‘Avatar the Last Airbender’ review: A serviceable adaptation that at times bends too far from the original

With every announcement of a live-action remake of popular animated shows and movies, one question haunts the show’s production and eventual release: is this necessary? The 2010 film The Last Airbender certainly gives precedent for why another live-action of Avatar the Last Airbender can’t be done. But there’s also 2022’s Cowboy Bebop and 2017’s Death Note, both of which were Netflix productions that failed to live up to the original anime. There’s also the factor that people tend to look down on animation, only seeing live-action features as serious forms of cinematic storytelling. 

However, when the first trailers for Netflix’s Avatar the Last Airbender, created by Albert Kim, dropped, they held promise. At least, it looked miles ahead of the live-action film. The set dressing was there, and the first episode lived up to the promise of the trailers. But while Episode 1, “Aang,” deviates from the pilot episode when necessary, the following episodes are a complicated mix of exhilarating adaptation and rushed storytelling. 

The truth lies somewhere in the middle. Netflix’s Avatar the Last Airbender does so many things right. The look and scale of the show paint the dynamic world of elemental bending. The characters all look like their animated counterparts without coming across too cartoonish. It expands on certain storytelling elements from the original, like showcasing a fully-fledged airbender community, expanding on iconic scenes like Zuko (Dallas Liu) and Aang’s (Gordon Cormier) conversation from “The Blue Spirit,” and bringing in Azula (Elizabeth Yu) earlier. A new detail that speaks more to Zuko’s character is that the crew on his ship are the ones he advocated for against his father, leading to his exile. It’s an adaptation; it should be allowed to change or expand on the source material to fit a new narrative structure. 

But the new standard eight-episode format finds another victim with this live-action. Despite the near-identical run time to the original, eight episodes aren’t enough to make the world-building feel truly lived-in, introduce the main characters, their conflicts and desires, and hit all of the iconic moments from the original. At least, not with the way the show utilizes that time. 

They certainly try. Memorable episodes like “The Northern Air Temple” get mashed together with “Jet” and even the Season 2 episode “The Cave of Two Lovers.” These kinds of mash-ups are present throughout the live-action show, to varying degrees of success. Original episodes that share similar themes, like “The Blue Spirit” and “The Storm,” make for an excellent combination in Episode 6, “Masks.” However, the two-part Omashu episodes that introduce the mechanist (a fantastically cast Danny Pudi), Teo (Lucian-River Chauhan), and Jet (Sebastian Amoruso), and send Sokka (Ian Ousley) and Katara (Kiawentiio) off to the cave of two lovers do too much in too short a time. What originally were distinct stories end up a hodgepodge of filling source material quota and a random one, at that. 

Changes are always going to happen with adaptations. However, for a change to be good, it has to make sense for the new format. Zuko can fight back during the Agni Kai with his father because Ozai’s (Daniel Dae Kim) ruthlessness still persists and Zuko’s compassion beaten down time and time again. But certain lore changes, such as Aang’s ability to speak to past Avatar’s being tied to an avatar’s shrine creates less interesting plot-driven obstacles rather than being derived from character.

Avatar Kyoshi (Yvonne Chapman) possesses Aang in Season 2 of the animation, but in the live-action she does it in Episode 2, “Warriors” — a moment that originally belonged to Avatar Roku (C.S. Lee). Aang’s connection to the past versions of himself largely depends on his spirituality, an important fact for the spin-off show The Legend of Korra. Taking this aspect away from the show diminishes the impact of meeting the past Avatars. It’s a change driven by plot superiority and fueled by a short runtime.

One of the more impressive feats of the series is how it grounds the characters into believable live-action counterparts. It rides a fine line between the goofiness present in the animation and the seriousness of seeing oppression and genocide on screen. This does mean that the show loses some of the more joyful aspects that made the original so much fun. Namely, Aang himself is a more streamlined character. 

Gone is his desire to ride the penguins or swim with giant koi fish; once he realizes he’s been gone for 100 years during which a war broke out, it’s off to the races for him. Despite this streamlined version of Aang, he never actually learns any waterbending, despite this season covering Book 1 of the original, titled “Water.” Another plot change comes from Kyoshi, who tells Aang that he must go to the Northern Water Tribe because they’ve had visions of destruction happening there. These new motivations for the characters, particularly Aang, come off as forced urgency when the original motivation worked perfectly well. Katara and Aang needed to learn waterbending, so they traveled to the Northern Water Tribe. The attack on the Northern Water Tribe then catches everyone off guard. 

Katara and Sokka also have a more streamlined character arc, though certain changes lessen those arc’s impacts. Sokka’s sexism is replaced by not understanding his sister’s desire to waterbend, fueled by a fear of the Fire Nation’s oppression against non-fire benders. While this direction brings more nuance to his character, there’s no clear character progression. However, the same gender role constraints that fueled Sokka’s sexism are still there but it fails to tackle those gender stereotypes in any meaningful way. 

This affects Katara, as well. Her anger and jealousy — at the Fire Nation, her brother, and Aang — are a part of who she is. But she’s also empathetic to a point that she can bond with Aang and understand his own anger. Without Sokka’s sexism, and with a rushed story, that anger comes across more subdued. Katara shows the same empathy she did in the original, but without the anger, she comes across more one-note.

However, in the Nothern Water Tribe episodes, that anger begins to appear. She brings her all to the fight with Pakku, standing up for her right to participate in her culture’s liberation. But without the established gender role constraints she fights about with Sokka, her stand against Pakku (A Martinez) ends up being just another source material quota, with nothing in this particular story anchoring it. Considering one of the more popular episodes involves Katara’s anger getting the best of her to a point where she blood bends, this needs to be rectified in future seasons, pending renewal. 

Zuko’s story is more clear, and thus, he remains the best character in Avatar the Last Airbender. While certain expanded scenes show a lighter side to Zuko earlier than in the original, the appearance of the Fire Lord counteracts Zuko’s compassion. Time and again, Zuko chooses he’d rather prove himself to his father despite being presented with the other options, allowing the expanded parts of Zuko to still exist without interfering with his inevitable redemption. Alongside him, Uncle Iroh (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) provides the same wise yet quirky mentorship to Zuko, though the grounded nature of the live-action emphasizes Iroh’s role as a leader in the oppression against the other nations more clearly. 

These live-action adaptations are tricky. It’s a huge undertaking to adapt something that already exists in a near-perfect form. The comparisons are going to happen. And with this live-action Avatar the Last Airbender, the biggest changes standout so much because of how little they were called for. In the end, it’s a serviceable, and at times, even enjoyable, adaptation of an already perfect thing. That doesn’t mean I don’t wish for more because there is something special about seeing these iconic moments come to life in a different format. It’s when unnecessary changes get in the way of sticking to what’s already good that an adaptation starts to fail. Unfortunately, Avatar the Last Airbender runs into that issue one too many times. 

Avatar the Last Airbender is available to stream on Netflix. So is the original.

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Images courtesy of Netflix