Amph ATLA and The Legend of Korra (ATLA live action remake coming Feb 2024)

Why not?

 

Because it mostly fail if ever.

 

The cartoon characters from the show are so easy to identify with, part of the show’s amazing achievement, I actually thought it might be nice to see how these characters react to each other when they’re limited to human facial expressions etc. I knew the cgi was going to be expensive and the production design lavish

there was a lot of potential, but it was too big a task. I don’t know whether that was inevitable, because they produced what I thought were two really excellent episodes out of 8.

there was too much that could go wrong? the writing, the limits of child actors, etc. but I wouldn’t call it a fundamental lesson about not trying to adapt cartoons for live action.

 

While I largely agree with this sentiment…I would propose the counter of:

Why should any source material ever be adapted to a different medium?

Why turn novels into movies?

Why turn comic books into games?

I think it’s all done to reach a wider audience. Period. And also because… let’s be real, even most animation fans like to imagine what some things would look like in live action.

Personally, I’ve wanted to see what a “real” Fire Nation ship could look like, or how convincing Special effects and CGI could make earth ending or fire ending look like. On that end, I thought this show nailed it. I’m about mid way through it and my only real complaints are the acting from Aang and Katara and some of the story beats seeming…. Sort of off.

I don’t think it’s great but I don’t think it’s bad so far.

 

I mean "I want to see what this could look like in live action" is at least something, I'll give you that over the weird nihilistic "it's not as good but adaptation" arguments I've mostly been seeing. However I think it's misleading to compare this to your other examples because those are extremely different media that are engaged with fairly differently by any audience, including the original audience - when I'm watching War and Peace I'm not thinking "Well, the book exists, so this is pointless" (although in some different instances I definitely think "Well the book exists and this sucks, so..." ) - TV to TV, as is the case here, seems way more dubious unless they're trying something interesting or different compared to the original, and live action + CGI vs cartoon doesn't get it over that line for me.

 

That’s where I agree with you: most visual to visual adaptations don’t have good reasons for being adapted.

To me, Only in the sense of “why are we telling the exact same story?”

 

how was the pacing

 

The actress that plays Katara….

 

Then it's a remake.

To see it in a different medium.

And to introduce it to a new generation or a wider audience, and keep the interest in the story-world fresh.

 

I really enjoy it for what it is so far. Episode 1 did a nice job showing us things we hadn't seen so it wasn't just a full rehash of the cartoon.

Spoiler

Episode 2, so far, was my favorite.
Episode 3 was definitely a mix- did like getting Azula but not enough of Mae or Ty Lee and I found Bumi to be difficult but the character was always going to be that way. That said, as soon as I heard the orchestral version of Leaves From the Vine, episode 4 definitely hit different. So far, Zuko, Iroh and Sokka are my favorites.

 

I think visually, it doesn’t look great. Really artificial, almost as if they’re aping the naturally clean style of the animation. And that’s the real question: If you do a live action remake, why try to ape an animated style? That makes little sense to me as…we already have the cartoons…

 

I know they are working on some animated material for avatar still I’ll just wait for that.

 

Why can't the new generation be simply introduced to the vastly superior original animated show?

 

How many kids have watched the ATLA the animated show. In recent years. Mostly its older who watched it in recent years. Most of kids who watched it is now adults. You get them who get their kids to watch.

 

Kids probably aren’t watching this remake, either. Most people don’t watch a given Netflix original regardless of target demographic, we literally have proof of this from Netflix, so while that’s maybe the mental justification, it’s likely less accurate in practice (although to be fair the Netflix original that does get the most minutes from younger viewers is Cocomelon and even I'm not going to argue that's a better situation).

 

Why not both?

And it doesn’t matter how superior the original is, if I, a new viewer, have never seen it.

I got into Star Wars after seeing Attack of the Clones in theaters. THEN Iater went back and watched the originals. To me, the originals are better, but that’s not what I saw first that sparked my interest.

 

Just started watching it

Managed 10 mins then thought, I can just watch the original

I'm sure there are some out there who will appreciate a live action version but 10mins in and it just felt redundant when I can watch the cartoon.


I've gone back to Disney+ and I'm watching the XMen cartoon (still one of the best opening themes out there)

 

They nailed Zuko with the casting.

And yes… Omaha with Bumi was so off for me, specifically because they made Bumi out to be…. Idk resentful towards Aang for disappearing and trying to teach him a lesson on warfare and I’m like… that’s not even Bumi’s character or the meaning of this meeting. I even went and immediately watched the Bumi episode from the original show and his motivations were completely different.

And I don’t mind a show changing things to expand, explore more, or possibly even do them better but Bumi was the only direct link to Aang’s old life to me and for them to turn him into having this subtle resentment towards Aang was very, very strange to me.

Didn’t ruin the episode entirely (the episode was bad for other different reasons) but that was one of them for me.

 

Yeah, kids today think things before 2010 are too old, most kids' parents' grew up watching ATLA. Now more kids will hear about the show, and not only get into it, but also decide to try out the animated show and see it's not just some ancient cartoon from their parents' childhood days.
And it also introduces the world to the adults who still refuse to watch animated shows and only will watch live-action.

 

I still don’t understand why you’d want the live action version of the story to have an animated look to it. You have that in…the animated version. Wouldn’t it be more interesting for the live action remake to look more…naturalistic? Or realistic? So as to better justify the different medium?

 

Personally, I felt they were going for a visual style the combined that of the cartoon with classic Shaw Brothers kung fu flicks. You really get that with wig/sideburn combo on Jee and Zhao. The clean costuming is so 70s-early 80s Hong Kong. I actually really appreciated that.

I'd think the martial arts is potentially the weakest part, mostly because they actually need to bring in Hong Kong stunt people to do a little more of a mix of old school Lau Kar-Leung choreography alongside Yuen Wo-ping wire-fu for benders especially. There's too many cuts to and slo-mo shots for my taste where extended single camera exchanges would be more interesting.

Overall I really enjoyed the series and finished it over the last two days. I usually don't do that. I give myself at least a full week to watch things, one episode a day. Like House of Ninjas, really liking that as well but taking my time with it.

My kids all know ATLA. They've all grown up with it. My youngest is 9. My eldest is almost 18, he even saw the Shyamalan abomination in the theater with me. We are currently watching the cartoon again, in the early episodes of Book III. The youngest watched the live action with me for the most part.

It's flawed, but it's fun. Similar to the way Ahsoka drove home that Ahsoka was a child during the Clone Wars, this show also really drives home that these are children fighting this war.

I see a lot of complaints about the baby faced Azula, for instance, but you don't really get a sense that she's as young as she is in the cartoon imo.