Netflix missed the point of Avatar
– I know, I am too old to be getting this worked up over a Netflix remake of a cartoon that came out when I was 11, but this is not just any cartoon. It’s not like they’re rebooting “Jimmy Neutron” and I’m off pissed about it. “Avatar” is a nearly perfect series. It’s one I enjoyed a lot when I saw it as a kid, but rediscovering it as an adult blew my mind. It’s a show that moved me to tears multiple times.
It’s something that the creators put so much thought and care into getting every detail right from the world-building to the music. Now, for a long time I thought it would be impossible to translate this world into live action, partly because of how intricate and beautiful the animation is, and partly because the last time they tried to do it, it was a fucking disaster. I’ve seen way too many people say regarding the Netflix adaptation, “Hey, at least it’s better than the movie.” Yeah, I would hope it’s better than one of the worst films ever made.
You don’t get points for that.
Because of how goofy and awkward this movie looked, I assumed it just couldn’t be done and that this world was simply unadaptable to live-action, and in a lot of ways Netflix proved me wrong. This show looks probably as good as a live-action “Avatar” could. I mean nothing will ever truly compare to vibrant and fluid 2D animation, but the VFX team that worked on this did a really good job of making something that very easily could have looked dumb as shit looked pretty realistic. Except for the air bending, I don’t know what happened there. Yeah, a lot of the scenes are directed a little jarringly and it’s way too dark sometimes, but with what they were tasked with bringing to life here, I think they deserve a lot of credit.
But it’s funny to me that Netflix nailed the part that I thought couldn’t be done well and messed up all of the stuff that should have been a slam dunk. Let’s start with the pilot because I started writing this video 10 minutes into the first episode. The pilot condenses the first three episodes of the animated series into one premier, which on paper works well. The end of episode three is where the prologue ends. We’ve established the world, we’ve introduced the characters and a little bit of their backstories, and they’re flying away from their past as they venture forth onto their journey.
And while the very beginning of the show doesn’t quite reach the heights that it eventually will, I think this is all paced well and does a good job of doling out enough information to explain what’s going on, while still having the restraint to hold onto some things that can be revealed when the time is right.
We open on two of the three main characters, Sokka and Katara. We learn that they’re siblings who live in the Southern Water Tribe. Katara is a waterbender, Sokka is not. He belittles her ability, they bicker for a bit, it escalates, and then Katara’s water bends so hard that a 12-year-old bald kid falls out of an iceberg.
Wait, that’s not just any bald kid that’s the avatar. No one’s seen him in 100 years. What the hell? No time to stop and explain everything though, because they have inadvertently alerted a nearby Fire Nation ship of their presence. This is Prince Zuko and his Uncle Iroh.
They’ve been banished from their home and sent on a new three-year quest to find the avatar. A quest that may just be about to end. Some chaos ensues, and a fight breaks out, but ultimately, with the help of his new friends, Aang can escape Zuko and the three of them fly into the sunset.
Now, that brings us to episode three, and there is still a crucial piece of information that the showrunners have not yet revealed to Aang because they’re waiting until the right moment. The gang heads to the air temple that Aang grew up in.
A place where Sokka and Katara know is probably filled with dead airbenders, but they don’t have the heart to break it to him. He’s so cheerful and excited to just show them where he used to play with his friends. How do we tell this kid that everyone he knew and loved was murdered by the Fire Nation? Instead, they try to cheer him up and keep him distracted. We see a flashback of Aang’s former life.
He’s talking to his friend and mentor, Giyatso, someone who we can tell he cared a lot about. Aang talks about how overwhelmed he is at the thought of being the avatar, and Giyatso assures him that everything will be all right. We cut back, they keep exploring for a bit, and they find Momo a little pet to go with their big pet. Things are going great until, oh, shit. – Firebenders, they were here?
(somber music) Giyatso. Oh. – Oh, man. Come on, Aang. Everything will be all right.
Let’s get outta here.
(ominous music) – This is a really important scene for the beginning of a Nickelodeon show that up until this point has been pretty lighthearted. Seeing your main character, who’s just a kid, find out about the death of his entire people and then freak out and have to be calmed down by his friends. It’s a really powerful moment that can only happen because the writers held onto this reveal until the time was right to reveal it. So now, let’s talk about how Netflix handled the pilot.
