Avatar: The Last Airbender Live Action Series

Budget. They blew all their money on location and had little left over for effects, so when the time came to add the CGI element attacks, they just had to throw shit in.

The film was supposed to be as heavy on element moves as the show is, but when the time came down to it, bare minimum was all they could afford.

So, should we be worrying about that? Avatar is known for two things: all the beautiful locations and the magic kung fu, so a live action production will always have its work cut out for it.

Edited by Blueace on Feb 24th 2020 at 2:11:19 PM

We know virtually nothing about the series, besides it’s happening. Even One Piece boasted of its massive budget and its writing staff. All we know here is that it exists and it’s a LA adaptation. Cast, writers, budget, I would need to know all of these before I could make a guess about how faithful it would be.

Still, this is the era of prestige television so odds are it will at least look nice.

That it even is a TV show at all gives it a better chance at faithful adaptation than the film had.

People tend to remember Avatar as one long ongoing storyline, but it was episodic as f*ck. It's just that the way they handled being episodic made it so that episodes rarely felt like filler. Apart from each season's multi-part finale, each individual adventure usually contributed to the overarching story in some way, while still being its own isolated adventure.

The pacing for a TV show is very different from the pacing for a movie. A movie's supposed to be one story, about this one big thing that happens and changes everyone's lives.

"The Last Airbender" was an hour and forty minutes long. That's five episodes. Imagine you can select only five episodes from each season in which to tell the totality of Avatar. Just five episodes per season. You have fun picking out which five episodes are the important ones while all the others can be carved out. I guarantee you that no matter what you pick, it's going to be a disappointing experience.

Making the adaptation into a show means that they'll have a better opportunity to pace it out properly. Of course, it remains to be seen how well they take advantage of that opportunity.

For all the flaws of the movie, it does a rather close approximation of the first season. A lot of the choices and changes I see as reasonably pragmatic, especially in trying to fit a long-form narrative into a cinematic one. "Blue Spirit" was almost directly translated into the second act, and in turn was probably the strongest part of the movie. But the hour and forty minute runtime was just too ridiculous, they needed to be Lord of the Ring-lite (somewhere close to two and a half hours) not young adult adaptation.

Netflix seasons tend to be about ten episodes long, if they do 45 minute episodes they have the opportunity to cover just about every bit of material from all three seasons, even include brand new stories. That could be its own issue, though. The shorter runtime of the episodes meant there was little fat and managed to be continually compelling. The Mandalorian sometimes gets dull with all the bland desert canyon scenery. The Witcher is better about it because the story is a lot more diverse than just one character.

Agreed. The movie is not good but I think it had the right idea over what to cut and what to actually keep, something that will be very interesting to see when the Netflix series is released. I wonder if they'll decide to cut any characters from the show, like Suki, Jet or Haru.

I also agree about The Mandalorian and The Witcher being pretty dull at times in spite of the whole adventure aspect being done well. The reason why Avatar did such a good job with it was because the characters were so well defined that they all react differently to various places that they went, making for great character interactions. The Mandalorian doesn't really have the same benefit and The Witcher only works (for me anyway) because Yennefer is pretty great.

I think movies could be done if you had two movies per book. Provided you condense a few things and remove the extraneous episodes of course. However six movies is a big commitment.

As for the episodes to be adapted I think if you condensed things somewhat you could include enough of the opening episodes, the the Southern Air Temple, Kyoshi Island, the earthbender prison camp, and the Solstice two parter to make a single movie while still being coherent. Then for a second movie I'd have Omashu(yes I'm changing the order of things), the Blue Spirit, the Northern Air Temple, and all the episodes at the Northern Water Tribe.

This honestly sounds perfect to me.

Yeah, I would break book one into two movies as well, with the solstice as the ending for the first movie. It makes for a great movie climax and sets up the stakes for future movies.

Season three is the only season with a passable structure that you can split into two, it's easily divided with "Day of the Black Sun" as a climax.

Season two would be the most difficult, the Myth Arc is back-ended onto the last four episodes with everything else being very episodic even if it was moving the story forward, "The Drill" would be very underwhelming compared to "Siege of the North."

For season one, "Winter Solstice" might work a little bit as the midpoint but it's more exposition heavy, I would say combine it with "Blue Spirit" so that Zuko's development can run parallel as his appearance in "Winter Solstice" is more obligatory than really vital. You could even push more late season one stories like "The Deserter" or "Bato of the Water Tribe" into the first movie and dedicate more time to the Northern Water Tribe and "Siege of the North" in the second.

I think the Library and Appa going missing would be a good breaking point for the first part of Book 2. Although the Drill could work too depending on how you structure things. That could even be better in a way since you could devote all of the next movie to Ba Sing Se.

In terms of where to split the story, the Library could work as a midpoint. The problem, however, is that if you're splitting the season into two movies, you aren't looking for a midpoint. You're looking for a mid-season climax; something as narratively intense, dramatic, and action-packed as "Siege of the North", "The Crossroads of Destiny", "The Day of Black Sun", etc.

I think the third movie, "Earth, Part I", would probably need to take the largest amount of artistic license with the source material out of any of the films, because it needs to manufacture a thrilling third act to end on, something on par with the other films' third acts, with only a few episodic adventures to work with.

But I do think it can be done. Apart from Wan Shi Tong's library, there are two things that this film would want to focus on: introducing Toph as a character and introducing Team Azula as antagonists.

Because of the difference in how the narrative flows for film versus a series of episodic adventures, you'd want to stage Toph's culmination, the point where she fully becomes a member of Team Avatar, in the third act. The third act should also be where Azula, Ty Lee, and Mai engage Team Avatar, something that the film to this point has been building to. So, of course, Toph needs to be instrumental in fending off Team Azula and saving the protagonists, cementing her as a new member to the group.

This makes The Library a poor choice for third act, though a valid choice for second. We want Toph to leave the film looking like an Epic Badass, which means centering the third act around how awesome she is. She's the new character and the audience needs to walk out of theaters going, "F*ck yes, where have you BEEN all series?" The Library isn't exactly a high point for her.

Weighing the difference in pacing is critical when adapting one media to another. A film isn't going to just be a series of vignettes based on the episodes of the show; each one has to take a chunk of the season and make it into one story.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 7th 2020 at 11:20:59 AM

Has anyone even mentioned they were working on the show BTW? I know the One Piece adaptation has an official Twitter and it’s showing some pre-set production photos (while apparently fan casting Adam Sandler as Kizaru) but nothing similar has been done for TLA.

Yeah, we still have very little information here. To the best of my knowledge it hasn't even officially been confirmed to be an ATLA adaptation. And I don't think it's supposed to be a movie, either, I thought we knew it was going to be a series.

Wait I thought it was a live-action version of the original cartoon.

Your saying what the show actually is going to be about isn't even confirmed?

It's going to be a series and it's going to be an adaptation of the show. That's as much as we have confirmed.

James Sie, who voiced Cabbage Man in the animated series, says he'd like to reprise the role for the live action show.

Can't have avatar without Cabbage Man.

Make this happen. Please.

This was announced around the same time as the live action One Piece, and that’s scheduled to film in the fall. I don’t think I’ve heard a peep about anything besides the announcement of Avatar.

And still, live action Avatar makes waaay more sense than live action one piece.

I just wish I knew more about the production, cast, filming location, budget, etc. One Piece’s production has been quick to brag about its massive budget to alleviate concerns, so there’s that.

Just imagine, an Avatar series with Go T budget.

There's also discussion over in the Western Animation forum, but Mike and Bryan are no longer working on the Netflix live-action adaptation.

Well there goes what little faith I had in the show?