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The Last Airbender: Live Action on Netflix!


fionwe1987

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2 hours ago, Calibandar said:

Fantastic news. Really liked the original cartoon and enjoyed the Shyamalan film a great deal as well.

I'm baffled. Utterly baffled.

6 hours ago, All Souls Bass said:

A live-action remake is not going to be a shot-for-shot copy of the original animated version. The overall story and characters will be the same, but how that gets played out will likely be quite different because of the change in medium - there's a lot you can do in animation that just doesn't work well in live-action (or is far too expensive, even for a high-budget Netflix show). 

As for different stories, a live-action show doesn't need to end where the original animated series ended. It could continue onward, borrowing stuff from the comics to build storylines. I'm also skeptical that there's a big audience (so far) for TV stories set in the same universe - when they did Legend of Korra, the ratings largely declined both across episodes within the same season and from season-to-season (until they yanked it from a TV release mid-season in Season 3). 

Season 1 of Korra was an unexpected hit for Nick, if I recall, prompting them to order another season.

Seasons 2-4, though, were much more popular online than as a ratings success on live TV, and Nick had no clue how to deal with that. So they had this property that was getting a lot of online views, with older demographics, and a lot of mainstream discussion. They utterly messed up and pulled it off air, partly due to maturing content as well.

I don't think Netflix will have those issues.

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4 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

Season 1 of Korra was an unexpected hit for Nick, if I recall, prompting them to order another season.

Maybe online, but the TV ratings for Korra declined even within the same first season (when it was the highest rated cartoon show in 2012). The season finale was down nearly a million viewers from the premiere two-part episode. 

It did get screwed for the second season, with a Friday Night Death Slot. And you're right that this won't be an issue for Netflix - the whole season will drop at once. 

 

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42 minutes ago, All Souls Bass said:

Maybe online, but the TV ratings for Korra declined even within the same first season (when it was the highest rated cartoon show in 2012). The season finale was down nearly a million viewers from the premiere two-part episode. 

It did get screwed for the second season, with a Friday Night Death Slot. And you're right that this won't be an issue for Netflix - the whole season will drop at once. 

 

Unless Netflix decide to do a "part 1'. Although that seems to be a curse mainly of their animated shows so this might be a plus of it being live action

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2020 is going to be a wild year for new giant fantasy streaming shows. There's going to be one every month. 

 

I'm not too sure on that. They've brought Witcher forwards to 2019 and Lord of the Rings won't be debuting until 2021. AvatarLive! and Frankly Unnecessary Game of Thrones Prequel Series could debut in 2020 but it's a bit more up in the air on Conan and Wheel of Time.

Still, we're going to get a reasonably large number of epic fantasy shows in a surprisingly short period of time.

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59 minutes ago, All Souls Bass said:

Maybe online, but the TV ratings for Korra declined even within the same first season (when it was the highest rated cartoon show in 2012). The season finale was down nearly a million viewers from the premiere two-part episode. 

From what I can see online, it dropped from 4.5 million viewers for the premiere to 3.7 for the finale. Per wiki, though, at an average of 3.8 million, it was the most watched cartoon show in 2012.

Given this dropped 4 years after the end of ATLA, which peaked at 5.6 million viewers for its finale, that's pretty impressive, I think. I do wonder if the fact that it was going to be a limited series, as everyone thought then, played a role in the tapering ratings?

But the biggest fuckup has to have been with Season 3. 6 episodes were leaked, and they suddenly moved up the premiere. Of course it ended up with really shitty ratings. 

Its worth noting, though, that online viewership of Korra on Nick's website was very high, and by season 3, was higher online than on TV, which is what made them take it out of their live broadcast lineup. That's going to be fine with Netflix.

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13 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

I'm baffled. Utterly baffled.

 

I can see someone liking the movie and then getting into the TV series. But the other way around is truly baffling. Perhaps judged on its own merits the movie isn't as bad as I think. But as a live action movie rendition of a story line from the TV show it fails in so many ways.