Instead of starting the show with our main characters, we open on an epic chase. This is streaming, baby. We gotta put a fight scene within the first 10 seconds or people are gonna turn it off and go watch “Love Is Blind”. If you don’t brutally murder someone right now, I’m taking my ass to Freevee, but you know what? I’m fine with this cold open.
I understand you’re just trying to grab people’s attention and a quick little action sequence that shows how ruthless the Fire Nation can be is not the worst way to do it, but it should have ended here.
You say this line. – This isn’t about the airbenders. This is about one who lives among them. – But the avatar is yet to be revealed.
– Which is why we have to kill them all. – And then we cut to the present day to the three main characters similar to how the cartoon did. I think that would’ve been an effective opening, because if you’ve never seen the show and you just watch the Fire Lord say, “We gotta kill all the airbenders.” And then you cut 100 years into the future and you see an Airbender that survived, you’d probably be like, how did that happen? I’m gonna stick around to find out.
Instead, we come back from the title sequence and we’re still in the past on the day of the aforementioned invasion. I guess we’re just gonna do the whole show chronologically, lest anyone be confused. We meet Aang and Giyatso and see them stand and talk for a while, and then we get to watch some people sit and talk for a while and we cut back to Aang and Giyatso and they do more standing and more talking and then Aang flies away and a whole bunch of murder happens.
Oh my God, so much murder. I’m talking several uninterrupted minutes of murder, because remember, this is a show for grownups.
Cartoons are for babies. We got a bunch of dead bodies in this one. What’s crazy to me about this entire sequence is that while they’re so insistent on showing something that I honestly think had more emotional impact to just see the aftermath of, they do not attempt to show us any aspects of Aang’s personality. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the writers take the time to explain Aang’s personality to us. He and Giyatso tell us all about him.
– I know who I am. I like to play Airball eat banana cakes and goof off with my friends. That’s who I am. – I feel bad for this kid because he seems like a very good actor, but the writers keep giving him lines that make it sound like he’s about to burst into song.
– Monks don’t even trust me to feed the baby bison and I’m supposed to save the world?
– Why can’t I just be a kid? But this isn’t even the worst example of tell don’t show that they do in this episode. Remember I told you about how Aang finds out that all the airbenders are dead? How he stumbled upon the corpse of his former best friend surrounded by all of the firebenders it took to take him down? Here’s how they do it in this show.
– Most ’em had just arrived for the Great Comet Festival. – The Great Comet Festival. The last time that the Great Comet was seen in the sky was 100 years ago. – Someone just tells him about it. – Everyone in the village knows this story, but you don’t just as you don’t know that airbenders haven’t been seen in generations and that the Southern Air Temple was the first to fall because you’ve been trapped in that ice this whole time.
– Gran Gran reads out loud the entire opening theme for like two straight minutes, while he has to just sit there and give reaction faces, before running out of the room crying. And he’s sad for like 10 seconds and then everything is fine. No time to mope, buddy. You gotta do another walk and talk. This is infuriatingly bad writing.
You took one of Aang’s most impactful moments from the beginning of the show and turned it into someone else’s monologue. It’s so weird to me when shows are clearly in a rush to establish as much information as possible, I guess because they think people will get confused and turn it off if they don’t have their hand held through every interaction, but it feels counterintuitive.
I think what gets people to continue watching something is a mystery. You don’t need to answer every question I have within seconds of me having it. You can reveal information in small doses and slowly add to it piece by piece.
That’s what’s gonna compel me to keep watching something not paragraphs of expository dialogue whenever you feel like you’ve got some lower blanks to fill.
It’s also weird to me that they still try to recreate the Air Temple moment in this episode, even though it’s not new information for Aang. He goes and sees dead Giyatso who was much easier to kill this time around and still goes bananas and still has to be calmed down, but it doesn’t make sense, because he already knows about this. – My friends, they’re all gone. – [Speaker] What is he doing?
– It feels like kind of an overreaction considering he barely gave a shit about it earlier. Also in the original, Katara is the one to calm Aang down while he’s in this state. She tells him that she knows what it’s like to lose someone you love, but the world needs him and they’re here to help no matter what. It’s a great moment for the three of them because it gives closure to Aang’s past while bridging the gap into this present journey they’re about to go on.
