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SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” now streaming on Netflix.
A cruel dictator grabs an enemy soldier by the wrist. The soldier’s eyes widen. He lets out a desperate scream as his skin turns crispy: he is being burned alive. An ashen corpse falls to the ground and the dictator advances calmly, ready to discuss war tactics with his men.
This scene takes place just five minutes into the premiere of “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the Nickelodeon series of the same name that was originally animated, widely acclaimed, and notably made for kids.
“It was really important that we started that way,” showrunner Albert Kim says of the bold decision to open his version of the story with such a stark image of Fire Lord Sozin’s (Hiro Kanagawa) brutality. “It’s a very clear sign that this is not a note-for-note translation. “It’s within the mythology of the original, so fans will know what we’re doing, but we’re going in a slightly different direction.”
The episode goes on to describe how the Hundred Years’ War began; The original series constantly nodded to the Fire Nation’s genocide against the Air Nomads, but it was never shown on screen in such detail. “Showing the Southern Air Temple genocide establishes what is at stake for our world,” Kim says. “It’s one thing for a 12-year-old to say, ‘I have to stop the Fire Nation.’ It’s another to see what the Fire Nation did to his home, his family, and everyone he loves.”
speaking to Variety, Kim took a deep dive into the history of “Avatar” to analyze these changes and others.
The original “Avatar” is ostensibly a children’s show, but the story’s violence becomes more visceral in live action. Were you targeting an older audience here? What was your philosophy when writing the most violent sequences?
It wasn’t about getting older. It was about setting the stakes for this world. One of the things we wanted to do was show how dangerous bending can be. Firebending should seem dangerous; I should feel something that could hurt you. Additionally, as fans know, the tone of the original series begins to change in the later seasons. It goes to some pretty dark places, so we had the benefit of hindsight. We knew the fans understood where the show could go, so we were able to start there. And I will say that if you look at the rest of the season, I don’t think we get much further than that. But the most important thing for us, always, was to feel faithful to the spirit of the original. Every choice we made was based on that litmus test: Does this feel like “Avatar”?
Let’s dig a little deeper into the story. In his version, Fire Lord Sozin says that his plan is to destroy the Airbenders. before A new Avatar is revealed. Why does he want to kill the Avatar instead of trapping him, since his death will cause the birth of a new Avatar of the Water Tribes?
This is getting deeper into the mythology than most viewers know, but there is usually a time lag between the time an Avatar dies and the birth of a new one. And there is a period of time before they are old enough to become the Avatar; They are usually told when they are 16 years old. Sozin is making a calculated bet as to the window of time he needs to take over the world. There will be a new Avatar reincarnated, but he will have time, if he kills the current one, to move on and conquer the world. It’s a tomorrow’s problem. That’s getting into Sozin’s head a bit, and whether or not it’s a good strategy is up for debate. Avatar scholars can debate that.
What we wanted to show with the military strategy when we opened the season is that Sozin achieves a bit of deflection. He makes us think that he is going to attack the Earth Kingdom and instead he attacks the Air Nomads. We close the season with Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim) doing the same thing. He’s kind of a little bookend that we set up.
How did you imagine the parts of the war that you don’t show on screen? For example, if the Fire Nation believes they successfully exterminated the Air Nomads, How does Zuko know he’s looking for an Airbending Avatar instead of a Waterbender?
Actually, I’m not sure he knows. A hundred years have passed and no one has seen the Avatar in that time. In the writers’ room, we realized that he’s a little bit like past mythology. It’s a story that’s out there, like, “Oh, the Avatar, is it real?” Because some generations have descended without ever having experienced an Avatar in their lives. In mythology, there is a possibility that the Avatar line could end, so I’m sure scholars in this world have studied it and thought it had ended, or perhaps it passed on to another master, or perhaps they are in hiding.
So when Zuko is sent on his mission (this is one of the subtle changes we made), he is studying the history of the Avatar. You see his notebook, his shelf of figurines. He has traveled the world researching the Avatar cycle and who is next in line. I think he’s considered the possibility of airbenders, waterbenders, all the way. He leaves no stone unturned. That’s why he’s so surprised when he sees Aang, because he thinks he may be facing someone like Kyoshi (Yvonne Chapman) or Roku (CS Lee), but then along comes this 12-year-old airbender.
