Avatar: The Last Airbender

“Avatar: The Last Airbender is unconcerned with modern navigations of prejudice and reads as an aspirational fantasy where such things are immaterial.”

Title: Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024)
Episodes Reviewed: Season 1
Creator: Albert Kim 👨🏻🇺🇸
Writers: Albert Kim 👨🏻🇺🇸 (2 eps), Bryan Konietzko 👨🏼🇺🇸 (2 eps), Michael Dante DiMartino 👨🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), Joshua Hale Fialkov 👨🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), Christine Boylan 👩🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), Keely MacDonald 👩🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), Gabriel Llanas 👨🏽🇺🇸 (1 ep), Emily Kim 👩🏻🇺🇸 (1 ep), Hunter Ries 👨🏼🇺🇸 (1 ep), and Audrey Wong Kennedy 👩🏻🇺🇸 (1 ep)

Reviewed by Clint 👨🏼🇺🇸🌈

Technical: 2/5

The notion of the big-budget live-action anime adaptation is always a dicey one, and there is no bigger case study for that than Netflix’s output. Of its numerous attempts to re-stage popular anime with streaming-series production values—Cowboy Bebop, Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist—only last year’s One Piece seems to have captured anything close to the vibrancy and fluidity of its source material. Unfortunately, with their new take on Nickelodeon cult favorite Avatar: The Last Airbender, that may have been the exception more than the rule.

As in Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko’s original series, Avatar tells the fantastical tale of a magical world split into four factions, each with command over a different element: water, fire, earth, or air. A century prior, the Fire Nation attacked the Air Nomads, wiping them out and beginning a crusade to conquer the rest of the world. But two teenagers from the Southern Water Tribe—waterbending Katara (Kiawentiio Tarbell) and her brother, Sokka (Ian Ousley)—stumble upon a young boy named Aang (Gordon Cormier) who’s been stuck in ice for a hundred years. Not only is he the last known Air Nomad, he’s a powerful airbender and the latest incarnation of the Avatar, a powerful being meant to master all four elements and bring peace to the world.

Thus begins your classic hero’s journey, as the three young protagonists ride across the world to hone their skills, grow as people, and defeat the evil Fire Nation and their labyrinthine factions grappling for power. But where the original animated series treated its characters and themes with subtlety and respect, showrunner Albert Kim stumbles when adapting the characters to live action, especially when constrained by Netflix’s eight-episode formula.

What follows amounts to a limp, shaky reshuffling of the original show’s first 20-episode season into a hasty, demonstrative rehash. Character motivations are muddled and moved around, subplots from various episodes are melded or rushed for seemingly no reason, and dialogue exists to do little else but spell out the plot and character beats that happen before you. Add to that the curious mix of expensive and cheap that many Netflix productions sport (murky gray color grading, lavish special effects that still feel weightless), and this version of Avatar feels less animated than its source material in many ways.

Gender: 3/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES, but barely

Like the original, Avatar features many strong women characters, formidable warriors and people in their own right. Katara is a confident young woman whose desire to master her waterbending abilities flies in the face of male-dominated hierarchies. (The Northern Water Tribe, for instance, demands female waterbenders only use them for defense.) Fire Nation heiress Azula (Elizabeth Yu) ambitiously competes with her disgraced and insecure brother, Zuko (Dallas James Liu), for the throne.

In the animated series, Sokka’s haughty attitude towards women gives the Kyoshi Warriors the chance to best him and forces him to readjust his own attitudes. The new show smooths out that wrinkle, leaving them as uncomplicatedly skilled warriors with little on the page to work with. Yes, they’re shown as powerful leaders and fighters in crucial moments. But in the end, the story still centers its tale on familiar coming-of-age tales for boys like Aang and Zuko.

Race: 4.5/5

One of the new Avatar series’ unironic wins is in its casting, which eclipses both the original show and the execrable M. Night Shyamalan adaptation by having a majority cast of color. Each nation’s culture is derived broadly from various Asian and Indigenous milieus, and care has been taken to at least somewhat reflect the aesthetic inspirations behind each realm. A few casting choices come closer—Katara, of the Inuit-inspired Water Tribes, is played by Mohawk actor Kiawentiio, and a diverse Earth Kingdom metropolis is ruled by King Bumi, played by Indian American actor Utkarsh Ambudkar. Others miss, such as Water Tribes’ Sokka played by Ousley, whose Cherokee ties are unclear.

But if there’s one throughline, it’s Avatar’s mix-and-match approach, resulting in casting that’s inclusive, but not particularly authentic. Main Japan-coded Fire Nation characters are played by actors of Chinese-Indonesian (Liu) or Korean descent (Daniel Dae Kim and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee). Aang, whose nation is inspired by Tibetan Buddhist monks, is played by a Filipino and white actor (Cormier).

These nitpicks aside, it’s ultimately refreshing to see a world where Asian cultures of various stripes get the chance to showcase themselves, albeit in a fantasy setting. We see inter-nation bigotry among characters, of course—see the Fire Nation towards, well, any of the others—which reflects historical conflicts like the Sino-Japanese Wars. In this way, Avatar is unconcerned with modern navigations of race-based prejudice, and reads as an aspirational fantasy of a world where such things are immaterial.

Disability: 3/5

One episode has a notable subplot with a paraplegic character named Teo (Lucian-River Chauhan), who uses a wheelchair. But his inventor father has also converted his chair into a kite-like glider, which he uses early in the episode in a breathtaking sequence where he flies alongside Aang. As a character, he’s largely treated with respect and love.

However, for a show that was very willing to bring characters from the original series’ later seasons into the show earlier, the absence of blind character Toph Beifong, who later becomes very important to the story, feels notable.

Bonus for Religion: +0.25

The faiths and beliefs of each nation are treated with utmost respect, from the Shinto-inspired practices of the Fire Nation to the monasticism of the Air Nomads.

Mediaversity Grade: C 3.19/5

Adaptation of a beloved property is a difficult thing, especially when, as showrunner Albert Kim points out in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, “We were committed to authenticity, not just to the cultures that inspired the characters, but to the characters themselves.” However, that level of authenticity doesn’t quite overcome the gaping holes in the rest of the show’s presentation, from the hazy, demonstrative storytelling to the often wooden performances from its cast. As a whole, the show feels like a lazy, hollow recreation of a nostalgic favorite, focused more on recreating the story on the more “acceptable” medium of live action than adding anything new or novel.

The latter complaint is very clear in its central trio, who chew through their expository dialogue in ways that rarely feel like more than rote line-reading. It feels slightly unfair to ding such young actors for not rising to the level of their adult co-stars. But as with Aang’s role as the Avatar, being the lead of a big-budget action-adventure series comes with its own immense responsibilities. Cormier, Kiawentiio, and Ousley have a lot of growing to do before they’re up to the challenge.

As representation goes, Avatar: The Last Airbender works best when it celebrates the Asian and Indigenous heritages from which its fictional setting derives. Inconsistent as it may be, it’s rare to see a show with this much production value behind it that places those marginalized perspectives front and center. If only the rest of the show received the same attention.

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Grade: CLiMarch 2, 2024