Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender First Pics Make Shyamalan's Movie Look Like a Masterpiece
It wasn’t that bad after all. In some aspects.
How often do you hear that the book is better or that a remake has nothing on the original? More often than not, fans feel very particular about the things they love. And doomed is any adaptation or remake that does not live up to their high standards.
That is precisely the case for Avatar: The Last Airbender. The original animated series aired on Nickelodeon from 2005 to 2007. The series was set in a fictional world inhabited by four races, each affiliated with one of the four classical elements: water, fire, earth and air. The show quickly gained popularity with audiences all over the world owing to its great visuals and superb storytelling. Later, it even had a spinoff, The Legend of Korra, which won over fans with its darker narrative.
However, when the original series was adapted into a big-screen movie in 2010, fans generally saw it as a major disappointment. Despite doing pretty well at the box office, M. Night Shyamalan's live-action movie failed to please the fandom with its take on the story.
But recently Netflix released promotional photos of the upcoming series featuring the cast playing Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Zuko, and the Last Airbender fans have not been impressed with what they saw. Suddenly, the 2010 movie no longer looks that bad. M. Night Shyamalan's version created a visually captivating picture that viewers wanted to hold on to despite the movie suffering from rather poor writing. For instance, many people say they were mesmerised by the characters' costumes.
'I feel like the one thing that the Shyamalan version did well was in adapting the character outfits and looks to live action. Aang’s tattoos with the intricate details looked really good and more realistic than a solid blue arrow in a live action version [by Netflix],' a Redditor wrote.
Indeed, the new attire is plain and closely follows the original animated series. While this level of loyalty to the source material may sound appealing in theory, recreating visuals from the animated series in a live-action adaptation as is can't really work, as they end up looking ridiculously, well, cartoonish.
Regardless, the new Netflix series is still in the early stages of production, so there's still time for the showrunners to improve the costumes based on early audience feedback. And then again, M. Night Shyamalan's 2010 movie set the bar so low that it's probably statistically impossible for the new series to be an even bigger disappointment.
Source: Reddit.