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3 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

I can see someone liking the movie and then getting into the TV series. But the other way around is truly baffling. Perhaps judged on its own merits the movie isn't as bad as I think. But as a live action movie rendition of a story line from the TV show it fails in so many ways.

The movie is utterly lacking in humor, though. And the main leads were terrible. I've known people who watched the movie and were hard to convince about how good the show was, because they hated the movie so much. And I can't blame them...

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Watching the Shymalan movie, I could see how it could have been good - or at least okay. Get rid of the whole stupid "do the martial art move and then the bending happens" instead of having it happen along with the movement like in the show, get rid of the stupid "fire benders must use lanterns to bend fire", and for god's sake get rid of the constant voice-over exposition. 

Of course, that only made it annoy me even more. Shymalan loves his heavy exposition in fantasy and SF stuff. 

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2 hours ago, RedEyedGhost said:

Arrested Development and The Get Down had that too.

It seems to be happening more often. With live action I guess it's more a scheduling issue (definitely the case with arrested development).

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2 hours ago, All Souls Bass said:

get rid of the stupid "fire benders must use lanterns to bend fire"

That bit actually makes some sense; none of the other benders can conjure their element out of nothing, they have to work with what's present in their environment.

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23 minutes ago, felice said:

That bit actually makes some sense; none of the other benders can conjure their element out of nothing, they have to work with what's present in their environment.

In logical terms, so far as there are any since fire isn't any kind of a real thing unlike the other three, it makes sense, but as a balancing issue it completely doesn't. The Fire Nation need to be overpowered for the story to work, not crippled by any water bender being able to put out their power source before the fighting starts.

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2 hours ago, felice said:

That bit actually makes some sense; none of the other benders can conjure their element out of nothing, they have to work with what's present in their environment.

I guess airbenders having bigger problems than bending if they are in a situation where there's no air.

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

In logical terms, so far as there are any since fire isn't any kind of a real thing unlike the other three, it makes sense, but as a balancing issue it completely doesn't. The Fire Nation need to be overpowered for the story to work, not crippled by any water bender being able to put out their power source before the fighting starts.

I thought the point of the show wasn't really that firebenders are more powerful benders but that they actually had an industrialised society/military and the avatar on their side/not stopping them? They then stalled/prevented a non fire nation avatar appearing.

The benders were quite balanced (blood bending was possibly tilting the balance too much in favour of water benders) and while you can put a fire out with water you can also evaporate water with heat so it really depends on the relative strength of the benders.

I vaguely recall there being an episode where aang was being trained in fire bending where it was mentioned air and fire are closely linked in terms of the strength of the fire eg the avatar could use fire to devastating effect?

I think I may wind up watching the show again pretty soon at this rate!

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16 hours ago, Werthead said:

I'm not too sure on that. They've brought Witcher forwards to 2019 and Lord of the Rings won't be debuting until 2021. AvatarLive! and Frankly Unnecessary Game of Thrones Prequel Series could debut in 2020 but it's a bit more up in the air on Conan and Wheel of Time.

 Still, we're going to get a reasonably large number of epic fantasy shows in a surprisingly short period of time.

Frankly unnecessary Game of Thrones LoL, could be another excellent show in a world we love, let's say in advance that it's not really necessary like you said about the upcoming HBO Watchmen show. Come on man, give things a chance.

Both of these are among my most anticipated shows.

Avatar has definitely joined those ranks now, this could be thoroughly excellent.

I have hope that the LoTR show comes out in 2020 by the way, not sure if that is realistic. 

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1 hour ago, Calibandar said:

Frankly unnecessary Game of Thrones LoL, could be another excellent show in a world we love, let's say in advance that it's not really necessary like you said about the upcoming HBO Watchmen show. Come on man, give things a chance.

Both of these are among my most anticipated shows.

Avatar has definitely joined those ranks now, this could be thoroughly excellent.

I have hope that the LoTR show comes out in 2020 by the way, not sure if that is realistic. 

