Avatar: The Last Airbender live-action show on Netflix (now sans its creators).

[red snow]

Netflix should drop the live-action show completely and just hand the money over for the potential third avatar animated project. They could probably pay for the entire animated series for the cost of one live action season. And if they are only making the live-action show off the heat of the existing animated series surely this is a safer/less risky way to go?

I see it as potentially good news. I never really saw the point of the same creators remaking what was a perfect story already. One angle no-one has considered is that maybe netflix are being too faithful to the show and it's beat for beat the same story. That would be incredibly dull for the original creators to take part in as they don't really have anything to contribute other than echoing their previous ideas. eg if dimartino said "we actually wanted to do this in this part of the show but we couldn't because it was deemed older audience" and the production says "no, we'll leave it as is" that would be incredibly frustrating. So it could be that there's nothing new at all in the show as opposed to it being too different.

[Rippounet]

On 8/12/2020 at 7:10 PM, Werthead said:

There is a hint that DiMartino and Konietzko may now be considering creating a third animated show in the universe instead, which would at least be one good outcome. 

If that's what comes out of it then it's good news.

I also don't see why it was necessary to make a live-action version of one of the few perfect animated shows rather than create new content (*insert rumbling about studios being so focused on remaking good stuff*).

I've been thinking a third Avatar show would be fantastic. Moving time forward another 70 or 100 years would mean flirting with science-fiction, and having a world in which bending is almost irrelevant compared to technology (might even be half-forgotten), so that the avatar's role would be more focused on diplomacy, politics, or spiritual matters. That would be challenging to write, but would be great to watch.

[red snow]

17 hours ago, Rippounet said:

If that's what comes out of it then it's good news.

I also don't see why it was necessary to make a live-action version of one of the few perfect animated shows rather than create new content (*insert rumbling about studios being so focused on remaking good stuff*).

I've been thinking a third Avatar show would be fantastic. Moving time forward another 70 or 100 years would mean flirting with science-fiction, and having a world in which bending is almost irrelevant compared to technology (might even be half-forgotten), so that the avatar's role would be more focused on diplomacy, politics, or spiritual matters. That would be challenging to write, but would be great to watch.

Or the increase in tech actually makes new forms of bending possible. Not that the tech allows it but maybe nature itself finds a way of keeping up a bit like electricity seemed to develop with fire nation's tech. I can't think of any obvious examples beyond "tech bending" but maybe forces like gravity, magnetism and time could all be bent in the future? That would also give the Avatar a mission which might be to track down those who can use these new forces and add them to their repertoire. So, in this case such skills are very new and only a handful/one person may have any true mastery over it. Although I dread to think how powerful an avatar would be with all those abilities. 

Or drop in on some of the earlier avatars, it's all good to me.

[fionwe1987]

7 hours ago, red snow said:

Or the increase in tech actually makes new forms of bending possible. Not that the tech allows it but maybe nature itself finds a way of keeping up a bit like electricity seemed to develop with fire nation's tech. I can't think of any obvious examples beyond "tech bending" but maybe forces like gravity, magnetism and time could all be bent in the future? That would also give the Avatar a mission which might be to track down those who can use these new forces and add them to their repertoire. So, in this case such skills are very new and only a handful/one person may have any true mastery over it. Although I dread to think how powerful an avatar would be with all those abilities. .

The Avatar can already channel the energy of a nuke to open an inter-dimensional portals, so I don't think there's much to worry about an Avatar becoming overpowered. They're the continuous rebirth of the Spirit of Light. Able to reshape continents, stop volcanoes, and give or take away bending. 

All of which makes me think it would be interesting to see an Avatar who ends up being not firmly on the side of good. How would the world deal with that? Could be a fascinating story. 

[Rippounet]

It's always nice to see that any three random people on the internet have better ideas than making a live-action of AtLA.

(*insert rumbling about studios being so focused on remaking good stuff*)

[red snow]

1 hour ago, Rippounet said:

It's always nice to see that any three random people on the internet have better ideas than making a live-action of AtLA.

(*insert rumbling about studios being so focused on remaking good stuff*)

It gets worse when studios remake things and force their original ideas into it so it barely resembles the source.

 

2 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

The Avatar can already channel the energy of a nuke to open an inter-dimensional portals, so I don't think there's much to worry about an Avatar becoming overpowered. They're the continuous rebirth of the Spirit of Light. Able to reshape continents, stop volcanoes, and give or take away bending. 

All of which makes me think it would be interesting to see an Avatar who ends up being not firmly on the side of good. How would the world deal with that? Could be a fascinating story. 

Evil avatar has legs although not sure how protagonists defeat an evil avatar unless it is through tech. 

