Features and Editorials

Does Netflix’s Avatar The Last Airbender Live Up to the Original

James Green, Journalist

March 13, 2024

Avatar: The Last Airbender has been praised as one of the greatest shows of all time for years due to its excellent character arcs, immaculate worldbuilding, and surprising maturity for a show airing on Nickelodeon. After one failed movie in 2010, live-action Avatar returns on Netflix to… mixed reviews. The show has received a 7.4/10 on IMBD, and a 59% critic score along with a 75% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Netflix remake of the animated classic has a few changes that begin to bring it down. Its 8 60-minute episodes are simply not as capable of telling stories as the 20 20-minute episodes were in the original. This forced the writers to cram episode plots together to tell the full story, but it still misses major pieces and character moments. The character arcs of the main characters, Aang, Sokka, and Katara have been practically removed, and the villain Zuko has had his character haphazardly dropped in the center of his character arc. Minor characters like King Bumi, Jet, and Zhao, now with more time to shine in hour-long episodes, somehow get less screentime and have lost most of the original character’s charm. The blame can likely be put on the strange writing.

The dialogue is the greatest weakness of the Netflix remake. Characters constantly give exposition through strange run-on sentences, which becomes glaringly obvious when you look at the original series. It seems that the writers have forgotten the very first rule of writing, “Show, don’t tell.” For example, an integral part of Aang’s character is that he is just a twelve-year-old who has had this responsibility forced upon him. In the animated original, this is communicated by Aang being generally immature, not knowing how to do things, and playing games. It’s almost wordless. In the live-action, they communicate that Aang is just a kid by having him tell his giant CGI bison “I know who I am. I like to play airball and eat banana cakes and goof off with my friends. That’s who I am. Not someone who can stop the Fire Nation. Not someone who can stop a war.” Unfortunately, this is how most of the dialogue in this show sounds.

According to this review, it sounds like I think it’s a bad show, and really, it isn’t. Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender is a solid show across the board. The issue is that it is directly competing with one of the greatest shows of all time, and is lacking the brilliance of the original. It is tough to recommend this show, as those who haven’t watched the original should go watch that instead, and for those who have watched the original, it’s a painful experience with a few rare moments of excellence. I cannot recommend this show to anyone reading this, but anyone who watches it without seeing the original will likely have a good time. The show has already been renewed for a second and third season and can be watched on Netflix.