When it was announced that Avatar: The Last Airbender was getting a Netflix adaptation, everyone groaned and rolled their eyes, flashing back to M. Night Shyamalan’s failed movie attempt. Then they perked up when the original creators were revealed to be involved. Then grew suspicious when they left. Then everyone was excited about how accurate casting looked and how good the trailers were. But now?
The more those involved with the show talk about it, the more it seems they are changing the source material in ways that miss many points of the animated series, and it feels like it’s becoming more clear why the original creators left. Every time I turn around there’s a new quote that feels like a red flag here.
First, we started with the removal of Sokka’s sexism, which is an important part of his character growth as he learns to respect powerful women over the course of the show, and the first season in particular: “I feel like we also took out the element of how sexist [Sokka] was. I feel like there were a lot of moments in the original show that were iffy,” said Katara’s actress Kiawentiio.
Now, they are said to be reshaping Kitara’s character: “There are certain roles I think that Katara did in the cartoon that we didn’t necessarily also do here. I mean, I don’t want to really get into a lot of that, but some gender issues that didn’t quite translate from the cartoon,” said producer Albert Kim. This may be referring to Katara acting as a maternal figure to the group, again, hugely important, or her dealing with Sokka’s sexism which was an important part of conflict and character growth.
Aang is not spared either, as they are changing his core personality from the start:
“So we decided to make Aang’s narrative drive a little clearer. In the first season of the animated series, he’s kind of going from place to place looking for adventures. He even says, “First, we’ve got to go and ride the elephant koi.” It’s a little looser as befits a cartoon. We needed to make sure that he had that drive from the start. And so, that’s a change that we made. We essentially give him this vision of what’s going to happen and he says, “I have to get to the Northern Water Tribe to stop this from happening.” That gives him much more narrative compulsion going forward, as opposed to, “Let’s make a detour and go ride the elephant koi,” that type of thing. So that’s something, again, that’s part of the process of going from a Nickelodeon cartoon to a Netflix serialized drama.”
No! What! The entire point is that he is this goofy kid who doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation but is slowly shaped into being the hero and warrior he needs to become. This is like if the One Piece adaptation made Luffy some gritty pirate trying to get revenge for his mentor instead of a guy constantly shouting about getting the One Piece for its own sake and trying to find a cool ship. Also, the show says it will show the massacre of the Airbenders, something the original series left to the imagination as they were simply…gone, and it feels like it will add nothing to show it.
All of these problems may be summed up by what they’re trying to turn the show into:
“We had to make it a serialized Netflix drama, which meant it couldn’t just be for kids. It had to also appeal to the people who are big fans of Game of Thrones. And so, it had to feel grounded and mature and adult in that way too.”
As an adult, the original Avatar animated series remains one of my favorite shows, filled with life and humor and drama and not needing to be “Game of Thrones-ified” in live action to make it “grown-up.” Again, we just saw this happen with One Piece, which stayed wholly true to the original tone and spirit of the show, while The Last Airbender seems to determined to rewrite and reshape key elements. This is a massive potential problem.
Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.