In one word, decent. In 15 words, not as bad as I feared, but not the masterpiece I hoped it would be. 

There was reason for concern with the original writers leaving the team and disowning the project in 2020 over creative differences, but let’s start with what was done right. 

For context, Avatar is often hailed as one of the top animated shows to ever be made, remembered for having many lovable characters, great worldbuilding, and powerful messages told by the characters’ growth as individuals. To introduce a few terms, bending is the power system of Avatar where some people can manipulate one of the 4 elements and the Avatar is the person with the ability to manipulate all 4 elements. The elements are earth, water, fire and air.

The visuals in the live-action TV show were stunning, which creates even more hope for CGI and special effects for live action movies in the future. The costume design was also on point with the characters having a wardrobe that was faithful to the original. The visual presentation helps make up for the show’s many shortcomings.

The fight scenes were very well choreographed and looked realistic for the audience; they included fights that are original to the live action. The music and sound design did not disappoint, with the original songs adapted to fit the new live action.

The acting is good at most points and the actor of Aang, Gorden Cormier, looks like he was ripped from the animation to act in real life. The other members of the main cast we got to meet also highly resemble their characters. 

The cast captures the personalities of the original characters. Although not perfect, Zuko’s Actor’s rage feels authentic and Sokka’s actor is witty and funny, true to his character.

Actor Daniel Dae Kim looked amazing as his character, Ozai, and his fight with Zuko captured all of the cold disrespect he showed to Zuko by his ease in handling his attacks.

Now for what was done poorly… There’s a reason the writers left the live action team. Condensing the Book of Water – the first season of the animated tv show that consisted of 20 episodes – into 8 hours of content ruined the pacing. There are multiple points where they merged 1, 2, or even 3 plot lines into one part. The pacing also made the journey feel way too short while glossing over various plot points.

Because it was rushed, the writers replaced subtle hints that were fun to figure out in the animated tv-show, with exposition in the live action. This is likely because they feared the lack of a new watcher’s ability to follow the plot and remember details. The exposition caused the dialogue to be lengthy and repetition of the same phrases made it feel repetitive.

As for any changes they made with the characters, it feels like they removed much of Aang’s childish joy and the humor scenes felt a bit dry because they are told by a serious character stead of the goofy Aang we know and love. In the original show, Aang runs away from his responsibilities as the Avatar, whereas in the live action he was portrayed as being more mature and accepting of his responsibilities, which leaves him no room for character growth. This is especially ridiculous when in the original cartoon, the events of the whole show happen because Aang is just a kid.

There is some controversy about how they removed Sokka’s sexist comments and personally, I don’t think it’s good that the writers did. Characters need flaws to grow off of and without giving him something to grow off of, Sokka seems like less of a dynamic character and more boring. In the original, Sokka gets humbled by Suki and becomes a well trained warrior and effective leader.

All of the romance was also ruined by the lack of character complexity or development. All Sokka did was act like an idiot for a while and that somehow made Suki fall in love with him despite the complete lack of much meaningful character interaction between the two like when Sokka admitted his flaws and trained with Suki.

At the end of the day, I would say this wasn’t too much of a trainwreck. Visually, the series gives me hope for live actions and CGI as a whole. All in all, it was pretty mediocre.