 Anybody that knows me or my channel even a little bit knows that when it comes to these live-action remakes, I don't play. I don't mess around with them. And so when it was announced a few years back that Avatar the Last Airbender, one of my favorite animated shows, Nye, my favorite animated show of all time, was getting the remake treatment on Netflix, I was more than a little concerned. Well, today was the day finally when I got to put this thing to the test as all eight episodes of season one, book one, water have been released. And I watched the first two episodes and I'm here to give you my impressions. So let's get to it. Before I jump into the review of the first two episodes, I would appreciate you subscribing to the channel, hitting the notification bell so they show up in your feed, maybe even liking the video and commenting your thoughts on this before I even dive in. But with that out of the way, let's get into it. I had zero expectation that this was going to be anything less than hot trash. And I was absolutely amazed to find out it wasn't. It wasn't bad at all. In fact, I found myself really enjoying the first episode. Now I do need to get this out of the way first of all, do I think that this in any way shape or form acts as a replacement for the animated series that went 61 episodes and is basically perfect from front to back in my humblest of opinion? No, I don't. Do I think this stands alone without having the knowledge prior? That's a bit harder for me to say, because I have seen the animated one multiple times over from beginning to end. So I can't put myself in the mindset of someone that doesn't know what's going on and if the show's doing a good enough job of explaining things. If anything, I could almost argue it's doing too good of a job explaining. There's too much dialogue and too much over explanation going on. Exposition is all over this thing and that is definitely a deterrent, especially when they have less than eight hours, because each of these episodes is roughly 45 to 60 minutes long. I'm not sure how long the final episode is, but they don't have a lot of time to cover 20 or so episodes of season one. And boy, how is there a lot to cover? I will say the first two episodes I watched felt a little bit rushed at parts, but not overly rushed like that terrible film from M. Night Shyamalan. People have already been throwing a lot of shade at this show, saying it's terrible, saying it looks awful, the characters look like AI. I can kind of see the AI one mainly because they just look so damn good. These are really cute kids that they got to play these characters. Aang, I believe, is 12 in the TV show and in this show. That kid that they got absolutely nails the role. He looks fantastic. Katara, cute as a button, looks great. Saka! I thought he's almost one-to-one in the looks department. And the acting from all these characters is really good too. Not phenomenal by any means. It would have been great if Aang could have shed a couple more real tears during a couple of the dramatic scenes, but they're doing a good job. Truly doing a good job on the villain side of things, which is just as important, if not more important than this show, is Zuko, a very tough character, a nuanced character to kind of get your head around. In season one, he's just a total spoiled bratty kid, but he's internally struggling with a lot of conflict. He wants to make his father proud. He wants to get in the good graces of the Fire Nation again after being banned until he tracks down the Avatar and brings him home. Basically, an unaccomplishable task. Unaccomplishable. Is that even a word? Unaccomplishable. We're going to move past it. It's not going to happen, basically. The Fire Lord is disgusted by his son, kicks his ass out of the Fire Nation. Three years go by, he's hunting down a figment of his imagination, an Avatar that has yet to be birthed out because he's been lying dormant, frozen in the ice for a hundred years. We get into the backstory. I'm not going to regurgitate everything. I'm not going to go through. If you don't know Avatar at this point, the Last Airbender, I definitely wouldn't start with this show. I would go back and watch the animated one. It's just about as good as you can get. Before I say more, let's get back to the cast. Everyone, I would say, is really well cast in this film, with the exception, and it's not the actor's fault, but Uncle Iro, I just don't know how you can even replicate Mako. The voice is so iconic. Even the guy that followed up Mako after he died in the last season, Uncle Iro definitely feels a bit off from the character. The actor's doing a good job. It's just so hard. I don't even know how you even bother with that character at this point. You're almost better off just leaving him off the show, which you can't do because he's super crucial. He's my favorite character from the animated show, which makes me a little bit more critical about him. Actors aside, like I said, they all look really good. They all sound great. Most of them sound almost one-to-one to their animated counterpart. The CG, the special effects, the backgrounds, the look of the show, the costumes, the design, I'm here for it. I have noticed some bizarre editing where we'll have a shot of Aang close up and he's angry, and then we'll get that second cutaway shot, but the shot they cut to is too close to the previous one so you get almost a jump, jarring effect. It doesn't feel like a fluid natural progression. I noticed that twice already in the two episodes. Not a huge deal by any means, but the first one undercut drama that was taking place, so I was a little annoyed by the bad editing there. Okay, visually speaking, the clothing is awesome. It looks really good. I like the color grading on this show. It's bright. It's colorful. It's very high, crisp, visually exciting. Kind of reminds me of Rings of Power, just with how good it looks. Now, of course, Rings of Power, total garbage fest. I was very generous to that show with the first episode or two. I remember I did a review on it and I was pretty high on the hog. That might be an expression somewhere, but I didn't even finish it. The first impression was good and then it just kept getting worse and worse to the point where it was unwatchable. I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan. I was willing to give it all the benefits of the doubt, even though I was hearing a lot of stuff ahead of time about how it was a mess and they were doing this and that with characters. I just wanted to believe. I wanted it to work. Because believe it or not, I love movies, I love shows, and