In this version, Katara just watches while we see a bunch of flashbacks from earlier in the episode in case you were looking at your phone during that part.
– Aang! – [Speaker] You are my friend. – I don’t understand the obsession with Giyatso in this version. He is an important character, but more so as a memory for Aang like a symbol of what he lost. He’s not that relevant to the present-day journey they’re about to go on.
What matters the most, is their relationship, their friendship is the foundation that this entire series is built on. So, I think you’re doing a huge disservice to that by taking interactions away from Katara and Sokka so you can give them to a guy who died 100 years ago. They do this multiple times in the show. They keep bringing Giyatso back instead of giving that valuable screen time to the more important characters.
They even do this in the opening title scroll in the pilot episode.
In the original, Katara is the one who does this voiceover, which kind of establishes the show as being from her point of view. And the very iconic lines she says at the end. – [Katara] But I believe Aang can save the world. – Actually, tell us something about her. They tell us that she’s optimistic and believes in her friends no matter what.
So, they managed to add characterization into a sequence that is at its core exposition. It’s a very efficient use of dialogue. In the remake, they take this away from Katara so they can again give it to a character who died 100 years ago. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that everything that’s said in this version of the title sequence gets repeated multiple times throughout the episode. It’s a very inefficient use of dialogue.
– [Speaker] The avatar, is the one person with the ability to master all four elements, the avatar, the next master of all four elements. – Only the avatar, the one person who can master all four elements. – Only the avatar, master of all four elements, but when the world needed him most, he vanished. – [Speaker] When the world needed the Avatar the most he vanished. – Episode one shouldn’t feel as rushed at the end as it does.
It’s roughly the same runtime as the three episodes it’s adapting. So, it’s not that they didn’t have the time to tell the story, it’s that they misused the time they had. They add in all this stuff that probably would’ve been better if it was just kept a mystery. They waste so much time repeating the same information just from different sources and they replace interesting character development moments with vague mumbo jumbo. – Bending is about energy and balance.
By feeling the energy around you, you can find balance. By finding balance you can feel the energy. – Aang, what the fuck are you talking about? Remember, energy is balance, which is energy, which is balance. Whoa, thanks, Aang, I’m water bending now and I am internet bending.
Ooh, sorry about that. This portion of the video is sponsored by Opera. The faster, safer, and smarter way to browse the web. If you’ve ever wondered why it takes me so long to make videos, is because most of my job is writing, and while I’m writing I like to have 97 different tabs open for every thought that pops into my head.
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Download Opera for free using the link in the description. Thank you to Opera for sponsoring today’s video. Now, before I continue just getting mad about every single aspect of this show, I do wanna answer a more general question like, what should we expect out of an adaptation? Because it may sound like I’m trying to say that this should have been a one-to-one recreation of the original show.
When that is not the case.
You can and should be able to change things. Why even bother spending all this money to make something that looks worse, if it’s gonna be the same, those changes need to enhance the story. They can’t be at odds with the spirit of the show or fundamentally change a character. So, that brings me to episode two. In the months leading up to the show’s release, I kept seeing aggregated quotes about it from cast members from the creators, and every time I did it, it made me a little bit less optimistic about what we were going to get.
One of those quotes was how the creators of the show very nobly, got rid of the sexism that Sokka had a little bit of at the beginning of the cartoon because that was 2005 and we’re a lot smarter now.
I don’t need to tell you that there are tons of movies and TV shows from 20 years ago that have not aged well, but I think you’re missing the point, if you try to lump this show in with those. Sokka is an overconfident, but misguided teenage boy who grew up isolated from the rest of the world where he has been tasked with being the sole leader and protector of his entire village. As a result, he begins this show with a pretty dated sense of what men and women should be expected to do. He’s constantly making belittling remarks to his sister.
He meets the warriors on Kyoshi Island and is relieved to see that they’re just girls. Here’s the thing though, the show is not glorifying his behavior.
They’re very much doing the opposite because you know what happens right after he says these things? He is immediately proven wrong. He underestimates Suki and the rest of the Kyoshi warriors and they kick his ass.
