 The new Netflix avatar series comes out this week and that scares me just saying it. I'm a big fan of the original animated series. I even like Korra quite a bit, hated the movie that came out and I am very concerned that Netflix is handling this because their track record with movies is terrible and TV shows is very hit and miss. Let's talk about some of these things for a bit. So the original series ran 61 episodes over three books and they are amazing from beginning to end with barely a misfire. There's maybe one or two episodes that I would say. Eh, you could skip it. It's kind of a filler episode. But there hasn't been a show to my knowledge outside of maybe Breaking Bad where it's just consistently banger after banger and these characters and the story just gets better and better as it goes on. The first book focuses on the water tribe then we go to the earth tribe and we end with fire where the lead hero angle square off against the fire lord. Again, outside of Breaking Bad, Avatar the Last Airbender, I say this as a grown-ass man, might be my second favorite show full stop from beginning to end. It just nails it. That ending is fantastic. It gives fans exactly what they want. It doesn't feel pandering though. It just naturally goes the way that you want it to. What else is amazing about this show is it manages to do the thing Hollywood so often screws the pooch on which is making these strong female lead characters. I often mock it by going strong female leads. Whenever a cringy new trailer comes out that promotes it so heavily and for Hollywood, it's about time. But when they do it right it isn't something they have to preach and sing about and pat themselves on the back. If we look at Avatar the Last Airbender almost all the main protagonists, all the really interesting characters are female. Katara, the water tribe, waterbender is fantastic. She's the sound mother of the group that keeps people on track, keeps a calm head for the most part and will develop an amazing relationship with Aang. Then there's Toph, the earthbender who's a badass, strongest earthbender around, manages to create a new type of bend altogether. Then there's of course the Kiyoshi Warriors, Azula, one of the secondary antagonists who later becomes basically the primary antagonist with her two female Fatal friends. This show is so freaking good because it manages to write characters different and uniquely and impressively and doesn't pander to any certain demographic. It even has a wise uncle with sage advice, Uncle Iroh, probably the best character in the show. I mean fireball to the head, I think I might pick him first. His relationship with his nephew Prince Zuko, no words. No words can describe the pure joy that it brings me when that final season comes together. If you haven't watched Avatar, the Last Airbender, do yourself a favor and check it out immediately. I beg you, I honestly do. It really is one of those shows that after three or four episodes, if you're not completely hooked, I just don't think you have a pulse. This brings us to the Avatar film by M. Night Shyamalan. A director that I don't even hate. I actually, sometimes I think he's great, other times I think he completely misses. Every time though, I will go watch his movies because I do respect the hell of a guy who's willing to do completely different things. And M. Night Shyamalan is so much different than any other director out there. You know a Shyamalan film when you see it. Mainly because the characters all act like robots for the most part. They don't emote ever in his films. They're so dry all the time. He's not a character director. He's more about the scenarios, the scenery, the mind fucks and things like that. So when you give a guy like this avatar, a TV show, you know for families, excuse younger of course, it's animated, it was on Nickelodeon. And this is a guy that comes from the sixth sense, unbreakable. Like this is just such a poor fit, especially when avatar is a big scale show. It gets bigger and bigger as the seasons progress. M. Night's a very small scale director. His movies are typically just around four or five main characters, usually in kind of a smaller environment. You think village, lady in the water, hell even signs, primarily takes place at a farmhouse. Old takes place pretty much just on a beach. So giving him this huge world that he has to play in was such a huge mistake, especially with avatar where it is character driven first and foremost. He did the opposite with almost every character on the show. Not only did he race swap half of them, they also just lost their personality along the way. He doesn't even know to pronounce Aang. They call him Aang throughout the movie. And it's not just one character. Everybody does it. Aang, are you okay Aang? Aang? Shut up, it's Aang. And then there's the, um, the bending. It ranges from somewhat cool to dear gods, what the hell is that? My favorite is when there's a group of like five earthbenders and they're like And then just a pebble goes by. It's just a small ass rock that all these dudes created. What teamwork? What's Blender? And the other problem is he's fitting an entire season into one movie. Condensing like 20 episodes down into an hour and 45 minute film just does not sit well. It's one thing to take a book where we don't have any visualization of it to begin with and in pairing it down to a movie and obviously you take creative liberties with it. It's another to go right off of a show where you have 20 episodes and you condense that down, but you still hit every plot point from the show that you can. And so at one point it's great. Aang in the seasons gets kidnapped a lot, especially in season one by Zuko. But this is spread out over many, many hours of showtime. But in the movie they still had all those major plots. So Aang's captured three times over the course of an hour and 45 minutes. And by the third time even Katara turns over to her brother and says, Aang's been captured again. At what point do you just cut your losses? Just be like, yeah, okay, Avatar, maybe you can air bend your ass out of this one on your own because we're sick of saving you. So the animated show, Massive Success, the movie, which is just called The Last Airbender, they couldn't actually say Avatar because James Cameron trademarked the rights to use it because of the movie. Even though the Avatar TV show came out before the movie, it's James Cameron. He does what James Cameron wants. When Netflix announced years ago they were doing a live action TV show, eight episodes to start of the original animated show with the show runners coming back, I thought to myself, no, I've already seen what Disney has done with all these live-action remakes. They're trash for the most part. Nine times out of ten, they're miserable or mediocre. The only one I thought was actually good was the Jungle Book. And that's because it's basically nothing like the original. It was its own thing. And even though the show runners are coming back, I just think to myself, why? You had a perfect run to start with. There's no way to top it. There's no way to do it. So why do it at all? And then it was announced that they left it. They had a difference in opinion with where it was going and they left the show, which really made me pause and say, okay, what are we doing here? Now you might be asking yourself, well, why do you care, Adam? You don't have to watch it. Just let it exist and you have your original show and that's that. The reason I care, and I feel like I have to explain this every time is Hollywood only greenlights so much. These studios only greenlight so much a year. And when there is a trendset and when they see the money coming in, it just puts out a really bad playbook for people to follow. Oh, look at this. The Lion King is the top ten highest grossing movie of all time. That's actually true. The live-action, which is still animated. Lion King is one of the highest grossing movies of all time. Now they're doing a prequel, Mufasa. DreamWorks looks at that and says, well, we could do that with how to train your dragon. We could definitely do that and they are. Now they're going to make a live-action, how to train your dragon. And then Moana gets a live-action and oh, I bet Frozen will be on the horizon. We'll see a Frozen at some point. You know we will. And there's the Avatar animated series getting its live-action show. So the reason I'm annoyed with it is because it's already sucking more creativity out of the industry. It's already going these safe routes instead of saying, hey, why don't we green light new stuff? Why don't we tell new stories? Why don't we keep the stuff that's already phenomenal where it's at instead of trying to make that lightning strike twice, which is almost impossible. Those are just my concerns. Now it is very possible that this could be a great show. We'll find out very soon. I don't typically cover TV shows very much unless it's something I'm really into. This might be one of those instances where I take a look at the show and let you know what I thought about it. So if you are interested in hearing about those thoughts or you just like me talking movies in general, I know this was more TV show based, but this is a movie channel. It's Adam Dizmovies. Feel free to like the video, subscribe for more, hit the notification bell. 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