Avatar: The Last Airbender :Netflix’s Live-Action Remake Is a Major Letdown
The streamer's take on the beloved animated series centers on a young boy tasked with saving the world by mastering all four elements: earth, air, water and fire.
Several times in Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang (Gordon Cormier), the 12-year-old chosen-one hero, calls for guidance from the spirits of his predecessors. And they oblige, appearing before him in a glowing blue aura to share their experiences or offer advice. But they remind him as well that each Avatar is different — that the role evolves with the needs of the times or the personality of the individual inhabiting it, that it’s on Aang now to figure out for himself what it means for him.
It is sage counsel that Avatar itself clearly wants to take to heart. The live-action drama is positioned not just as a remake of the Nickelodeon animated saga but as a corrective to the disastrous 2010 movie adaptation, and it gamely tries to incorporate the lessons of both while forging its own darker path forward. If the effort is admirable, however, the execution is decidedly not. Rather than breathe fresh life into a familiar world, this Avatar serves only to remind that some beloved properties might be better left on ice.
Of course, by the logic of entertainment franchises, leaving well enough alone was probably never an option. So creator Albert Kim dusts off the premise that devotees of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko’s cartoon can surely recite by heart: “Water. Earth. Fire. Air. Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them. But when the world needed him most, he vanished.” Where Avatar 1.0 started out as a pleasant half-hour meander, though — having goofball Aang awaken from his century of accidental hibernation to befriend Water Tribe siblings Katara and Sokka, and only gradually building to harder conversations about peace, violence and conflict — this Avatar throws us right into the deep end. The opening minutes are filled with scenes of soldiers, spies, harrowing cruelty.
The brightest elements of this universe mostly cluster around the Fire Nation, and not just because their flames are inherently more cinematic than the earthbenders’ floating rocks or the airbenders’ gusts of wind. (Whatever the discipline, few of the fight scenes are anything worth writing home about.) Aang might be the one referenced in the title, but Avatar‘s ideas and intentions are best exemplified in antagonist Zuko, a teenage prince with daddy issues that would make Kendall Roy wince with sympathy. Radiating rage and pain from every pore, actor Dallas Liu stays faithful to the character originated by Dante Basco while simultaneously embodying Zuko so fully that it seems the role has always been his. With help from more seasoned performers like Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Ken Leung and Daniel Dae Kim, Zuko’s redemption arc, rushed though it is, emerges as the only truly compelling through line of the show.
Given that the original Avatar has been hailed in many quarters as one of the best series of the past few decades, living up to its memory was always going to be a nigh-impossible bar for any reboot or adaptation to clear. But the flaws plaguing this Avatar are entirely its own, separate from the unbearable weight of fan expectations. In its turn toward the dark, it forgets to make space for light. In reaching for lofty themes, it neglects the details and basics to make them land. In its impatience to grow up, it leaves its characters no room to evolve. And in all of these failings, it delivers an Avatar that, grittier though it may be, feels far less mature than the kids’ cartoon ever did.
Avatar: The Last Airbender | Official Trailer
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