I vaguely recall their being avatar twins (or I'm maybe getting mixed up with another legacy superperson) that gives you a light and dark aspect. 

[TrueMetis]

Eh, it's not like Bryke aren't responsible for a lot of crap ideas, after all they were all for the movie version until it bombed and suddenly they hated it all along. And Netflix currently has Aaron and Elizabeth Ehasz on their payroll and they were responsible for a lot of the good in the show. (Remember Toph? Yeah that's them, Bryke wanted Toph to be a guy and in a love triangle with Aang and Katara, just see the crap relationships in Korra to see how that would have worked out)

I mean the show's probably still gonna be garbage, but it's was going to be garbage with or without Bryke's involvement.

Also don't trust to much on the reasons why they're gone, there's apparently been a lot of deliberate misinformation being spread around.

[AverageGuy]

On 8/13/2020 at 4:23 AM, red snow said:

Netflix should drop the live-action show completely and just hand the money over for the potential third avatar animated project. They could probably pay for the entire animated series for the cost of one live action season. And if they are only making the live-action show off the heat of the existing animated series surely this is a safer/less risky way to go?

I'm leaning more toward sometimes it's best to let stuff go altogether. Korra was pretty uneven. A lot of the scattered spirit lore in season 2 and Korra angst plus that clips episode in season 4.

Edited August 15, 2020 by AverageGuy

[A True Kaniggit]

Ahhh Korra. I remember having to finish the show on my computer because it was cut from TV before it finished. 

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, AverageGuy said:

I'm leaning more toward sometimes it's best to let stuff go altogether. Korra was pretty uneven. A lot of the scattered spirit lore in season 2 and Korra angst plus that clips episode in season 4.

Season 2 was poor but I think they course-corrected reasonably well in Seasons 3 and 4. They weren't as good as ATLA or Season 1 of LoK, but they were entertaining and a good comeback from Season 2, which was just awful.

The clip show was weird but I think the reasoning behind it was that if they just lost an episode from the run, everyone would lose 1/12 of their pay for the year, so by putting together a clip show they were able to keep the writing team and all the US arm of the show still being paid for the full season. 

[fionwe1987]

4 hours ago, AverageGuy said:

I'm leaning more toward sometimes it's best to let stuff go altogether. Korra was pretty uneven. A lot of the scattered spirit lore in season 2 and Korra angst plus that clips episode in season 4.

Well, if that's the "uneven" they produce, I want a ton more.

Korra's chief flaw is that it consists of 12-13 30 min episodes instead of hour long ones.

The need to rush through too much plot literally causes all the flaws. Season 2, the worst of the bunch, really suffers from not having 2 seasons to cover the storyline. Do that and they'd have time to develop more.of some of the background for the season to hang together a lot better. 

In many ways, I think Korra would have been the better show to go to live action. The extra time would help the show deepen, while retaining all of its fantastic beats.

ETA: never understand the minority of folks who think season 1 is better than 3 or 4. There's just no way that's true. 

Edited August 16, 2020 by fionwe1987

[red snow]

8 hours ago, AverageGuy said:

I'm leaning more toward sometimes it's best to let stuff go altogether. Korra was pretty uneven. A lot of the scattered spirit lore in season 2 and Korra angst plus that clips episode in season 4.

It's always dicey introducing new lore as it has the potential to diminish rather than enrich previous material. I think korra tread a fine line with some of the spirit stuff but overall felt it added.

 

3 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

Well, if that's the "uneven" they produce, I want a ton more.

Korra's chief flaw is that it consists of 12-13 30 min episodes instead of hour long ones.

The need to rush through too much plot literally causes all the flaws. Season 2, the worst of the bunch, really suffers from not having 2 seasons to cover the storyline. Do that and they'd have time to develop more.of some of the background for the season to hang together a lot better. 

In many ways, I think Korra would have been the better show to go to live action. The extra time would help the show deepen, while retaining all of its fantastic beats.

ETA: never understand the minority of folks who think season 1 is better than 3 or 4. There's just no way that's true. never

I'd never thought about korra as live action but now you mention it i agree it would have been the better option. All the characters are older to begin with making it easier to use older cast. It fits that CW demographic (although i guess Netflix may be going for stranger things dynamic with a younger cast). It's also easier to see how story elements could be expanded for tv. The anti bending movement for example would work well in TV.

It would have cost more to make though unless they dialed back the steam punk and has it more resemble the 1920-30s

[Veltigar]

6 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

ETA: never understand the minority of folks who think season 1 is better than 3 or 4. There's just no way that's true. 

Agreed. Zaheer was by far the most interesting villain in the LoK pantheon. 

11 hours ago, AverageGuy said:

I'm leaning more toward sometimes it's best to let stuff go altogether. Korra was pretty uneven. A lot of the scattered spirit lore in season 2 and Korra angst plus that clips episode in season 4.

