“When the Avatar returned, everything changed.”
The Netflix premiere of the live-action adaptation of the 2005 Nickelodeon animated series “Avatar: The Last Airbender” is highly anticipated.
The Netflix series depicts a world where people have the ability to manipulate one of the four elements – water, earth, fire, and air. These people reside in four respective nations. The story revolves around Aang, who discovers that he has the power to control all four elements as the Avatar. Aang must defeat the Fire Nation to end a century-long war.
Live-action ‘Avatar’ cast
The cast of Netflix’s “Avatar: The Last Airbender” includes:
Gordon Cormier as Avatar Aang
Kiawentiio Tarbell as Katara
Ian Ousley as Sokka
Dallas Liu as Zuko
Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Uncle Iroh
Daniel Dae Kim as Fire Lord Ozai
Elizabeth Yu as Azula
According to the show’s synopsis, the world has lost hope as the current Avatar is yet to emerge. However, there is a ray of hope as Aang (Gordon Cormier), a young Air Nomad and the last of his kind, awakens to take his rightful place as the next Avatar.
Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender series established a new standard for children’s television by producing thoughtful character development and exploring difficult subject matter like genocide. Despite its mature tone, the show was still a cartoon, leveraging the strengths of the medium to bring to life the magical world envisioned by co-creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.
While watching the new live-action Avatar series on Netflix from executive producers Albert Kim and Dan Lin, it becomes apparent that the creators of the show are trying to distance themselves from the previous, notoriously whitewashed cinematic adaptation. In some instances, they succeed in doing so. However, despite their good intentions, the new Avatar is yet another example of Netflix taking a beloved animated property and transforming it into something that feels disconnected from what made the original so great.
“Avatar” is a story set in a world that has been ravaged by war. It revolves around three children who are brought together by destiny to overthrow a fascist empire. For years, the Fire Nation, which has pyrokinetic powers, has been terrorizing the other elemental societies on the planet, making it difficult for them to see Fire Lord Ozai (played by Daniel Dae Kim) as anything other than a monster. The fear of the Fire Nation is so great that the two Water Tribes dare not venture beyond their borders, and the Earth Kingdom is always on high alert because of the deadly raids led by Ozai’s brother, Iroh (played by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee). However, the main reason why no one dares to challenge Ozai’s rule or openly resist is that everyone remembers how the war began – the Fire Nation almost completely wiped out the Air Nomads.
