I have been able to see the first episode of the show via a few different sources/leaks/etc. I would ultimately say the show is very, very, very mediocre. Not bad, but one of the most generic action shows you could possibly imagine. Here’s a rundown of some basic thoughts:
1 – The acting is very hit and miss. Zuko, Iroh, and Aang are very good. Katara barely does anything so it’s hard to tell. Sokka is very unnatural. All are working with very clunky dialogue, so the various levels of quality comes from how well they can work around it. Gran-Gran is horrendous. Apparently at the actual premiere event, people were laughing at her performance, and I can see why.
2 – The effects are also hit and miss. All the bending looks very good. The waterbending sometimes suffers from the issues it had in the M. Night movie (i.e. a floating ball of water has a bunch of water pouring off it but stays the same size), but ultimately looks fine. The animals and CGI sets look…awful. Just purely awful. Zuko’s ship and some shots in the water tribe just look so bad. The M. Night movie looks better in this aspect for the most part.
3 – There are 3 cold opens for some reason. The majority of the episode is spent shoehorning in a plot about the air nomads celebrating Sozin’s Comet (for some reason) and reworking the story of Aang running away to remove most of the emotional weight. He now is told by Gyatso that he’s the avatar and just rides away on Appa to clear his head. The Fire Nation then just happens to attack all the air nomads while he’s gone. Then we have the other two regular openings from the original debut episode. So by the end of those, there’s barely any time left to cram 2+ episodes of content in, and boy does it feel rushed.
4 – The discovery of Aang is super, ultra, mega botched. They open the iceberg by accidentally crashing into it. Because of the removal of Sokka’s sexist stuff, we never once see Katara get angry or defend herself. She doesn’t even interact in any conflict in the entire hour. Aang is also immediately told that the air nomads are dead, which is a problem because…
5 – The “new” avatar state rules are abysmally stupid. Aang is still able to go into the avatar state when distressed. This is an issue because again, he’s told his entire race is dead and then doesn’t even react at all. Then he sees the Gyatso skeleton and does go into the avatar state later…so yeah, inconsistent. Katara doesn’t calm him down from this either, by the way. It’s just a flashback that does. The other change to the avatar state is that Aang can be “possessed” by a past avatar by being near one of their statues. I wish there were more specifics, but that’s it. So I guess once they get Toph, she can just make infinite avatar statues and Aang doesn’t need to train at all? They obviously didn’t think this one through.
6 – The music is overall great. There are lots of references to the original score and it sounds very well-orchestrated. The action scenes are not great. Lots and lots and LOTS of quick cuts, jump cuts, shaky cam, etc. Even if the choreography were legible, it’s all masked in some shotty editing that’s allegedly meant to make it look more intense. It seems like the actors and stunt people know what they’re doing, so they’re just hurting themselves here.
7 – Sokka’s character is honestly as botched as you would think. The sexism being removed obviously nerfs his arc a bit (as well as causing ripple effects as seen in Point #4). The real kicker is that they show other adult males in his tribe during the Southern Water Tribe scenes. The whole purpose of his character was learning how to become a man in the absence of a strong male figure, but now he has them, so…?
8 – Zuko as a character has been softened quite a bit. He doesn’t snap at Iroh at all. He is patient with the water tribe people when asking for Aang. He only gets into minor conflict with Sokka. Not sure what they’re going to do with his character later, but having him start this soft certainly won’t make his redemption hit hard at all. Also he’s writing a book? For some reason? Idk.
9 – The bulk of the pacing, as stated previously, is spent on setting up stuff and/or adding unnecessary story beats. They are cutting quite a bit of character building and development in order to add things already, which isn’t a great sign. The fact this season in runtime is longer than the original Book 1 yet things are being cut doesn’t bode well.
10 – This show seems like it is more interested in the lore of the universe overall than the characters themselves. Obviously this is from a first episode read, but plenty of pilot episodes do a better job of weaving in good character intros and lore building, such as the original ATLA. I don’t inherently think this is a negative, but given how rushed and impersonal a lot of the character interactions are in the first episode, I fear it’s going to brush over most of the aspects that made the characters so fun and engaging in order to showcase some boring royal family drama, or some other weird new universe law that they threw in just to fill space.
Overall, I think that it is a very average show. It will not anger people in the same way the M. Night movie did, and it certainly isn’t as bad. It’s just…average. It’s what you’d expect from a bunch of nobodies hired by Netflix admittedly trying to emulate Game of Thrones while adapting ATLA. A lot of the additions are things that seem cool on paper but really don’t make much sense given what happens later in the show. I think it sits at an exact 5/10 for me.
As a note for the future, no, I am not going to watch the rest of the series. I am not obligated to watch something I do not enjoy. While this wasn’t quite the disaster I thought it could have been, I’m not going to waste ~8 hours to see something that at most may elicit a “meh” out of me. I am wholly uninterested based on all of what I’ve seen so far, and thus I have no reason to continue paying attention to it.
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