I just finished The Last Airbender Netflix series…

It was quite possibly the most densely packed “on the nose” writing of anything I’ve watched in years.

You could have told me that the entire thing was first written as script notes, and the director mistook them as first person dialogue. Practically every scene that progressed the plot is written with the character’s lines like “This is what I’m feeling. This is the history that is relevant to our situation. This is my motivation. Friends are good. Let’s continue toward our goal.”

I just don’t understand how a script like that can survive tens or even hundreds of million in budget. It’s incredible. 🤣

I will say it was a significant improvement over Shamalama DingDong’s film adaptation. But only because the bar was set so low. The Netflix series did have really great action scenes and VFX though. Some of it was a little iffy, but had the show been good nobody would’ve cared.

Also, the casting was bonkers.

#grownostr #filmstr #introductions

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

This is quite possibly the most accurate analysis I’ve seen.

You haven’t watched much anime have you?

The series is phenomenal. This was not a “let’s do it like the show” problem 😂

Worth your time in hindsight?

I love to watch stuff that’s really bad because I get to pick it apart and play around with how I would fix it. I majored in film and also was an avid watcher of Mystery Science Theater 3K 😆

I did very much actually enjoy watching it, and there were very brief moments where I felt I was in the show, but i think it was ~90% just my already established familiarity with the characters than it was the show, lol.

So in short, I enjoyed watching it. But it might not be for the reasons others would enjoy (or not) to watch it for themselves.

nostr:npub18yvpnchj7yaepjk8yz2pn66hfmmup505aqvx0lpyc3aree0g5fyq8clpz3 also spoke highly of it.

Added to the queue. 🫱🏻‍🫲🏼

Shamalama who?? 😂😂😂😂

M. Night Shamalama DingDong.

Now this song from Grease is stuck in my head 😂😂

https://youtu.be/ZUrxG8APyiI?si=UmzNCWIBR7i2x8n5

Anytime Aang or Katara were on screen I got annoyed. Sokka was the best, sukki was great, zuko and iroh were okay but grew on me

Animals were really well done

When momo saved that kid at the end I literally yelled "oh fuck off"

Soma was the best casting by far, and I agree on Sukki too, she was a good choice for the character.

Katara was either just a horrible pick, or just given such terrible lines there was nothing to be done. Practically everyone else was awfully cast, lol.

Azula and all the female actresses were so bad. Azula is supposed to be intimidating, sharp, direct, and completely in control at all times. Instead she had a round baby face, looked pouty, was whiney, dependent, and bitter, and her “evil” moments were just kinda her being a snot, rather than brilliant and ruthless like she was in the show. I couldn’t even muster up the slightest fear of her if you offered me a whole bitcoin. 😂

I had exactly the same reaction with the momo thing, lmao. He was in the series more in that 1 minute of that episode than his cumulative screen time for the rest of the series.

That’s supposed to start with “Sokka” if not for autocorrect and the lack of an edit button 😆

I’m a HUGE fan of the animated show and after getting up to EP 4, I started to tune out as the writing is SO on the nose. Damn. I agree with you. They really tried clearly, so I’m hopeful S2 will be better but I’m having trouble powering through S1.

They would have to literally recast critical roles and replace all the writers if they wanted to give me hope for season 2 😆

Hollywood can’t quit its “tell, don’t show” approach to storytelling.

What a shame 😢