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PORTSIDE CULTURE

NETFLIX’S LIVE-ACTION AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER IS EVERYTHING FANS
HOPED IT WOULD BE  
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Aja Romano
February 22, 2024
Vox
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_ Avatar remains one of the most unapologetically antifascist shows
ever made. It’s not even generically pacifist — it frequently
depicts acts of violent resistance as necessary. _

Gordon Cormier stars as Aang in Avatar: The Last Airbender. , Robert
Falconer/Netflix

 

Aja Romano [[link removed]] writes about pop
culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a
staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics
Institute, they’re considered an authority on fandom, the internet,
and the culture wars.

_____

Reader, you can relax: They nailed it.

Halfway through the third episode of Netflix
[[link removed]]’s tremendously anticipated live-action
adaptation of _Avatar: The Last Airbender_, we’re treated to a
slickly choreographed fight through a town square between our title
character, Aang (Gordon Cormier), and his self-declared nemesis,
Prince Zuko (Dallas Liu). This hand-to-hand combat through a colorful,
chaotic street scene ends not with a victor but with a different coup
de grâce: a cameo from a fan-favorite produce vendor wailing over his
ruined cabbages [[link removed]].

Between the rocky history of the franchise and uncertainty about the
current production, fans’ anxiety around this Netflix release might
well be at an all-time high
[[link removed]].
The previous attempt to adapt Nickelodeon’s beloved animated show,
which ran for three seasons from 2005 to 2008, for a mainstream
live-action audience resulted in infamy. M. Night Shyamalan’s 2010
movie sparked a notorious controversy
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his decision to cast his main characters with white actors, a move
that resulted in years-long protests from fans and contributed to the
movie being released to utter ignominy
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A gutsy 2012 series expansion following the exploits of Aang’s
successor, Korra, renewed the franchise, though it garnered plenty of
controversy
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its own right for featuring a (gasp!) messy female protagonist. With
so many fans still burned by the film, the news of Netflix’s
eight-episode live-action adaptation spawned plenty of worry. That
wasn’t helped when the original show’s creators, Michael Dante
DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, walked away from the project
[[link removed]] in
2020, two years after it was first announced. Between their departure
and the delays caused by the pandemic, fans wondered whether the show
would even be released at all.

The wait, it turns out, has been worth it. Although there are plenty
of things to quibble with in successor showrunner Albert Kim’s
version of the series, so many things go right that this adaptation
of _Avatar_ not only rejuvenates the whole franchise but elevates
Netflix’s flagging live-action project.

I am unabashedly _Avatar_-pilled; I think the Nickelodeon original
is one of the greatest TV shows ever made
[[link removed]].
It pulls off in just three seasons the kind of epic world building and
character evolution that shows double its length never manage to
achieve. It does so by balancing its family-friendly ethos with a
story that deals openly with war, genocide, fascism, trauma, and child
abuse.

The result is a show that’s routinely as devastating as it is
delightful. Our heroes each grapple with deep personal loss while
trying to stop a powerful military force, the Fire Nation, from
colonizing the rest of the world. That world is inhabited by fantasy
creatures, steampunk cities, and four distinct groups characterized by
their relationship to the traditional four elements: besides the Fire
Nation (inspired by imperial Japan, China, and other East Asian
cultures), there is the Water Tribe (inspired by Inuit and other
subarctic cultures), the Earth Kingdom (inspired by imperial Chinese
culture), and the Air Nomads (inspired by Buddhist and Hindu cultures
in Tibet and parts of Southeast Asia). Among these tribes, people
known as benders can control the element they’re associated with.

Only one human, known as the Avatar, has the ability to master all
four elements — an ability passed down to them through generations
in an unbroken chain of previous avatars. The disappearance of the
most recent Avatar, Aang, a century ago has allowed the Fire Nation to
lay waste to the other nations, including completely wiping out all
the Air Nomads, the tribe into which Aang was born. Aided by Katara
and Sokka, two Water Tribe siblings whose mother died in the Fire
Nation’s ethnic cleansing and whose father is away at war, he has to
make up for lost time and defeat the Fire Lord once and for all. This
is heady stuff, especially for a kid’s cartoon. But the show,
which won a Peabody
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“adding thoughtful substance to [the] genre,” has the writing,
creativity, and deep characterization to pull it off.

That’s not to say that _Avatar_ as a franchise and artistic
product needs no reckoning with. The show’s status as an artifact
of millennial nostalgia
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become complicated over time. The degree to which its homage to anime
and borrowing of Asian culture veers into cultural appropriation
rather than tribute has been a source of debate
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fans and critics. So has the degree to which, as a show made by white
creators incorporating elements of colonized cultures, it reifies
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very thing it attempts to rebuke.

Still, unlike other shows
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its time, _Avatar_ has largely managed to hold on to its fans. This
is partly because it’s never quite reached the mainstream. (In fact,
its lack of a household name complicates things for us: Do we
editorialize with the longstanding shorthand _Avatar_, which was
preferred until it was usurped by James Cameron, forever turning it
into “_Avatar_ — no, not that one”?)

It’s also partly because _Avatar_ remains one of the
most unapologetically antifascist
[[link removed]] shows
ever made. It’s not even generically pacifist — it frequently
depicts acts of violent resistance as necessary. For all the time Aang
spends proselytizing about things like morals, friendship, and the
benefits of riding an air scooter
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resorts to empty platitudes; its moral and political lessons are
usually hard-won.

