Live action ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ series to see some differences with the animated series

By: Gelene Peñalosa - 9 months ago

So apparently, the live action ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ will be a little different from what we’ve seen in the animated series all those years ago.

Cast members Kiawentiio (Katara) and Ian Ousley (Sokka) revealed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that Sokka’s sexism in the earlier seasons of the animated series will not be included in the live action The two mentioned how the character arc was discussed during the show’s development and was later on “deliberately” cut away at.

“There’s more weight with realism in every way,” said Ousley, who will soon personify Sokka, Katara’s older brother. “I feel like we also took out the element of how sexist [Sokka] was. I feel like there were a lot of moments in the original show that were iffy,” said Kiawentiio, who will soon be seen as the waterbender Katara.

Other than that major change involving one main character, showrunner Albert Kim also said in an earlier interview that the show will not begin with how the siblings from the Southern Water tribe found Aang and his flying bison Appa in the iceberg. The live action will also see some events that had only been indirectly hinted upon in the animated series, such as the Air Nomad Genocide, and possibly, the beginning of the Hundred Year War.

In revealing this, Albert Kim said, “That was a conscious decision to show people this is not the animated series. We had to sometimes unravel storylines and remix them in a new way to make sense for a serialized drama.”

Another interview with Albert Kim, this time with IGN along with Jabbar Raisani, revealed that the live action will see characters Azula and Fire Lord Ozai having a larger role to “balance out the storylines”. The two characters mentioned were not originally seen in the animated series’ first season.

“…We needed to know more about the background for Zuko, and why he’s doing what he’s doing, and set that in the context of his family dynamic, and how he fits in with his father and sister.”

Kim also revealed in the interview that the show will not detour from the main storyline and explore the side adventures in contrast to the animated series, to make Aang’s narrative to become clearer. “We needed to make sure that he had that drive from the start. And so, that’s a change that we made. We essentially give him this vision of what’s going to happen and he says, “I have to get to the Northern Water Tribe to stop this from happening.”

“Avatar: The Last Airbender” creators Bryna Konietzko and Michael Dante Di Martino were both originally involved in the development of the live action series for two years, and definitely shocked fans when the two announced their exit due to “creative differences.”

Fans didn’t take too well to the changing of some of the characters’ elements (Sokka’s sexism, Aang being a child, Zuko receiving his burn scar, etc.), with some citing that this may be the reason why the original creators left the show and that the remaining showrunners do not understand their source material at all.

https:/twitter.com/GrowWithDisney/status/1752158865372721300?s=20

What are your opinions on these changes? Is the Netflix adaptation still good enough to give a chance?

 

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