Honestly, it was better than I thought it would be. In comparison to the 2010 live action take, this adaption at least adheres far closer to the source material while taking the obvious creative liberties.
Pros
Dallas Liu's portrayal of Prince Zuko is spot on. A stand out performance for sure. In fact, I like everything the creators of the live action did with Zuko. They hit the mark every time with this guy.
Joining Dallas Liu in character portrayal and delivery is Ian Ousley, who delivers a pretty good portrayal of Sakka's dry wit humor. Imo, I feel that Sakka is by far the trickiest character to really nail down in a live action adaption. He's largely comedic relief but then he illustrates spurts of brilliance and seriousness here and there. I feel like Ian did an excellent job navigating the nuances of Sakka's character for the most part.
The Bending is fantastic and the fight choreography is pretty good.
The dynamic between Fire Lord Ozai, Azula, Iroh and Zuko was very well done.
Cons
I found the depth between Team Avatar lacking. The actors who play Aang, Katara and Sakka don't have any on screen chemistry, no emotional depth. They feel more like stage actors reading lines at each other than actors owning their characters respected roles.
Oddly enough, Aang and Katara don't have any on screen presence compared to their animated counterparts. Katara's personality is like she's an NPC. She doesn't have any real agency and she feels largely like a background character in her own story. Aang is no different. In this adaptation he doesn't FEEL like the main character and again, his character lacks agency.
Prophetic dreams drive the plot. For some reason Aang's journey is propelled by a random dream sequence of the Fire Nation attacking the Northern Water Tribe... but in the animation, it was a rather very simple reason that triggered Aang, Katara and Sakka to journey up north and that was to find a waterbending master for the BOTH of them to learn from. That's it. That's what started it all. I get for the TV adaption, there is a need to create tension by illustrating certain doom, but this is also a lazy approach. The original animation already laid a simple groundwork that could have easily been lifted into the live action without the need of dream sequences to do most of the legwork.
Pros
Dallas Liu's portrayal of Prince Zuko is spot on. A stand out performance for sure. In fact, I like everything the creators of the live action did with Zuko. They hit the mark every time with this guy.
Joining Dallas Liu in character portrayal and delivery is Ian Ousley, who delivers a pretty good portrayal of Sakka's dry wit humor. Imo, I feel that Sakka is by far the trickiest character to really nail down in a live action adaption. He's largely comedic relief but then he illustrates spurts of brilliance and seriousness here and there. I feel like Ian did an excellent job navigating the nuances of Sakka's character for the most part.
The Bending is fantastic and the fight choreography is pretty good.
The dynamic between Fire Lord Ozai, Azula, Iroh and Zuko was very well done.
Cons
I found the depth between Team Avatar lacking. The actors who play Aang, Katara and Sakka don't have any on screen chemistry, no emotional depth. They feel more like stage actors reading lines at each other than actors owning their characters respected roles.
Oddly enough, Aang and Katara don't have any on screen presence compared to their animated counterparts. Katara's personality is like she's an NPC. She doesn't have any real agency and she feels largely like a background character in her own story. Aang is no different. In this adaptation he doesn't FEEL like the main character and again, his character lacks agency.
Prophetic dreams drive the plot. For some reason Aang's journey is propelled by a random dream sequence of the Fire Nation attacking the Northern Water Tribe... but in the animation, it was a rather very simple reason that triggered Aang, Katara and Sakka to journey up north and that was to find a waterbending master for the BOTH of them to learn from. That's it. That's what started it all. I get for the TV adaption, there is a need to create tension by illustrating certain doom, but this is also a lazy approach. The original animation already laid a simple groundwork that could have easily been lifted into the live action without the need of dream sequences to do most of the legwork.