Yes, I agree with this as a general rule. With Korra it's difficult, but that second season was atrocious. I don't remember the specifics of it, but the spirit lore was utter garbage of the Rise of Skywalker type (not only being a terrible product on its own, but also lowering the enjoyment/sense of the original).

That being said, there is a lot of promise in it though. I feel like LoK is the writers just regressing to the mean after pretty consistently making the right choices with regards to the promising ideas in the Last Airbender. They made a few bad calls, but with a bit more luck it could have been just as good as ATLA.

[A True Kaniggit]

8 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

Agreed. Zaheer was by far the most interesting villain in the LoK pantheon. 

I despised Zaheer. 

Man was a child killer. 

[Veltigar]

5 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I despised Zaheer. 

Man was a child killer. 

I don't see why "interesting" and "despicable" should be mutually exclusive. 

Edited August 16, 2020 by Veltigar

[A True Kaniggit]

12 minutes ago, Veltigar said:

I don't see why "interesting" and "despicable" should be mutually exclusive. 

Didn't say it was. Man could be interesting while wanting to murder a kid because of some "balance" thing.

Bloody fanatics.

[Werthead]

8 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

ETA: never understand the minority of folks who think season 1 is better than 3 or 4. There's just no way that's true. 

Minority? Take a straw poll, did you?

Season 1 is tight and focused on establishing the new world and having a reasonably strong protagonist. Seasons 3 and 4, after the embarrassing mess of Season 2, were better and had a reasonably strong villain with Zaheer in S3, but a much less interesting villain in S4 (who also kind of does her most interesting stuff between seasons, and is a bit too obviously Earth Kingdom Hitler). The big robot fight to end the series was fun, but it was immensely dumb.

3 and 4's biggest problem is that they were left dealing with the colossal mess of the S2 storyline (particularly midichlorianing the whole Avatar thing in the first place) and the interface with the spirit world, and Korra never really figured out what it was trying to do with the spirit world storyline. Trying to do industrialisation and the impact of that on bending and the world was interesting, but then the spirit world stuff came in and felt like it muddled the waters. Not to mention that "spirit world" to the creators seems to mean "floaty glowy things just, y'know, hanging out, or something."

Edited August 16, 2020 by Werthead

[Rippounet]

Yeah season 1 of LoK got a lot of things right imho. The pro-bending story added the lightheartedness that should come with an avatar show while the rest of the season was focused on more serious stuff. Later seasons never quite found that kind of balance again. 

[fionwe1987]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Minority? Take a straw poll, did you?

Just basing this on Reddit and just the general reactions to the seasons when the aired.

As for me, I never felt the issue with Season 2 was the spiritual stuff. Beginnings 1 and 2 are excellent flashback episodes, and nothing they reveal contradicts the previous show in any drastic way. And I am a huge fan of the consequential way they had the rise of Unalaq result in Korra losing her connections to the past Avatars. That was a gutsy, and gut wrenching move.

My issue with Book 2 was more that Unalaq didn't get much development, and the whole civil war aspect was rushed and silly, and blended in with some more love triangle shenanigans to make the early part of the season a mess. Add in that another studio animated the first half of the season, and I truly felt that part was bad and hurt the rest of the story. 

[AverageGuy]

14 hours ago, red snow said:

It's always dicey introducing new lore as it has the potential to diminish rather than enrich previous material. I think korra tread a fine line with some of the spirit stuff but overall felt it added.

 

1 hour ago, fionwe1987 said:

Beginnings 1 and 2 are excellent flashback episodes, and nothing they reveal contradicts the previous show in any drastic way.

I think Beginnings was incredible on its own. Loved the animation, story was interesting. However, I do feel it was inconsistent in the greater context of the show. TLA shows the spirits interacting with the mortal world and being part of it, more akin to what you'd see in Native American animism or Japanese Shinto. Wan Shi Tong (the librarian owl in the desert), Hei Bei (forest/panda spirit in Winter Solstice), the legends of the Painted Lady, Tui and La/Princess Yue... none of them were locked away in the spirit realm. In Korra spirits feel more like strange beasts, which doesn't make them that unique in the Avatar world (what makes an Air Bison or a Badgermole different from a spirit? They have the strange shapes and magic abilities). There was also a hint that there was more to energy bending when the Lion Turtle talked to Aang, but we only see it as their granting people bending-- and with their involvement less of a direct role in teaching from dragons/bison/badgermoles. YMMV, but to me it felt like bad lore.

I felt like that about a lot of Korra, though. So many things that were amazing on their own and then failed to come together. Granted there are rumors Nickelodeon was heavily interfering.

Edited August 16, 2020 by AverageGuy