Avatar: The Last Airbender receives mixed reviews from critics

Netflix’s new live-action offering, Avatar: The Last Airbender, is dividing critical opinion.

The eight-episode series is a remake of the popular animated fantasy series of the same name by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.

The two signed on with Netflix to make the live-action version, but never finished the project.

Critic Aramide Tinubu said the series “is far from the disaster” of another remake, M. Night Shyamalan’s 2010 film The Last Airbender, but added: “It will leave fans wishing the streamer had left the work alone. DiMartino and Konietzko’s teacher.

He added: “While the show’s visuals and its Asian and Indigenous stars add authenticity to the series, the performances of most of the cast, no matter how earnest, do not hold up to the weight of the narrative.

“Many of the series’ performances lack the emotion necessary to convey a series focused on the horrors of genocide, war and totalitarianism.”

The show’s legal team will be keen to point out that this has nothing to do with Avatar itself, the highest-grossing film ever made, but it’s still a big hit among fantasy lovers.

Without giving too much away, the premise of the series is that there are four divided realms, defined by fire, earth, water, and air, and the “masters” who live in them harness these elements to convert them into some kind of magical power. .

Its main characters include 12-year-old Aang, played by Gordon Cormier, who teams up with 14-year-old Katara (Kiawentiio) and her older brother Sokka (Ian Ousley) to save their kingdoms.

“The landscapes sparkle, there’s a giant six-legged flying bison that spectacularly carries everyone from place to place through the clouds, and the young cast is up to the task,” he wrote.

“The Airbender franchise has been confidently resurrected; this won’t be the last we see of it.”

He added that it is “a rather drab, thinly sketched version of fantastical, well-worn tales of oppression and rebellion” and, despite each episode being an hour long, “the show somehow feels too long and too short at the same time.”

“It’s solid entertainment,” he said. “Fast, action-packed, with decent fight scenes and some engaging performances, all done on a generous Netflix budget.

“Don’t expect subtlety: it’s aimed at children, so the characters and plot are broad.”

Singh said he watched it with his children, the age group the series is aimed at, who also gave their own review: “It’s good,” they said, “but not as good as SpongeBob SquarePants.”

“From the beginning, the live-action series has many flaws,” he wrote. “The performances are stiff, the writing is even stiffer, the costumes are flashy, the score sounds annoying, and the whole thing looks like it was filmed through a light coating of mud.

“But worst of all, the serious hour-long premiere of the new series is simply boring. It’s hard not to get distracted somewhere along the way, and even harder to muster the enthusiasm to continue for seven more installments.” he added.

“What should have been an exciting adventure feels like you’ve been given a task, which is a difficult fate for something based on a Nickelodeon children’s cartoon.”

“It’s not as good as the animated series,” he continued. “Of course it’s not. It’s painting the Mona Lisa with colored pencils, which may be great in its own right, but it’s just a completely different medium that could never live up to the original masterpiece.”

However, he concluded: Despite a mountain of skepticism, including my own who considers the original one of my favorite shows, I have to say that Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender is much better than I thought it would be. In the end, I really enjoyed it.”