Avatar: The Last Airbender

Presumably the episodes will be roughly an hour long rather than the show's half hour, if that helps.

That said, there will likely be some adaptational changes as is often the case. It's unlikely that the show will be a direct 1-for-1 translation of each individual episode.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 19th 2018 at 8:17:33 AM

You probably don’t need to adapt every episode in Book 1 - “The Great Divide” could be skipped, of course, and I think you could do without “The Fortuneteller”.

There are some pretty essential episodes that would need to be covered one way or the other, though you might want to fold their plot points into a single episode - the “Winter Solstice” episodes as well as “The Storm” and “The Blue Spirit” would probably work alright this way.

Really though, I don’t know if wr could say what should be cut if we don’t know how many episodes they’ll be getting.

Actually, Patrick Stewart seems a great choice for Tenzin (if that list was supposed to be a joke).

If we were to go by Ability over Appearance, then yeah, I can actually see it!

Man this is some unexpected news.

I’m very cautious to this, hopefully it’s good.

I will say though that I think it would have been better if they had done an original story set in the Avatar-verse instead of just redoing the show. There’s a lot of potential there really.

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 19th 2018 at 8:02:04 AM

Seconded. I feel the original show is so well-done that I'd rather just keep exploring the universe that's established.

A series about Aang and co.'s adventures post-Sozin's Comet. We have the comics, but there's still so much more. Mai and Zuko's love lives could use some resolution, we need to see who Sokka gets hitched with (if anyone), Toph has quite a bit to do...

Yeah I'm still trying to figure out why this is happening. It just seems like a bad idea after the last foray into live-action.

Testing the waters would be my guess. They probably want to see if translating the series into a live-action format can work before doing anything more with the idea.

There's a popular logic in Hollywood that doing something that's a proven success again will lead to the same level of success. It's bunk, of course, but Hollywood executives live by the myth of the Proven Success. It's why reboots, remakes, and blatant Follow the Leader clones are so commonplace: executives are convinced despite all evidence to the contrary that there is such thing as a winning formula.

So, if you were a Hollywood Executive and you were looking to try out this Netflix adaptation thing for your franchise, a logical place to start would be to make a hit show again in the new format. Then you can use the original show's popularity as a baseline to measure the new show's success.

It's not unlike Disney making A New Hope again to find their sea legs and kick off their Star Wars films.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 19th 2018 at 9:14:40 AM

Well, there is an argument to be made for the merits of a reimagining of a classic for a new generation, for the same reasons that there will always be a need for new translations for foreign language books. Just as the language changes and requires new, fresh translations, the culture changes and needs fresh reinterpretations of old stories. Remakes make a lot more sense if you view them as a new translation of an older story.

The problem is often that studios want to do a remake too soon. The Ducktales reboot was a good choice because the old show was 30 years old, and it was time to refresh it for the next generation (regardless of what you may think of the results). The My Little Pony reboot, in contrast, comes right after the close of the current series, and is in real danger of being unable to recapture the same success they had with this series. There is no nostalgia factor there, and not nearly enough time for a new generation to rise and demand a new adaptation.

I think 13 hour long episodes works.

1. The premiere
2. The Southern Air Temple
3. Kyoshi Island
4. Omashu
5. Imprisoned
6. The Solstice
7. Jet
8. The Blue Spirit
9. Bato of the Southern Water Tribe
10. The Deserter
11. The Northern Air Temple
12. The Water Bending Master
13. The Siege of the North

Some of these were two parters so events don't have to be changed that much. The rest could be expanded without much effort.

Edit: Season 2 is harder since that has fewer filler episodes.

Edited by Kostya on Sep 19th 2018 at 11:42:22 AM

I think having a great portrayal for a character like Tenzin is much more important than the actor being the right ethnicity. What use is having an actor of the correct ethnic background if he botches the character?

Huh their already rebooting My Little Pony?

Damn that is surprising.

It’s like with the new TMNT.

At least when DC does it’s shows it’s usually a couple years after the last one.

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 19th 2018 at 8:45:52 AM

This argument is dumb though. American alone has millions of Asian people. I'm sure there are tens of thousands that are halfway decent at acting. You just need to do an open casting call.

There is also the whole fact that Avatar is pretty heavy on the martial arts, which would be another thing to consider on the cast.

But you also want younger actors so anyone famous for their martial arts skill is probably too old.

Yeah, Asian actors shouldn't really be a problem. Inuit actors? I legitimately could see that being one if you're going for "accuracy" of ethnic portrayal.

I just want actors to look like the characters. I'm not particular about their ethnicity, though I do find Katara and Sokka being light as snow in The Last Airbender while Zuko and Ozai are played by Dev Patel and Cliff Curtis absolutely hilarious.

Edited by Soble on Sep 19th 2018 at 8:57:53 AM

I don't think they're going to care about the specific ethnicity. As long as they cast East Asians, South Asians, and Native Americans I'm not going to complain.

Should probably at least create a thread for this in the live-action forum.

A live-action reboot on Netflix? I was not expecting this. Not sure what I should think, given how most live-action adaptations of animation tend to go wrong. I dunno, if this new show is successful, I wonder if they'll plan a live-action Legend of Korra reboot next.

Also, I wonder if they'll ever make a third animated series in the Avatar franchise, I think most fans would be much more interested in seeing that.

Edited by AHI-3000 on Sep 20th 2018 at 5:32:18 AM

Fun fact: The first seconds of ATLA's opening sequence ("Water. Earth. Fire. Air.") used actual Chinese words that represent those elements.

Not-so-fun fact: The Shyamalan movie replaced those actual Chinese symbols with completely 100% gibberish ones.

NOT. COOL. SHYAMALAN.

Edited by TargetmasterJoe on Sep 21st 2018 at 1:14:47 PM

Lol, that's... really? REALLY??? When you could just as easily have copied them?

Yeah, that is beyond lazy. That's almost being deliberately disrespectful to the source material.

Being deliberately disrespectful of the source material is race-lifting everyone so that white guys are the good guys and brown people are the villains. The show's races made sense. The Water Tribe were all Inuit-based, just like in real life. The Earth Kingdom were tan-skinned asians (west asians) like in real life. The Fire Nation were fairer skinned asians (east asians) just like in real life. And the Air Nomads were Tibetan monks.

Bryke did a ton of research and constructed a world that made sense, and had people that fit. Shyamalan did... not.

I am already seeing some people bitch about the fact the live-action show wants to not whitewash the cast.

Cause people are dumb that way.