I hate wasting my time with bad stuff. There's nothing I hate more. And so going into the last airbender, I fully expected one and done situation. I thought I would watch the first one, freaking hate it and walk away. Because again, I cannot stand live action stuff. I just can't. Disney's ruined it for me. Because when it's shot to shot remade and it's the same dialogue for the most part and it's the same almost storyboard settings, the same shots and everything, what's the point? Oh, you put a little 4K new animation on top of it? Whoopity-do. Half the time it doesn't look better. It always looks much darker in tone and it's just not exciting to look at. Whereas Avatar the Last Airbender, this new series, actually gets that right. It is not a shot-for-shot remake. It is not just paint-by-numbers redoing everything. In fact, the first 20 or so minutes are a completely different side of it. We start in a different setting with an Earthbender running away from a fire nation from 100 years ago. We jump into the backstory of Aang at the air temple with his fellow comrades and how the attack went down and how we got frozen into the ocean. Yes, these things are covered later in the show, but I thought it was great that they went a different direction and got me hooked and told me, hey, this is not going to be just a total retread even though it is at the same time. It's doing different things. It's giving us different lore or adding to lore that was there. Let me talk about the action. Avatar, known for having fantastic battle sequences, amazing action moments. Not so much in season one. Mainly two and three are where they really pick up and things really get going as Aang starts to master his abilities and we're going to come into contact with characters who are way more OP than the bozos he's currently rolling with. I thought that the action so far has been presented very well. Obviously, we have a budget. It's a TV show. It doesn't have a movie budget. Again, kind of back to the editing. It's a little choppy during some of the action scenes and there's not a lot of creativity going on so far. It's very much stock, throwing fireballs, moving water around, cameras kind of placed here and there. There's not a ton of visceral movements or anything too creative when it comes to the special effects department. Not bad, though. Not bad at all. Just would like to see a bit more playfulness, a little bit more creativity when it comes to the bending. The music's on point as well. Of course, we have the theme song bleeding throughout these first two episodes that I watched. There's new music that's chiming in. That's really good. From a production standpoint, I think everything is working really well. Now for the story. It's a little bit here and there. Again, the exposition, heavy-handed for sure. I understand there's a lot to cover, but I'm very much a show-don't-tell type of individual. So when I see Aang sit there for like three or four minutes, just kind of ad nauseam, explaining everything that's happened instead of giving me a flashback or just showing me... Here's a great example. Let me give you an example. A real-world example. In the opening scene, about the first 10 minutes or so, Aang's talking to his flying bison oppa and he says, I'm scared to be the avatar. I don't want this responsibility. I'm worried about what I will do. And he just keeps kind of laying out all of his emotions, which is something people don't really do. You think it internally. You don't speak it externally. I just felt it was unnecessary, especially when he then jumps on and he clearly is flying away because he's upset and he knows that he has all this weight on his shoulders. It was kind of pointless to have him say all that stuff. And that's something that's kind of littered throughout the show so far I've noticed. Other things that are working, but also not at the same time, are the emotional moments. There are some moments in this show already where I was like, alright, I'm feeling stuff. This is actually powerful. I'm liking this. And then there are other missed opportunities where it should have been addressed better. Another real-world example from the show, from episode one, where Saka and Katara leave to go help Aang. They did the same issue with the movie. They don't say goodbye to their grandma. They just kind of bolt from the village. There's no goodbye at all. And this is addressed in episode two. We do get a flashback where the grandma's there and she gives her a scroll. It's kind of there, but also not really. It's very fast. It's very kind of glossed over. These are the kind of things that are very important, I think, to these characters. We want to see that goodbye. We want to see Saka really upset that he has to leave this town, his village that he's been sworn to protect Anofi's dead or not. I just need them to take a little bit more time on the stuff that matters and less on the over-explanations of things. Again, I've only watched two episodes. I'm planning on watching more because it's doing enough right for me where I feel like I'm good investing my time here. I like these actors playing the characters. I think they're all doing a terrific job. I just don't have a lot of negatives to say on this and I'm very surprised. Honestly, I'm very happily surprised. But again, I'm also not giving this a glowing endorsement. This is coming from someone who really likes the original, hated the M. Night Shyamalan movie and was very trepidious about going into this one. Keep your expectations low and maybe you'll come out on the other side thinking, you know what, this was a fine companion piece to the animated one. Does it stand on its own? I'm not sure. Maybe let me know. If you've never seen the animated show and you decided you wanted to watch this one first, please leave a comment and let me know why and also your thoughts on this. I think they're all on Netflix. Maybe not the M. Night movie but I know the animated one is and this new thing, of course. So yeah, let me know your comments. Have you seen this show? Are you loving it so far? Are you hating it? I want to know what you have to say. Thumbs up the video, subscribe, do all that stuff. And if you want me to continue going with this, I need to see some views come in. I need some shares. I need some excitement saying, okay, Adam, let's support this what you're doing. Otherwise, I'll just move on to whatever's coming next in theaters and I won't waste my time talking about Avatar the Last Airbender, the Netflix 2024 TV show live action remake. Okay, thanks for watching. Hopefully, I see you next time. Take care.