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Isn’t This Supposed to Be Fun?
Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender makes the mistake of treating the original like a sacred text.
The cartoon builds to an epic sweep and some big action set pieces, but what’s most memorable is how much texture it manages to develop along the way: Within a showdown between good and evil, there’s room for tons of charming side characters, goofy one-off episodes, and recurring gags (the poor cabbage merchant). The series opens with a ponderous flashback to the peaceful Air Nomads as they’re attacked by the Fire Nation, as if to underline just how serious all this is, and then cuts back to the present, when the sole survivor and, essentially, chosen one, Aang (Gordon Cormier), is discovered by the Water Tribe pals Sokka (Ian Ousley) and Katara (Kiawentiio). Avatar ’s aesthetic resembles a lot of Netflix’s attempts at turning anime (or anime-inspired, in this case) into live action, as with Cowboy Bebop and One Piece, which is to say that it tries to replicate the visuals of one medium without paying attention to how they might read in a new context.
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