and then the forest/spirit world were convoluted and stupid.
  The other issue is changing characters completely. Bumi going from a fun loving crazy old man trying to teach Aang important lessons is now a crazy bitter old man attacking his childhood friend. The past Avatars, rather that being loving mentors, are just useless at best, mean at worst. And with Suki no longer being a foil for Sokka’s sexism, they turned her into a horny flirt.
  
  I agree with you on all of this except the point on Bumi. I think the change to his character is great and makes him feel more realistic! It felt like the live action Bumi was trying to be as fun loving as animation Bumi but can't hide how deeply the war has changed him for the worst, which makes sense since he is probably the only one (or only handful of people) to have lived and fought through a hundred years of war. He's also trying to be a good friend to Aang but can't help but feel resentful towards him for abandoning his role as the avatar.
- My favorite part of that scene is that the background music is the tune of "Leaves From The Vine"
  
  That was brilliant.
  They managed to touch on one of the most emotional moments of the beloved series, recontextualize it on its own grounds, and tie it back to the original in a subtle and respectful way. The series doesn't come close to capturing the magic of the original, but it has a little magic of its own if you let it.
- Small spoilers ahead: making Zuko's crew the 41st division that he refused to sacrifice was a great addition to the story.
  
  This was great addition as well!
- I agree and also thought they did a pretty good job. Not perfect, but perfection is never attainable and for having to squeeze everything into 8 episodes, they did well!
- Yeah this scene is great. There are a few more good additions, I have written about it at !avatar@lemmy.world already. My favourite episode is "Masks" with the blue spirit.

This adaption, while not perfect due to nothing coming close to the show in terms of perfection, is not bad at all. It's shorter than the show so of course they had to make things flow quicker and things were cut out. But for a 7 episode take on season 1 I was impressed.
- Im only 4 episodes in so I can't give a full review but I think the problem is there were some choices that were made that ruined the heart of what was good about the show. Uncle iroh and saka are not funny at all. I just saw the 4th episode which has the caves of omashu and the singing hippies were hilarious but got mostly removed. It's like they think laughing would cheapen then shows seriousness or something. There is no love connection between aang and katara. And they added a bunch of storyline from season 2 for some reason.
  
  Obviously there is no love connection between Aang and Katara, that simply does not work between a 12 and a 15 year old.
- Yeah it's not the best thing since sliced bread, but it was a decent TV show (in a vacuum.) Which was about the best we could hope for when they said they want to appeal to Avatar fans AND Game of Thrones fans.
  
  I just don't get it. Who wants a live action avatar. The show holds up just fine.

For a fraction of the cost, Netflix could have instead just frame remastered the original show into 16:9 (not lazy cropping) and spent most of the effort into marketing it properly to gain a much wider audience.
But that would involve talent, critical thinking, and accepting that animation is a format not a genre. So naturally they just bought the rights so they could have their version of Star Wars/Harry Potter.
I could go on an entire rant about how even thinking making an animated show into a live action is a stupid idea, no matter how much money you throw at it, but I think I'll just wait for E;R's 2 hour youtube special instead lmao.
- Has this ever been done? Taken an entire TV series animated in 4:3, and just adding content to the sides of the screen on every single frame?
  
  God I hope they never try that.
  The best visual artists are extremely effective in their use of space. A 4:3 image expanded to 16:9 would just look weird, as the framing would simply not look right.
  The alternative is some amount of expansion and cropping but it would still not look nearly as good as leaving the artwork in it's original aspect ratio.
  A great example is Seinfeld which looks frickin terrible in 16:9:
  https://consequence.net/2021/10/seinfeld-aspect-ratio-netflix/
- I'll just wait for E;R's 2 hour youtube special instead
  Didn't that guy get revealed to be a ~~nazi sympathizer~~ straight up neo nazi that peppers propaganda into his videos """as a joke""" and got pewdiepie in a lot of shit for shouting him out?
  edit: yeah I just went back and watched a reupload of one of the videos (the SU fusion video) that I actually enjoyed before I really understood what fascist propaganda looked like or how to consume media critically and... wow. Even "censored" to get past youtube's filters, it's much worse than I remembered.

That play was pretty solid though, I'd watch it live.
- HONORRRRRRrrrr

It's not bad. Stop perpetrating this clickbait.
Edit: I was wrong y'all. It's trash
- I watched an episode. It's really bad. I rewatched the series this last year so I could compare it. Just because someone agrees with the popular sentiment doesn't mean they're perpetrating (perpetuating?) click bait.
  
  You watched an episode. That's not representative for all episodes. Simple as that.
  
  I agree. I stopped watching after the first episode. It was extremely bad. I would understand if it's worse than the show, but it's just bad in general. The best comparison I could give is a really bad CW show. It not only fails as a remake, but fails a lot of basic television fundamentals. I understand people have different opinions, but it was so bad that it was almost objectively awful.
- It is though and I've watched the entire thing. Dialogue lines are trash, they constantly "tell" instead of "show," timelines don't make any sense, Team Avatar has no Chemistry, Katara learns to waterbend at a master-level from a single scroll, Aang never waterbends, there's no obvious through-line for the plot (it's just assumed you know why Aang is going to these places), Aang literally has no passion, and the show is trying to straddle the line between shot-for-shot remake and a retelling, but failing at both. There's ZERO character development. I could go on with things that are wrong with this new series.
  I think the young actors and the special-effects crew have been failed by the writers, directors, and producers.
  