This adaptation also offers a different take on King Bumi (Utkarsh Ambudkar). In the original, he’s a dumb old man who essentially plays tricks on Aang to make him realize he’s his old friend from 100 years ago, but here, Bumi immediately reveals himself and is a bit more cynical towards Aang. How did Bumi know Aang was the Avatar if Aang himself didn’t know until just before he was trapped in ice for a century? And why did you add that animosity to their relationship?
Once again, 100 years have passed and Bumi has lived those 100 years. I think Bumi is someone who has thought a lot about “Where is the Avatar?” What has happened?” I think he did his own research into it and figured things out. While Zuko might have investigated in the library, Bumi was alive during that period. It’s something he’s discovered, knowing who Aang is, knowing his Airbender skills.
Something we didn’t show, but we are going to show, is that Bumi also knew Gyatso (Lim Kay Siu), because Gyatso and Aang would visit Omashu together. She knew all this and was able to deduce that Aang was the Avatar, but he had disappeared. There are hints in the original that he feels abandoned by the Avatar. You’re right. He doesn’t reveal his identity until the end of the animated series episode, but that’s a change we made because it helped our storytelling.
How did that help the storytelling?
Help Aang realize what he’s up against. The original episode is a fun one, with him overcoming these various challenges. For various reasons, that didn’t work in the live action or in our story. In the original episode, Bumi’s goal is to show what Aang needs to go through to become the Avatar, which is also part of what we work on in our story, but the most emotional story is what Aang’s departure from the Avatar meant to Bumi. world. He feels betrayed by his friend.
For Aang, he is beginning to feel the weight of guilt: “This is what happened because I wasn’t there. Not only did this abstract thing happen – the war – but a very good friend of mine got hurt and I hurt him.” To tell that story, it helped that the two knew who each other were right away.
In addition to changing some characters, you introduced some new ones, such as Yukari (Tamlyn Tomita), mother of Suki (Maria Zhang). What prompted that addition? Do you think you will continue creating new characters in future seasons?
When you think of Kyoshi Island, you think of a female-centered society, a community built around the island’s fearsome warriors. It seemed to make sense that the leader of the island would be a woman, and when we started putting those pieces together, we realized that she should be a former Kyoshi warrior and she should be Suki’s mother. I had Tamlyn Tomita in mind from the beginning; in a way we wrote it for her.
And as far as doing that in the future, one of our missions was to fill out the world a little bit as we went along and create some new characters, or modify characters that already exist. There are certain characters that are quite small in the animated series, like Lieutenant Jee (Ruy Iskandar), and we made him a little more consequential in our storytelling. We change the character of Hahn (Joel Oulette) in the finale. There are things that seemed better to us in the live-action version than in the animated series.
Was there anything you didn’t manage to incorporate from season 1 of the animated series that you want to explore in the future?
We incorporated elements from Season 2 into this season, so there’s no reason you can’t do the opposite. My biggest regrets about season 1 are the things we couldn’t include. The original series had so many amazing characters, stories, and scenes that I wish we could have done, but for practical, financial, or just narrative reasons, we couldn’t include them.
There’s a great sequence at Roku’s temple when Aang and the gang figure out how to get into the shrine. I would have loved to have done that. We simply ran out of resources. We have to make difficult decisions along the way, but that doesn’t mean we can’t revisit them at some point in the future.
The highlight of the first season was seeing indigenous and Asian actors play these characters that were originally inspired by their cultures. Fans are also excited to see Toph in live action. Are you committed to casting a blind actor to play her in a possible second season?
Who doesn’t love Toph? She is amazing. But at the same time, my entire focus has been on getting Season 1 across the finish line. All those questions, which are all important, are a problem for tomorrow, not for now. Not that we’ve made any decisions about any of that. If you’re like me, a little superstitious, you don’t want to jump the gun and start thinking about things that may not happen until we see how we do it. All of my focus has been on making sure Season 1 is the best it can be so that we actually have the opportunity to have those conversations.
This interview has been edited and condensed.