He’s so embarrassed by this that he comes back with his tail between his legs apologizes and begs to learn from them. It is meant to be a humiliating and humbling experience for him. One that also props up the women around him. It’s vindicating for Katara who’s had to deal with this bullshit her whole life and it establishes Suki as a badass.
It’s not unchecked.
It’s not something that the showrunners are celebrating. His misogyny is immediately met with repercussions. Are we really at a point where we can’t even show a character on TV doing something morally disagreeable? Can audiences truly not understand the difference between a real-life human being expressing a shitty belief and that belief being portrayed in a piece of fiction? And look, I’m not here to die on the hill that you gotta keep the misogyny in the show, man.
It was so funny. There are other ways for the writers to show Sokka having a flaw that Suki can use to get a leg up on him. So, what do they do instead? She walks in on him takes a bath and just fucking stands there staring at him with googly eyes then in their training scene together, they have to stop every 10 seconds, because of all the sexual tension.
– Avoided, we’ve avoided a lot of things by living the way we do.
– Jesus Christ. Do you see the point that I’m trying to make here? Instead of Suki being this cool and confident intellectual superior to Sokka who always has the upper hand on him and is always able to shut him down whenever he tries to pull some shit, they decided to just make her so horny she can’t function. I gotta say it’s a little ironic that in an attempt to remove sexism from the show, they took a more sexist approach to designing her character. They stripped away everything that made her who she was, made her obsess over Sokka, who doesn’t do anything to earn it, and then they have the nerve to act morally superior to the original writers.
Also, does anyone in this village respect privacy? Shaking my head. On the topic of absolutely destroying strong female characters, let’s talk about Katara. Her entire arc in this show is just, man, I’m not so good at bending.
And then Aang is like, “Yeah, you are.
” And she’s like, “Huh, you’re right. I’m the best.” She has not given any personality whatsoever. Her entire existence is tied to her water-bending ability, which is not what made her such a great character in the cartoon. Instead of showing how fiery and passionate Katara can be and how her optimism sometimes backfires, because the world they’re living in is so beaten down she can be a great leader and friend to everyone around her.
Not just because she’s strong, but because she’s empathetic and brings out the best in people. They just made her good at fighting, and that’s it. – You are a waterbender. That is who you have always been and always will be. – And she doesn’t even need any help, because she’s so talented.
Always has been in fact. – I wasn’t even really trying. – It’s just not an interesting choice when compared to how the original show handled her growth. They had this great episode early on where Katara gets jealous of Aang because he’s the avatar and everything just comes so easily to him.
But what this shows about her character is that she desperately wants to be good at water bending, will go to great lengths to be able to do it, and has to work twice as hard as Aang.
So, when we get to the end of the season and she does surpass him in skill, we know it’s because she worked hard to get there and that is more admirable than her just being handed this power.
I mean, handed. Gran Gran just gives her this scroll that in the original show she went to great lengths to steal. For Katara, her main motivation in season one is to get to the Northern Water Tribe so she can find someone to teach her water bending. Something she’s always wanted, but has never had access to, because she’s always been the only waterbender in her tribe.
And then they finally get to the North Pole, and I guess she doesn’t need that because instead of asking Pakku to train them, she begs him to let her fight. First of all, why are you asking permission? He’s not gonna stop you, just go do it. What is he gonna follow you around and tie your hands behind your back, ’cause you’re trying to fight the Fire Nation? Just go fucking do it.
But the point they’re trying to make is that she’s so powerful she doesn’t even need someone to teach her. Okay, well, then why doesn’t she just go defeat the Fire Lord herself? She has this line at one point where she’s like, “We need you, Aang. I need you.” No, you don’t.
You don’t seem to need anyone. The fact that everything comes so easily to her makes it so there’s no payoff at the end. It makes this line. – You found a master, haven’t you? – You are looking at her.
– Kinda of dumb actually. All you did was read one scroll that your grandma gave you and now you are a water-bending master. What a journey, huh? This story will be told for generations. They gave her zero depth in this show and it’s frustrating.
You may notice while watching this show that Netflix seems to have a fear of giving any of the main characters an unlikeable trait. God forbid any of these children ever make a mistake or have a redemption arc. They need to start the show already perfect. That is such a boring way to write your characters. It’s also a huge disservice to your actors by giving them nothing to work with.