  One weird decision was to rewrite Aang's disappearance. Originally he ran away and got frozen, and no one made a huge deal of his "running away". In the new series they explicitly change it to a brief flight to just think on things. Then they leaned hard a few times in shaming him for running away, when they expressly changed that detail..
- To be fair, I haven't gotten to more than Ep1 yet, because ep.1 was so bad I lost all excitement. The visuals are nice, and I personally don't mind little lore inconsistencies like flying that much, but the dialogue was really really bad, and I did not like frontloading the whole airbender genocide plot. Yes, 90% of the viewers probably have seen the original and know the plot, but it still robs me of the experience of discovering the truth and learning about Aang together with sokka and Katara. Idk, I just really like the structure of the original show, and I didn't appreciate the swap.
  
  In general, the approach of the show seems to be averse to the "big reveal" technique of the original. They do the same with the death of Iroh's son, Zuko's conflict with his father, King Bumi, etc. The philosophy seems to be to lay everything out for the viewer and watch it develop.
- How am I going to feel better about myself if I'm not shitting on stuff online? How do you expect me to feel superior to people who enjoy something without whining about how bad a show is?
- I thought it was really bad.
  
  After watching it all, it was really bad

Avatar state, Yip Yip!
- So much HOPE!

Haha as a German I am lucky and can just switch to the German synchro. The voice acting is directly 300% better... Still that leaves the bad visual acting... As a bonus I get the old voices though. Somehow they where able to get the original voice actors for katara, sokka, suko, azula, Ty lee, Zhao, jet (I think), and suki

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.
  
  It’s only 8 episodes currently, or there’s only going to be 8 episodes? Surely not 8 for the whole thing?
  
  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
  
  but i mean who needs character development to be applied to the correct character so it makes sense, as long as it happens
  but i'm just here to removed, hain't watchin it.
  
  They really thought that scene with the grandma was going to be loved by fans. As a fan I physically cringed during that scene...
- Meh. I'm enjoying it. It's extremely similar to the show, and they're really try to adopt a lot of the same jokes, scenes, and concepts from the cartoons.
  I mean it's a kids show, a kid will absolutely love this. If you go into it expecting Avatar for adults you're going to be a bit let down.
  
  I think this is why I take issue with these attempts at remaking the show. Even if it was a completely perfect recreation of the original, then why make it? I’d much rather see a different angle, something new. We already have so much substance in the original that trying to adapt it doesn’t make sense to me.
  I always ask myself what a reboot is adding. And there’s just not a lot to add to Aang’s story that wasn’t already very well said in the original series.
  I think aiming for something that’s just in the same universe could work really well, though. Maybe a focus on the other nations? Or follow one of the minor character paths that briefly cross with Aang? But trying to bring characters that we all know deeply and have a very specific expectation of just has such a low chance of hitting right that it baffles me they’ve tried twice now.
  
  You say it's a kids show but i felt like the fight/war scenes were much more violent and graphic in the live action version. Like there's a bunch of times where you just watch people burn to death. I enjoyed the adaptation but one of my complaints wild definitely be that they didn't stick with one tone.
- 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)
- 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

Ember Island Players is my favorite episode. It's such a good capstone.

I enjoyed Netflix' Avatar so much that I finally started the anime. The acting from basically all the children actors is atrocious but I just love the realism and animation of the worldbuilding that an anime just can't give me. Any plot points with minor characters are great and with the exception of Azula, the fire nation actors are great.
- I really hated the Netflix show, but I'm very happy it's getting some people to watch or rewatch the original. Enjoy!

"Did Jet just die?!*
"It's not clear."

Slight difference between a tongue-in-cheek self-aware parody of your own creation, and an earnest and serious attempt at an adaptation that falls flat...
- Yeah, you're not wrong but it's still a nice point to make. Maybe I should watch avatar again - it's been a while and I only saw it once, during lockdown...

Are we talking about the real avatar stuff or the giant smurfs one?
- Pixar's new animated movie about online profile pics that are sentient.
  
  ...what the hell is that new movie I've never heard of? XD
  
  Wait, what?

I really enjoyed the live action. Imo, it cut a lot of the filler from the animated show. I dislike wasting my time watching an episode that adds nothing to the plot.
I really think they should have just continued the story, rather than try to reboot it. I really hope they continue it though.
- The animated universe will still be continued with movies coming out in the next few years. I think there is more info at !avatar@lemmy.world about that somewhere.
  I also hope the live action gets a second season at least.
- Maybe it's just me, but I felt like there was no filler in avatar.
  Each episode mattered and was worth watching. Unlike a show like Naruto, where the filler is a legit joke and the writers don't even care.

Maybe...they could listen to the original creator?
If he has 'creative differences' maybe listen to him next time?

I know… it worked for Mean Girls and The Color Purple…
Avatar: the Last Airbender Musical

One thing I kept thinking about while watching this new show is how much you end up missing Toph. You still get interactions with Zuko, which I thought were fine, but something is still missing, and it's Toph.
- Toph isn't in the first season of ATLA though
  
  you end up missing her there too

it works pretty well as a recap episode, and as a teaching moment. covers, broadly, the events of the show up to that point (which, remember, is several years of airing and you might have missed a chunk of it), all while coating it in propaganda for the characters to reflect on and for the viewer to learn about. i remember being a kid and being outraged that the events were being portrayed wrongly, and it was a big learning point for me.

No way this is true. I hate that episode it's such a boring recap episode I always skip it. One of the like 3 episodes I skip In the entire show.
- So you're all people then? Counterpoint, I enjoy it. It's not my favorite, but certain meta moments are fun. Skipping the... hmm, tunnel? episode, Toph loving her actor, bad cosplay, and Sokka getting in on the ham are all somewhat fun. There's some bplot drama I don't care much for, but assuming everyone must have taste like yours is peak "everyone thinks like me and if they say they don't they're faking."
  People have tastes that don't match yours. Neither of you are wrong for your tastes. (Barring absolutely harmful ones anyway).

I thought this was about the good avatar

The show wasn't even that great. The third season was aggressively mediocre

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