While watching Netflix Avatar: The Last Airbender episode one, it’s hard not to be consistently reminded of the showrunner Albert Kim stating that the show needed to make an appeal to Game of Thrones fans. That the series needed to be more mature and adult. And this ideology plagues all of the first episode.
To start with the pros for the series, the bending is a significant improvement from the 2010 film by Shyamalan. Action sequences are, for the most part, well done, even if some just seem to exist to pad the run time. And Lim Kay Siu, who plays Monk Gyatso, gave the best performance out of the rest of the cast, and it made his death feel all the more tragic for it.
However, that’s where the pros end, and the first episode goes straight off a cliff. Rather than begin with Katara and Sokka on their boat discovering the Avatar, the Netflix series spends the first twenty minutes detailing the ‘secret’ plan by the Fire Nation to genocide the air nomads and then executing that plan. It’s hard to think of who this was supposed to appeal to though.
For people who have seen the original cartoon, this was wholly unnecessary. And for those who have not seen it a straight adaptation of Aang discovering what happened would have had far more emotional weight.
Aang’s immaturity also isn’t present. And neither is his reasons for fleeing the air temple made clear. Aang says that because he’s always been a special airbender, the people avoid him, but in the cartoon, Aang was friends with everyone until they found out about him being the Avatar. He resented being the Avatar and ran off because people stopped treating him like their friend. Instead, in the Netflix show, he cries briefly and flies off to clear his head shortly after being told he is the Avatar.
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By the time we pick up on Katara and Sokka, the changes made to Sokka are much worse than just ‘removing his sexism’. His sarcastic personality was also massively toned down, and this seems to be a problem of the show trying to take everything super seriously. The cartoon was able to balance comedic elements with a deep, and at times very tragic, story, but the show is all in on heavy drama.
Instead of Sokka angering Katara, which causes her to crack an iceberg and free Aang, the two have a much more emotional conversation about the war and their missing father before accidentally bumping into Aang’s icy prison. As their boat starts to drift off, Katara slowly bends the water to bring it back, but all of a sudden, the iceberg behind them starts to shatter, and Aang is suddenly free.
This was a massive, missed opportunity to show how strong Katara was even early on in Avatar. In fact, it’s almost as if Aang freed himself because someone just happened to be bending nearby.
We then shift to Zuko seeing Aang’s release and eventually go into a conversation with him and Iroh. Unfortunately, Iroh is a shadow of his cartoon self, as his merry and jovial nature seems gone entirely. He doesn’t tell any jokes, his obsession with tea isn’t mentioned, and instead, he’s immediately having a heart-to-heart with Zuko about pursuing the Avatar.
Then, when we move back to Aang, he is soon informed of what happened over 100 years ago while he was trapped in ice. Including the genocide of the air nomads. Aang instantly accepts this all as true, whereas, in the original, he is in full-blown denial that the air nomads have died out.
Before talking about the confrontation that is set to take place, it’s important to talk about the absolute glazing given to Kyoshi. Kyoshi is the first one shown performing all four elements in the introduction, and later, Zuko is preparing so intensely to fight Aang because he’s read Kyoshi defeated an entire army by herself.
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Kyoshi being brought up this early and being so heavily propped up will come into play in the second episode, but for the first episode, it’s hard to ignore that the showrunners really seem to have a crush on the character and want to insert her more into the series.
Zuko and the Fire Nation soldiers make landfall and immediately demand Aang be turned over. Sokka does at first go along with this, prioritizing the safety of the village before Katara convinces him otherwise. Instead, we see Sokka challenge Zuko to a one-on-one, which was just more wasted time padding as the fight is brief but later escalates with Aang taking on the soldiers. While flashy it still results in Aang surrendering himself and essentially picks up where the cartoon’s first episode was at in its final climactic act.
There is an added scene with Aang and Iroh that was appreciated. Iroh distinguishes himself from the rest of the Fire Nation by showing respect to Aang, but he still refuses to crack a single joke.
And then Aang is saved by escaping on his own while Sokka and Katara fly in on Appa and take off agreeing they can no longer return home. The final six~ minutes of the episode completely condensed Aang’s return to the Southern Air Temple, where he freaks out and loses control of his power upon seeing the corpses of the air nomads.
This did happen in the original, but it holds almost zero emotional weight now because we spent ten minutes at the start watching them get wiped out. And Aang had already accepted they were all dead. It really felt pointless, and like this entire section could have just been removed.
The final rating for the first episode is 4/10.
Overall, the acting is very hit-and-miss in this first episode. The removal of all comedy makes the show drag on with nothing to break up the tension. And while the bending is flashy and cool to watch, the actual meaning behind most of the fights is utterly pointless. The desire to be seen as ‘adult’ and ‘mature’ for a ‘Game Of Thrones’ audience was just to include more fights, be more brutal and remove the charm these characters had in the cartoon.
Sometimes less is just more. The first episode is around 15 minutes longer than the next episode, and the extended runtime was not well utilized.
And unfortunately, Episode 2 seems to be even worse, as that’s where the showrunners really decide to start making changes to the story. Stay tuned for the Netflix Avatar Episode 2 Review and comment below!
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Aang ran off because he overheard the monks conspiring to separate him from monk Gyatso by shipping him of to another air temple. But it sounds like they have no idea what made the original series good. I wish that were surprising.
Thanks for sparing me the watch.