Avatar The Last Airbender Netflix live Action Review

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Avatar last Airbender is one of those incredible fantasy stories that lingers through the ages. The story started clandestinely as a Nickelodeon cartoon but has amassed a massive fan base around the world.

Making a live action series for the animation was never going to be easy. Generally speaking, live actions of animations are very difficult to execute and whenever an attempt is made, I like to give plaudits to the efforts.

The execution of the Avatar last Airbender series live action series was always going to be an uphill battle. There are so many facets of the animation that simply cannot be captured into 8 episodes.

The fact is, live action adapted series will always pale in comparison to the animation or game and that is okay. There's just so much you can do in an animation that you cannot execute in live adaptation.

The ringer estimates that the entire budget for the series was around $120 million. Considering we had 8 episodes of around 50 minutes per episode, I'd say that's fair value for money.

As a fan of the cartoon series, I was always going to be immersed in the storyline and take mental notes of similarities between the live action and the cartoon. Overall, I'm pleased to say that just like my review of House of Ninja, this would appeal to Anime nerds more than "objective movie critics".

The likeness and Graphics

The first thing fans of the cartoon series will notice is the likeness of the live action to the source. For that, I reckon the producers did a great job.

Considering how limited of a budget the series had, I'll go as far as saying they exceeded my expectation. There wasn't any A-list actor in the series but that's okay as it really doesn't matter much to the actual story.

As far as I know, all the main characters from the animation were properly depicted and dramatized by the actors. It wasn't perfect in all situations but it was fair

General Iroh and Boomy, the king of Omashu, for example had minor kinks in their design that could be ironed out, while the actor that played Azula just didn't have the sinister aura of the source. However, overall, I'd say it was excellent work.

The CGI wasn't great but that's just about what you can expect from such a limited budget. Overall, I don't think there's any need to be overly critical of the quality of the graphics.

I think the most difficult part for the graphics team would be dramatizing earth bending. Fire, water and air are elements that exist on their own, so there's no environmental effect. Earth bending is complicated.

Earth bending requires the individual to literally pull out boulders and soil out of the ground. So, technically, whenever an Earth bender fights, there'd be holes in the ground. I reckon dramatizing something like that would be a hassle and with that budget, it is just not possible.

If you're watching or watched as a "neutral" it is important to remember that this is a live action dramatization of a kids show, so the earth bending "plot hole" wasn't an issue in the animation.

Plot

There's not much to say about the plot and that is actually a good thing. The original lore was hardly tampered with and there weren't any unnecessary dramatization.

Every single event from the source material was captured. However, there were minor tweaks to how the event transpired.

For example, Iroh reminding Zuko to use his breath of fire, Sokka's numerous flings and the events at the North pole were among the bits that were tweaked. However, all the main points of the story were identical to the source material.

I am trying not to post "spoilers" but virtually everyone knows how the story goes. Oh and just in case you're wondering, the first season only captures events of the first season of the animation, so everything was shoehorned into 8 episodes.

Overall, I'd give the show a solid 4/5 for excellent casting, makeup and sticking within reasonable bounds of the source material. The graphics weren't too quality but that's an issue with the budget and there was cringe scenes that I reckon are either because of poor acting skills of the actors or because I'm a grown up watching a live action of a kids' series.