Adaptations of animations carry with them some considerable risk. Well-established stinkers like The Flintstones (1994) and Dragon Ball Evolution (2009) make for arduous watching, while the live-action Cowboy Bebop stuttered and stalled before it could ever really get going. Sometimes however these new versions do strike gold. Netflix's One Piece, for example, has gone down a treat. The achievement is even more stunning when you consider that there is a legacy of almost 1100 anime episodes and 107 manga volumes to try and accommodate. When done right, adapting animated stories into live-action can have something to offer.
Unfortunately, it seems to be business as usual with Avatar: The Last Airbender, Netflix's adaptation of the legendary Nickelodeon series of the same name. It's certainly popular enough, easily debuting at the top of Netflix's global viewing charts for English language TV shows, but the critical reception has been far more mixed. If anything, much like Cowboy Bebop, there's a cruel irony to Netflix acquiring the entire catalogue of the original animated series (Avatar plus the sequel show The Legend of Korra) prior to producing its own versions. Yes, it reignited interest in the show and helped introduce new fans to the series, but it also meant that the benchmark for comparison was more easily accessible and that much fresher in people's minds.
Many reasons have been cited for the show's lack of quality, particularly when this inevitable comparison to its forebear takes place. The show feels rushed but somehow also too slow, feeling the need to dump information in large clumps rather than allow details to manifest over time. The characters don't have the same depth, the writing doesn't feel as strong, and the action is largely unimaginative.
However, it runs deeper than that. To even bother with the effort of crafting an animated TV show or film in the first place, rather than just picking up a camera, is no accident. Practically every animation is the medium of choice for a reason, chief among which is that it affords a glorious divorce from our reality. Roger Ebert put it succinctly when he said animation “is freed from gravity and the chains of the possible.” Animation does not depend on an external, non-filmic comparison to make its world feel genuine. Instead, it is a creative universe in its own right. To make something animated means that you have the flexibility to bring a cohesive, self-contained world to life, one that has its own rules for what people, animals, and objects look like and how they can express themselves within the fictional world.
What Avatar: The Last Airbender managed to treat audiences to when it first debuted back in 2005 is the way that animation allows you to render and stylise a story in a way that live-action simply cannot replicate. This includes action and stunts not easily or convincingly replicated in real life – nobody can really shoot fire from their fingertips, take flight on a flying bison, or drink jasmine tea without retching (sorry Uncle Iroh). This is why live-action needs to imprint CGI on top of the filmed footage, which leads to an issue of immersion. In the animation, part of why the bending looks and feels so amazing is because it is no more or less real than everything around it. On this blank canvas, everything has the same worldly status. Whereas in the live-action, it is far easier to tell when a certain visual effect has been added in afterwards, and it doesn't feel as visually or ontologically connected to what the characters are doing. This is a big problem when most of the settings are so grand in scale that replicating them without CGI is almost impossible.
It is not just in the thrilling, action-packed areas that Avatar proves why it will always work better as an animated adventure. The original Avatar has a very distinctive tone that lends itself well to animation. Courtesy of exaggerated expressions, occasionally caricatured action, and strategic manipulation of facial features, Avatar can elicit a family-friendly, humorous approach just as well as it deals with weighty issues of war, genocide, and destiny. Characters can go from cackles and laughter to sorrow so suddenly, changing their expression instantly in a manner that deliberately toys with emotional continuity – either for dramatic or comedic effect (for example, this hilarious scene from season three). In doing so, the show really captures these young protagonists in the midst of their deeply personal journeys, with all of the changes and emotional turbulence that this brings.
This is of course heavily borrowed from anime, influences that Avatar wears with pride, and many of the best anime series demonstrate similar strengths. Such a style adds charm, wit and, most importantly for Avatar, childlike innocence. It is more than an easy source of entertainment for younger viewers. It is crucial for situating the characters in the world as what they are – kids, with all of the zip and wonder that this entails. Without using animation to allow such brilliant ranges of expression and appearance, the world of Avatar feels that much less inviting. The energy and the fantasy just don't feel the same.
This is why a live-action version of Avatar doesn't make much sense. To deprive this world of animation is to make recapturing those things that helped to make it special all the more difficult. Perhaps this is part of the reason why the original series' creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko left the project due to “creative differences.” They may have realised four years ago what we are realising now; that the new show does not, and could never, feel the same because it has to march on with the belief that a live-action version is necessary or somehow even an upgrade on what came before. And as much as it could be said that the new series is taking the property in its own direction, the shared story elements and the slew of easter eggs mean that not only is comparison inevitable, but seemingly expected. And it does not flatter them in the slightest.
This is not to say that everything in the new show is awful. There are some standout performances, and the Kyoshi warriors are the one group that if anything look even more incredible than they did in animation (big praise to the make-up department, almost making up for the atrocity that is Paul Sun-Hyung Lee's wig). But to suggest that Avatar needed anything more than the animated gems we already have shows a studio executive level or arrogance. Avatar: The Last Airbender is yet more evidence of what too many people already know; that the television money machine doesn't care much at all about the art it possesses, and that yet again animation is forced to feel like the immature cousin of grown-up television when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Because if the art of animation was truly being respected, then live-action adaptations like this would be few and far between.
