Which brings us to the second season of the live-action Avatar The Last Airbender The chain and where it moves in this equation. Long story short: It’s fine. Not a complete disaster by any means. Long story short: As a live-action show based on a cartoon it still feels incredibly unbalanced, raising the question of why it exists at all.
After mastering waterbending and battling the invading Fire Nation in a bittersweet victory, thanks to the aid of a kaiju-sized Ocean Spirit, Aang (Gordon Cormier) travels from the Northern Water Tribe to the Earth Kingdom in a second round with the live-action gang, in hopes of finding a teacher to help him with earthbending. Unfortunately, Aang’s journey to mastering the elements isn’t a straightforward flight. Chief among the problems looming on her arrowhead are dealing with Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim) to kill his lightning-wielding daughter Azula (Elizabeth Yu) on the trail of his Hawaiian bison, looking over her shoulder at the ever-present threat of her brother, Prince Zuko (Dallas Liu), and protecting the Earth Kingdom of Ba Sing Se from a Fire Nation invasion. His final hurdle as humanity’s teenage savior would have been easier to overcome if the citizens and king of Ba Sing Se had not fallen for the claims that there was no war in the first place.
On paper, the second season of Avatar The Last Airbender This is one worth seeing. After all, it adapts the second book of the animated series, where the show undoubtedly hit its stride, bringing together fan-favorite characters like Toph Beifong (Miyako), the greatest Earthbender of all time, the tease of the long road to redemption for the disgraced Prince Zuko, and Aang’s moral dilemma of succumbing to unsolicited advice from his past lives, which turns out to be an incarnation of the ends justify the means like its predecessors, or something. And. More. All on top of element-bending kung fu action, political deceit, and mix-and-match of chimeric animals that create the world Avatar, This season is one that feels like a layoff to not mess up.
Unfortunately, its showrunners are also obsessed with the second season of the animated series, which has led to many of its big reveals – like Azula – being fudged in the first season. This leaves very little scope for real things to look forward to this season, other than how the show will rework, move forward, and further complicate what’s already in the works in the animated series. And of course, groan at all its forced referential nodding.
Like last season, AvatarIt seems like its second season was based entirely on weaponized nostalgia. That and the extra padding added to its seven-hour-long episodes were otherwise bite-sized chunks of cartoon that tried to resemble prestige television to some extent. If you’ll forgive the mixed metaphor, what’s left is a live-action series that unravels the threads of its source material. A Ship of Theseus with unnecessary additions that makes you yearn for the old animated character you once knew. Instead of sailing it to see it reach the finish line, you’re riding it just to see how it will turn out.
That doesn’t mean this season doesn’t have moments that work. Granted, many of them are the same beats that worked in season one, with a few additions that make season two feel like it’s making extra effort to justify its existence. Some ships look good sailing along the pier. Liu still gives his strongest performance as Zuko, incorporating a suffering, turmoil, and humility that transcends live-action cosplay and makes the character his own. Ian Owsley has even more in his bag as Sokka; Most of his non-contextualized jokes are highlights of the show.
Similarly, Miyako fits into the ensemble as the missing piece that makes their crew feel complete, playing Aang’s gruff, quick-witted teacher with the same energy Iñaki Godoy as Luffy was born for the role in Netflix’s live-action Luffy. a piece series. Less central but equally important are the cool, nature-documentary-style title cards and the unwavering sense that the cast are having fun, or at least feeling more comfortable joking around with each other.
Now for the negative. when i weigh my joy AvatarThe second season, despite its bright spots, is impossible to ignore how long it feels. This is a slogan. The series stuck to its worst habit from previous seasons: compressing four or five cartoon episodes into one hour-long installment. By the time the credits roll – or, more realistically, by the time I check the timestamp, groan, and realize I’m still stuck in the same bloated episode I started with – I’m amazed at how weak the story feels despite its runtime.
Despite the max runtime, the show somehow plays like a SparkNotes version of the original. Any real feeling of love with its characters comes less from the show and more from the callback food that jingles across the senses like keys waved in front of a child. The reference humor is certainly cute, but listening to those playful keys for an hour at a time over seven episodes is too cute for its own good. And the show constantly leans on that crutch, filling itself with Easter eggs instead of trusting its story.
As if already being over-corrected out of fear that this season would hew too closely to its source material as a high-fidelity photocopy of the cartoon, the show routinely takes characters with sudden left turns, abandoning any semblance of personality established in earlier scenes – sometimes in the same scene – for clichéd, manufactured drama. A hat on a hat, if you will. As a result of these disappointing, unnecessary flourishes, character motivations are reworked and made more complex in ways that are more confusing than compelling.
Momo and Appa – the series’ beloved tag-along critters – could have been stick figures waved on the screen or omitted entirely, taking up the bottom third of the scenes, given how much of an afterthought they are in CGI. Despite being inspired by the magic of time skips, Kiaventio still feels like there was very little left for him to do as Katara. And most painfully, Cormier’s Ang feels like he’s acting in a separate room from his co-stars half the time, given how hit or miss his chemistry with them is.
The march toward the final episodes of season two becomes a parade of characters teleporting into scenes because the script demands it, third-act fallout happening because the script demands it, and side character exposition dumps until the heroes focus on the next batch of side characters for even more exposure because the script demands it. In turn, its protagonists become less like active protagonists and more like players communicating in a video game’s sloppy cutscenes – which would have been better served by allowing us to see the exciting stories its supporting characters enthusiastically repeat rather than repeating them in a monotonous slurry of dialogue.
This does not mean that every creative freedom ends on arrival. This show has some really great team-ups and character interactions that feel like well-written fan fiction. And some of the action sequences – particularly Azula and Zuko’s fierce face-off – showcase the choreography, VFX and sound design at their finest. However, outside of those highlights, the action is frustratingly obscured by distracting vignette effects, making the pantomime movements seem stiff and awkward whenever anyone bothers to lean in.
And therein lies the main flaw of the live-action series: much of the magic of the original series lies in its animation. the elegant, hand-drawn elasticity of its impressive, complex action sequences, the emotional range and expressiveness of its characters, and Its larger-than-life world-building – these are its hallmarks Avatar household name. Incorporating it into live action on name recognition alone isn’t enough to make it a worthwhile watch, even if it does make for easy, inattentive dialogue-heavy content to pad out Netflix’s catalog. That’s the conceptual problem with live-action shows, after all.
In an era where creative forces are pushing live-action adaptations regardless of the above, Avatar This Sisyphean creative exercise might as well be the Teflon Don, seeing as how it’s gotten a third and final season despite how bad its second outing was. Hopefully, by then, it will have found its positive zing as a live-action adaptation instead of languishing in the neutral zing of its second season.
season two of Avatar The Last Airbender Streaming on Netflix.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
<a href