One of the foremost characteristics of Aang early on in the show is that he’s still just a kid. He’s a 12-year-old boy who has been given the overwhelming responsibility of saving the world. It’s something that understandably scares the shit out of him. So much so that he runs away. That’s how he ended up in the iceberg for 100 years.
It’s the inciting incident of the entire show.
That guilt follows him and it’s a really important part of his growth, but Netflix seemed to be so concerned with having their main character make an incorrect decision that they changed the reason for him flying out into the middle of a storm to him just going for a stroll. – You’re right, just needs to go up where things make more sense. – I gotta go up where things make more sense. The ground ain’t so good for thinking.
Don’t worry guys, it was just an accident. He wasn’t avoiding responsibility, because he is a child who wasn’t ready for it yet. He was just getting some fresh air in the middle of a lightning storm. Okay, great. So, instead of him showing signs of immaturity, he’s just an idiot.
Another thing about Aang still being a kid is that he’s not always focused on the task at hand. That’s something he has to grow into.
This is his very first line in the original show. – Will you go penguin sledding with me? – He’s constantly getting distracted and wanting to go on side quests because he’s a little boy.
Of course, it’s not like that the whole show, but it gives him a starting point so by the end you can see how much he’s matured. Netflix Aang doesn’t have a whimsical bone in his body. He is extremely serious and solely focused on getting from point A to point B.
He’s not written like a child. He’s already the season three version of Aang.
Netflix, if you want your characters to be able to grow, they need to have a place to grow from. Yeah, he takes the time to deliver his little soliloquies about how much he yearns to goof, but those are just words. We never actually see him do those things. It also makes it so his whole interaction with Bumi makes no sense. Bumi’s like, “There’s no time for fun, Aang, you’ve gotta go save the world.
” It’s like, yeah, he knows that.
He’s already very good at not having any fun. This is one of the worst-written arcs in the entire show because everything they say contradicts what they’re doing. Bumi tells him to quit playing games and go do your job as the avatar. Meanwhile, he’s the one holding him hostage, giving him games to play.
Aang wants to leave the entire time. Just let him go and he’ll do the things you’re asking him to. Aang’s immaturity also lends well to the narrative shift that happens in the first season because, for a long time he is like, yeah, yeah, I gotta save the world eventually. But first, let’s go here and fuck around here for a little bit. And then we get to episode eight and the former avatar is like, no dude, you have to defeat the Fire Lord by the end of the summer, ’cause this comment is gonna come and if you don’t do it before that he’s gonna be invincible.
– Mastering the elements takes years of discipline and practice. But if the world is to survive, you must do it by summer’s end.
– It’s this great shift in momentum that adds even more stakes to the equation. It puts a timer on everything. They kind of do that in this one.
They give ’em a vision of the North Pole being attacked, but that doesn’t do anything to address the overarching goal of having to learn and master all three of the elements. Something that small note here, he doesn’t do any of the entire season. They set that up as one of the main goals in the original first season and we see a bunch of examples of Aang learning water bending before having it pay off in the finale.
Aang doesn’t water bend once in this version. He’s so behind it’s stressing me out.
– It would’ve been wise to have focused on your training during your journey. – I swear to God, if they start season two and Aang is already very good at water bending, implying that there was a bunch of progress that happened off-screen, I’m gonna lose my mind and not try to tell me that I already have. This is me on a good day. As you watch more of the show, it makes a lot of the additions more frustrating, because everything has a cost. If you have to cut out character development moments, so you have the space to show a bunch of airbenders getting set on fire, you might wanna take a step back and reconsider your priorities.
It starts to become a little obvious why the creators of the original show left this project almost four years ago over creative differences.
According to them, they were promised that they would be given the job of guiding the show in the right direction and they were lied to. Dude, I’m so tired of these dumb ass executives who make $2 million every second getting involved in things that they do not know about. Why even hire the original creators of the show, if you’re just gonna ignore their input and act like you know their story better than they do? Why the concern over making characters unlikeable when that was never a problem to begin with?
Everybody loved Katara Sokka and Aang even with their imperfections. Imperfections are what make characters relatable and it’s like this was all supposed to be the problem with network TV. streaming was supposed to be the solution to this.