Out of the shows wert mentions I'd only say LOTR and AvatarLive are "uneccessary" (although they obviously are necessary for the networks making them). But that's just based on the fact I've seen versions that I thought did a good enough job. Watchmen has me intrigued simply because Lindelof is involved and the hope it's going to be an adaptation rather than recreation of the comic/film. The game of thrones prequel is at least going to be original and not a remake of something that only finished several years ago.

That said I'd much rather hear more traction on shows like "Lazarus", "east of west" and "the culture" just so I get a little SF with my SFF.

But it does look like we'll have a lot of fantasy shows to enjoy in the 20s. Hopefully they'll all be good!

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Frankly unnecessary Game of Thrones LoL, could be another excellent show in a world we love, let's say in advance that it's not really necessary like you said about the upcoming HBO Watchmen show. Come on man, give things a chance.

Are you making a TV show because:

1) It's an original story that you've come up with, nurtured and really believe in?

or:

2) Because of the money.

WatchmenLord of the Rings and Got Prequel #1 are all being made because of #2. That doesn't stop them being good shows (Deep Space NineFrasier and Angel are all excellent shows that came because of that reason), but it drastically reduces the chances of it being so.

The Valyria idea for a GoT spin-off sounds far, far superior and I'm amazing HBO didn't go for that option.

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11 hours ago, felice said:

That bit actually makes some sense; none of the other benders can conjure their element out of nothing, they have to work with what's present in their environment.

That's explained, actually. Other benders use their chi to direct the elements, but Firebenders must actually use their chi to produce fire. This makes perfect sense, since fire isn't a thing. It is heat. And since Firebenders can produce lightning, too, it is clear what they're doing is converting their internal energy (chi) to generate external energy, whether that is fire, an explosion, or lightning.

This doesn't make them more powerful, though. For one thing, they are a lot more susceptible to emotional turmoil affecting their bending. For another, they need to exert a lot more control, since fire can get out of hand.

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20 hours ago, red snow said:

Out of the shows wert mentions I'd only say LOTR and AvatarLive are "uneccessary" (although they obviously are necessary for the networks making them). But that's just based on the fact I've seen versions that I thought did a good enough job. Watchmen has me intrigued simply because Lindelof is involved and the hope it's going to be an adaptation rather than recreation of the comic/film. The game of thrones prequel is at least going to be original and not a remake of something that only finished several years ago.

That said I'd much rather hear more traction on shows like "Lazarus", "east of west" and "the culture" just so I get a little SF with my SFF.

But it does look like we'll have a lot of fantasy shows to enjoy in the 20s. Hopefully they'll all be good!

Personally I don't see that correlation that Wert sees between things being done for money or for being a creative project that you nurtured yourself, at least not as heavily. Original projects can sometimes be fantastic and be extyra great because they're new, but at the same time many of them flop as well because it's not such a great story or setting. Hence why you see so many remakes or stories in an already established setting. And stuff made because it looks like there can be a lot of money made can also still be excellent if done by the right people. I have no preference except a judgement of the end product.

And for the ones we are discussing, Watchmen is set in a different time period, LoTR series is going to be set before the Lord of the Rings proper, so in both cases we are not seeing the same old story re-told; it's still a new tale for tv.

And in the case of Avatar, as good as it was, it was a cartoon, seeing something like this in live action is not only a great idea, it's also going to look so totally different that it will be worth it just for that. And I'm happy for them to stay to the same general storylines as the cartoon. The change to live action makes this a very different proposition.

That said, I love even more Fantasy and SF projects to be made, but I daren't even complain as we are already seeing an unexpected glut of them. I'd love if we could get some information on how some of them are doing, especially the various Amazon adaptations like Culture, Conan, WoT and some others they had lined up. One I'm really interested is which is now greenlit is Foundation, hope that comes out next year. All of these are adaptations of famous and succesful books though, not original stories invented by the writers a la Avatar The Last Airbender.

 

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