this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024

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Avatar: The Last Airbender

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Netflix’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ Changes Showrunners Again (producer + director step up) (www.hollywoodreporter.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/avatar

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Albert Kim, who replaced creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, is handing over the series to colleagues Christine Boylan and Jabbar Raisani.

Sources say Kim’s intention was to lay the foundation for season one of Avatar: The Last Airbender after stepping in for the beloved franchise’s creators. Given the long turnaround time in crafting the series — Netflix ordered it in 2018, the creators left in late 2020 and the show didn’t debut until February 2024 — sources say Kim was ready to move on to new opportunities.

Co-executive producer Christine Boylan and exec producer/director Jabbar Raisani — both of whom were hired by Kim — will take over as the drama’s third showrunners for the previously announced second and third seasons.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I don't think the show is salvageable.

[–] brucethemoose 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think critics are being a bit dramatic. ATLA Book 1 had bumps and slow episodes, and some very similar flaws people pave over looking back (like Sokka being a chick magnet).

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I wouldn't care if the issues where just bumps or some slow episodes. The problem is that the live action has some very fundamental issues like a glaring lack of character development and generally poor story telling, which are things the original excelled at.

Just watching the live action remake and trying to tune out the original as much as I could, I found most characters to be very flat and superficial. Combined with the often very cringy dialog I found it really hard to emotionally connect with or care about the characters.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

It's a problem that lots of live action shows have nowadays, not just adaptions. Usually character writing gets better in the second season when the writers have a better grasp on what their actors are good at.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I don't understand why they can't just film a 1:1 recreation of the animated show as live action. Why change anything other than the medium?

This applies to all of these animated to live action remakes. Just do the original thing in live action! Or make something original. Stop half assing both.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

What's the point of a 1:1 recreation if the original is right there?

The 1996 shot-for-shot remake of Psycho showed clear as day that nobody needs anything like that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I just made another comment about that. I kind of agree. Maybe not a 1:1 remake but one very close to the original but maybe with an overall darker tone and including more mature themes, for example actually showing the horrors of the 100 year long wars that is supposed to go on, but see very little of in the kids show.

But yeah, keep all the good stuff and add to it. Don't remove or fundamentally alter stuff what already worked.

[+] 9thDragon -40 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The live action version is far better than the OG. I think this bodes well for the future seasons.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That is a good joke. I laughed for a few minutes before being saddened.

They washed down literally everything that made the show good. All of the aspects are simplified to the point that it's just a shell of itself. ATLA characters are actually pretty complex and have a lot of good interactions and growth together, which is terribly absent from the remake.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

True. I still think the live Action is "salvageable" but in the eyes of 99% of people it will never be better than the cartoon (let's be real here, personal preference is something subjective and some people will diverge from the majority in their taste).

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

It could be salvageable but it's not offering anything better than the original in my opinion, which makes it not really worth it. It's really hard to improve on perfection when you're adapting and not just making something based on the source material.

It's fun to see animated shows in live action but often they change from the source material either in an unfulfilling way or because they kind of try to find a middle ground nobody really wants. They need it to be quickly appealing to new entrants into the series, while also being familiar to the old fans, but the quick appeal usually takes away from what made it a fan favorite in the first place which disenfranchises the existing fanbase while never really appealing to new people.

Netflix also sucks as a content creator and host because they spin up and axe things like a rotary sawblade, so even if something is genuinely salvageable (I liked Cowboy Bebop) chances are it never even gets a shot. I would rather somebody take the source material and try a different approach, and that's why I was into Bebop is that they pitched it as "a remix" and not a direct adaptation. When you don't give a shit about alienating the existing fans you can actually try cool weird shit instead of just retreading the same ground over and over again.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The way I look at it is not as an adaption of the og series. In my eyes it's simply an alternative history re-telling, similar to Marvel's "What if". Which makes it way more intriguing than looking at it as the same story.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

But are an alternative history re-telling to succeed you either have improve on the story on the way the story is told. And I think the new show fell short in both categories.

What I was hopeing for (and It was always just hope, I never seriously expected it) was a very close adaptation of the orginal cartoon, but expand on the aspects that had to be tuned down for a kids show.

For example in the original cartoon you never really get the feeling there is actually a brutal war going on until the end of Season 3 and even then everything is quite tame. Portraying the war in a more dark and mature light could have added more depths to the seriousness of the overall conflict.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I don't know. I might have preferred to see different stories about Aang or maybe previous Avatars. I thought there's so many other stories within the same universe that are great and I think that focusing on the Gaang would always feel like it's going to come up short.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

That's my problem with Star Wars when everybody is related to the Skywalkers. There's so much space to explore, both literally and figuratively across the galaxy but instead we often just get memberberries.

I would LOVE a show about Kiyoshi or Roku.

[–] brucethemoose 10 points 7 months ago

I don't like changing showrunners. It doesn't speak to things being stable behind the scenes.

But maybe it will be an improvement?

[–] Everythingispenguins 1 points 7 months ago

Just give up already. It was a great cartoon it doesn't need anything else.