We’re not gonna micromanage and enforce a bunch of arbitrary rules. We’re just going to trust the showrunners to do the job that we hired them to do.
Yet, somehow over the past decade, we’ve just kind of reinvented cable. So, good job everyone. I honestly, wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most of the issues with this version of “Avatar” are the result of meddling from people who should have just stayed the hell away, because there is potential here.
Underneath all of the baffling decisions are the bones of what could have and could still be a much better series. For starters, I think they did a fantastic job with the casting.
I imagine it’s way harder to cast for live-action than animated, because not only do they have to have the perfect voice, but they also need to look the part and be the right age, and in this case, be able to do martial arts. The fact that they’re able to check so many boxes with these kids is impressive. I just hope that going forward they get better material to work with. The only character they consistently write well for is Zuko. This guy’s got it.
He nails the intimidating on the outside but is a little sensitive on the inside. And between him, Iroh, Zhao, and Lieutenant Jee, I think almost all of the Fire Nation scenes were more cohesive and well-written than anything that the rest of the cast was forced to do.
Going back to my point that you can and should be able to make changes in an adaptation if they make sense, I thought a couple of the additions they made to Zuko’s character worked perfectly. One, there’s the reveal that the crew Zuko protected from being sacrificed in the meeting that led to his banishment, it’s the same crew that he’s been commanding for the past three years since then. So, I thought that was a cool way of tying everything together.
It makes so much sense that I was surprised when I went back and rewatched season one of the animated series and realized they didn’t do that originally.
I also like the scenes they added with him and Iroh, like the flashback to Iroh’s son’s funeral where we see Zuko give him his condolences as well as a gift to remember his son. They have another moment like that at the end of this episode where Zuko is about to set off on his never-ending quest to find the avatar and Iroh’s like, “Hey, mind if I come along?” And Zuko’s pretty resistant to the idea, but then Iroh says this. – Everything I need is on this boat.
– It’s a very sweet moment, especially with the little nod they do to “Leaves from the Vine”. A famously sad episode from season two, but I do think it’s worth pointing out that this only works for the people who have already seen the entire animated series.
This only has the emotional weight that it does, if you’re going into this show with 30 hours of context. Keep in mind, that this is episode four of the live-action. If this is your first exposure to these characters, this moment is not going to have nearly the same significance to you.
It’s nice, but it feels a little premature. Netflix’s “Avatar” has an instant gratification problem where they don’t wanna set anything up that can be paid off later. They just want that payoff now. And I get that some of that was probably due to the uncertainty over whether they would even get a season two and three. So, they were trying to be as impactful as they could with this first season, but it’s only gonna make their job harder in the future.
Like where do you even go with some of these characters? There was one big change with Zuko that feels emblematic of the entire philosophy they approach this show with. There’s an episode in season one of the cartoon called “The Storm” where we see these juxtaposed flashbacks of Aang and Zuko’s pass and we learn about the moments that sent them on the trajectories they’re now on.
For Aang, it’s running away from home and for Zuko, it’s getting banished from home. He speaks out turn in a war meeting and disrespects everyone in the room by saying they should come up with a better plan.
Ozai does not appreciate this and he tells Zuko that he’s going to have to do an Agni Kai, AKA a fire-bending duel. But when Zuko shows up, he is shocked to find out that it’s not the general he’s supposed to fight it’s his dad. Zuko begs not to have to fight him. He outright refuses. But this only makes Ozai more angry.
Zuko has now disrespected him twice, so he burns his face and tells him he cannot come back home until he finds the avatar.
The Netflix version plays out pretty similarly but with one major difference. This time, Zuko fights back, because why would we keep one of the most important moments of the show when we’d be missing out on an awesome fight scene? Look at all the fire. Zuko refusing to fight his dad was the best way to show us who he is.
How, unlike his father, he’s not willing to hurt the people he loves. Netflix kind of respected that idea. I mean, Zuko refuses to fight for a few seconds and he eventually gets burned by his uncaring father.
The problem is you can’t justify Zuko getting banished forever because he lost a fight to the world’s most powerful firebender that wouldn’t make any sense. So, they had to add in another wrinkle to make sense of their first wrinkle, which is that Zuko actually could have won.
