In September 2018, Netflix announced that a live-action remake of Avatar: The Last Airbender was in the works. This week, it’s finally given us an update: the series is slated to hit the platform in 2024, and I’m miserable about it. There’s nothing wrong with the announcement, technically. I am thrilled to see Asian and indigenous actors cast in the show, because that was a huge criticism of the previous attempt at a live-action remake of the original Nickelodeon version – so many white people, and so few Asians. My issue with it is the entire premise: it’s a live-action remake. I’ve been vocal about my feelings about this. I don’t think everything deserves to be re🍨made, or adapted to a different mediuꦜm. I’d go so far as to say most things don’t, but if studios are going to go ahead and do it, there’s definitely 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a right, worthwhile way to do it and a terribly, horribly wrong way. However, Avatar does not need to be remade, and I really believe that. The animated show was an all-time classic, one that holds up to this day. It’s well-written, well-paced, and explores complex themes like colonialism, genocide, war, oppression, and free will. People hold affection for it to this day. My friends and I played a homebrew campaign of D&D based on it, 15 years after the show first came out. People say “There is no War in Ba Sing Se” on Twitter all the time. It’s iconic.It’s understandable that Netflix wants to capitalise on this because Netflix loves money. But if, like me, you’re in the camp that believes television should have artistic merit and beating the dead horse of IP serves nobody, you likely hate the idea of making a live-action just for profit. The animated version was already excellent, and I🍨 don’t see the point of a live-action version apart from showcasing how realistic CGI can make fire-bending look. I don’t give a shit about that, and that’s not why the show resonated with so many people. Animation isn’t an inferior medium, and it’s not one that has to be translated for mass appeaꦬl.
What makes me🥃 even warier is that Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the creators of the original Avatar, left the project a long time ago. They were originally attached to the project as executive producers and showrunners, but left because Netflix was changing the creative direction of the series. In an open letter on his , DiMartino said that he chose to leave because it was “necessary” for his “happiness and creative integrity”, and that while the adaptation has the potent𝓡ial to be good, it is not what he or Konietzko envisioned.
Even the show’s new showrunner, Albert Kim, confessed in a that a big part of what the team is planning to do focuses on the visuals. Specifically, he said, “What is there I could do or say with the story that wasn’t done or said in the original?” and “The more I thought about it, the more intrigued I became. VFX technology has advanced to the point where a live-action version can not only faithfully translate what had been done in animation — it can bring a ric🐭h new visual dimension to a fantastic world.” In the blog post, he also says that by lengthening the episodes, he hopes to give “story points and emotional arcs we’d loved in the original” more room to “breathe and grow”.
I try not to shit on things too much before they’ve come out. There’s no way for me to know for sure that it’s going to be bad, so I won’t say that. However, it is unnecessary, and that’s not the same thing. I thought HBO’s was unnecessary, but it was also pretty good. Maybe DiMartino is right, the adaptation has potential, and I’d𒐪 love to see a show with a primarily Asian and indigenous cast succeed, but that doesn’t mean I think the show should ever have been made in the first place. Unfortunately, representation isn’t enough to justify the existence of a piece of media.