I’ve finished episode 3, “Omashu”, and it’s pretty clear that this Avatar show is going its own way with some of the plot details from the animated series.
Jet, Teo, the Machinist, and Bumi all debut in the same episode; Jet tries to assassinate the Machinist and Bumi; Zuko and Iroh make their way into the city of Omashu, and Jet’s freedom fighters have been bombing buildings in Omashu.
Very different.
I like the series so far, but it’s not nearly as funny as the animated series. Will continue to watch, though.
Watched the first episode, loved it. Even with the changes, probably specially because of the changes. One of my very very few complaints about the cartoon was that they simply could not make fire bending work the way it should due to it being a children’s cartoon. Getting hit by a full blast of fire was like getting punched, it just tossed people around and they got up with a few soot stains and that was it. The live action version actually makes fire scary, which helps immensely.
It seemed to find it’s feet a bit in Ep2. Kyoshi subbed for Roku showing Aang what his road is, the editing was pretty great.
I still feel some of the actors are seriously miscast, but Sokka and Suki were pretty great together. The Sokka actor does a really great job.
Not impressed with Iroh, Zuko, Zhao, Katara at this point. Weak direction - therefore performances - and pacing. Keeping my powder dry on Aang, might be great but middling so far. Katara should have been a slightly older actress, a little more gravitas, but I can see why they went the direction they did. Iroh seems especially weak.
The music is a great tribute to the original.
CG is middling lame, sometimes greatish but fragile.
There’s a terrible tendency to have loooong speeches about stuff (so far by village elders). Show, don’t tell. “I believe Aang can save the world” took like 15 seconds and set out the mission of the whole series.
I finished ep 3 - really liking this so far. Lotsa little touches, like Iroh picking up a white lotus pai sho piece in Omashu. I’m really coming to like this cast. And the freedom fighters are exactly as imagined (and as evil morally ambiguous).
Mike was in Ep3 several times. He even said his line.
Ep4 drug a bit, but it was hitting a crazy amount of beats from the animated show. One I liked was Zuko choosing between rescuing Uncle or chasing the Avatar. They hit that beat well.
I watched Ep 1 with my wife. I will continue watching further episodes on evenings I can weasel her into sparing the time.
Me: “Hey, honey, you liked The Last Airbender. Wanna watch the first episode of a new live action version with me?”
Her: “OK!”
Me: (Waits two hours watching other shows while she putters on her computer deleting old emails.)
Her: (Eventually shows up with a bag of popcorn.) “I’ll watch for a while, but it’s almost my bedtime.”
Seen episode 1 now. Liked it a lot. Sokka was actually OK, like squeegee said. Aang is good, and Zuko and Iroh too. Katara is going to have to grow on me.
I watched all 8 episodes and I liked it. I haven’t seen the original cartoon series or the movie, so I didn’t have any preconceptions about the characters (I think I read a Wikipedia summary years ago, but that’s it). It was slightly odd hearing modern-day slang in a fantasy world, but I suppose there’s no real reason to have them use archaic speech either.
I thought it was better than the live-action One Piece show (which I also enjoyed, to a lesser degree).
As an aside, that seems to be the trend in modern fantasy literature, too - including in medieval-type worlds. Writers like Sanderson, Rothfuss, Lynch and Abercombie have their characters speak in a much more contemporary style than in you’d see in older fantasy works (Roger Zelazny aside).