He just chose not to, and that’s where this scene completely loses me. Ozai is supposed to be the ultimate threat. The world’s most feared villain looms over every second of Aang’s journey. And you’re telling me some random 13-year-old kid could beat him in a fight. What are we doing here?
I also just think it’s better for Zuko’s arc if he doesn’t stand up to his dad yet, because then it will mean way more when he eventually does. What this decision showed to me is that the creators of knockoff “Avatar” will always choose flash over substance. If we have to fundamentally change to important characters so we can get one extra minute of pyrotechnics, you bet we’re gonna be doing that, because this is a show for grownups.
Tell me again why the show made for grownups, Netflix’s “Game of Thrones”, had to dumb down its writing? Every line of dialogue is so on the nose.
– This was my home, and now it’s gone. – They always choose the simplest way to convey a point. – But the one thing I do know is, I’m the avatar, and this is just the beginning. – Oh, I get it, because he’s the avatar and this is the end of episode one. Compare these two lines that serve the same function and tell me which of these shows is made for babies.
– You will learn respect and suffering will be your teacher.
Compassion is a sign of weakness. – Compassion is a sign of weakness. Compassion. – It was a weakness.
– The script feels like a first draft filled with a bunch of placeholders that just ended up holding that place forever. I think the moment that made me realize, oh, they truly don’t give a shit about what they’re doing here, is when they reused the same twist three times. So, just like in the original, Zuko objects to the Fire Nation’s plan to attack one place as a diversion so they can attack somewhere else.
But then in the first episode, they added in this thing where the Fire Nation tricks the Earth Kingdom into thinking they’re going to attack one place as a diversion so they could attack somewhere else. And then in the finale, it’s revealed that the whole fight that just took place was, get this, a diversion so they could attack somewhere else.
How is the rest of the world not catching on by now? They only have one strategy. – The entire world will turn their attention to the earth benders. – A masterful rouse Your Highness. The enemy’s firepower focused on that diversion, we can launch pinning attacks here.
A masterful rouse Your Highness.
Why attack the North at all? – Distraction, the north was never the true target. – A masterful rouge Your Highness. – Not only is that such lazy writing, but the last one doesn’t even make sense.
They attacked the Northern Water tribe to distract them from Omashu, but both of those sieges happened over one day. Even if they somehow knew it was happening, because they got an email about it, they still couldn’t have gotten there in time to help. And it’s not like the Earth Kingdom was distracted from Omashu, because they were busy helping the waterbenders. They weren’t there. These two things have nothing to do with each other.
This wasn’t a diversion.
You just did two attacks at the same time and one of them worked and one of them didn’t. Also, did they not say in episode four that they knew Omashu was gonna be attacked? – Fire Nation forces are on the move. They’ll be here by dawn.
– Why write in that they knew it was gonna happen if you’re gonna make them so unprepared for it? – You’re under attack? – We will be, but we will be ready. (suspenseful music) – Is anyone in the writing room keeping track of things that they’ve said? I know some people are gonna watch this video and accuse me of just being a hater, but like I didn’t want to not like this show.
Believe it or not, it’s way more fun for me to like stuff than it is to not like stuff. I will root for success for this show and everyone involved. I got genuinely emotional watching the cast react to the news that they got picked up for two more seasons, and I didn’t even like the first one.
I’m just happy for them that they get to keep working on this. I think there’s a lot of room to grow and I’m happy that they’re being allowed to try and do that.
I hope that the Netflix corporate overlords who push for all the changes that people are complaining about can listen to the criticism and realize that they’re only making things worse by intervening. I don’t think they’re going to do that, but I will choose to be blindly optimistic until proven otherwise. At the end of the day, I would rather this show exist than not at all. It didn’t cost me $100 million to make, all I had to do was watch it. “Avatar” is one of my favorite shows of all time, and even if the best thing about this adaptation is that it’s convinced people to go back and discover the original series for the first time, I’ll take it.
And if you are one of those people, welcome. Sorry, I spoiled the first 20 episodes, but a lot more stuff happens after that. Season two is where everything goes up another level. They haven’t even introduced Toph yet. They replace Admiral Zhao with Azula, and that’s a huge upgrade.
It gets so fucking good, man. If you haven’t seen it yet, just go watch it. What are you waiting, for this video to end? It already did.
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