Complicated? Yes. But that’s also why, in the current political
climate, a live-action remake of _Avatar_ can’t afford a single
ideological misstep. Its moral clarity about the absolute necessity of
resisting genocidal regimes, political isolationism, and governments
of conquest matters now more than ever.

At their core, both the original and the new _Avatar_ are
travelogues — stories that evolve their characters and their
universe through a literal journey through that universe. It’s a
format shared by countless works, including fantasies ranging
from _Gulliver’s Travels_ to _Star Trek_. This works on multiple
levels, expanding our understanding of the world while also allowing
our characters to grow and change through each interaction with a new
culture.

The animated _Avatar_’s three seasons follow three phases of
Aang’s journey to master all four elements, after which he can
hopefully defeat the Fire Nation. The first season of Netflix’s
adaptation faithfully aligns with the first season of the show
(“Book One”) — though because it has to truncate much of the
action, the first two episodes feature a lot of clunky exposition. The
new show also suffers from a tendency to repeat the exposition we’ve
already heard, to the extent of showing flashbacks to moments that
happened earlier _in the same episode_. At times, the combination of
overexposition and overmoralizing turns hokey.

Still, the writing is stronger and more enjoyable than these choices
imply. Netflix’s _Avatar_ preserves the original’s plot, and its
changes work to tighten the narrative, deepen characterization, and
strengthen the impact of heart-clenching moments in the storyline.
Crucially, it retains the balance of the original: depth and darkness,
levity and light.

The production design is opulent and rich with detail, carefully
incorporating _Avatar_’s cultural influences, from architecture
[[link removed]] to costuming
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The CGI is primarily an unobtrusive enhancement rather than a
distraction (Appa the sky bison being a disappointing exception). The
action is backed by a lush, beautiful score, and the fight scenes are
excellent. The artificial nature of the CGI fight scenes was one of
the things that really torpedoed Shyamalan’s version; here, however,
particularly during all of the waterbending fights, the CGI and the
live-action choreography integrate seamlessly, generating visually
spectacular climactic battle sequences.

All of this bolsters the impeccable casting decisions that went into
creating this ensemble, which features cameos from a host of geek
faves like Danny Pudi, Arden Cho, George Takei, and Osric Chau but
never feels like pandering or stunt casting. Overall,
this _Avatar_ manages to avoid succumbing to “the Netflix look
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and instead serves as an exemplar of how to cast and visually adapt
animated characters without looking ridiculous or feeling fake.

The standouts in this regard are exactly who they should be: Zuko, the
willful, stubborn Fire Nation prince in exile, and his uncle, General
Iroh (_The Mandalorian_’s Paul Sun-Hyung Lee).
No _Avatar_ adaptation can succeed unless the audience invests in
this relationship; luckily for us, Dallas Liu exudes just the right
mix of brashness and vulnerability and restless energy from the first
moment he’s onscreen, while Lee unveils Iroh’s layered complexity
one careful degree at a time. If one or the other doesn’t break your
heart individually, the two of them together definitely will.

Kiawentiio, who plays our waterbending heroine Katara, is so much
better than everyone around her for most of her time onscreen that she
inadvertently highlights how little attention her character gets. Book
One focuses on developing her much less interesting older brother,
Sokka. In the hands of actor Ian Ousley, who plays him with precise
smarm and hamminess, Sokka is the epitome of the wisecracking
sidekick: You either love him or hate him. Given all the material this
season has to cover, the time we spend watching him chase cute girls
and debate what career track he should be on feels like filler —
especially since, by contrast, Katara is dealing (mostly offscreen)
with the trauma of having watched her mother be _burned alive_. By
the end, however, Katara gets her moment, with Sokka in full support.

Eclipsed by so many bright and colorful side characters and a plot
that gives his archnemesis the centerpiece hero’s journey, Aang has
never been the most compelling part of his own story. For most of Book
One, he’s still a naive 12-year-old who spends most of his time
fleeing Fire Nation soldiers instead of learning to bend elements.
Here, Gordon Cormier does his best, but he’s usually saddled with a
mouthful of either moralism or exposition. The show also suffers from
a failure to integrate Aang into the trio; we spend far more time
hearing Aang and Katara talk at each other about the importance of
friendship than we do watching them actually become friends.

Because so many of these weaknesses are imposed on the series by the
constraints of the eight-episode Netflix format, it’s worth asking
whether we even _need_ more _Avatar_. Can this shortening really do
justice to the original’s complex themes?

For me, so far, the answer is yes. It turns out I did need more from
this story. I did need to see Cormier’s face collapsing in grief and
love when he reunites briefly with the monk who raised him. I did need
the show to retcon a tiny offscreen romance in order to show us that
the conservative earthbending city of Omashu was quite literally built
on a lesbian relationship. I did need Zuko’s soldiers dramatically
saluting him because they’ve finally realized he’s had their backs
all along. I definitely needed to see Katara ice-surf during a battle
to prove her worth as a bender.

Is it perfect? Nah. But it might be a perfect way to rekindle your
love for _Avatar_ — and remind the world why it deserved to be
remembered in the first place.

 

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* avatar the last airbender
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* Fascism
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* Anti-Fascism
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