#hard to drop without radically rewriting Katara's arc but...yeah

[sixth-light]

Finished watching the Netflix ATLA live adaptation, having gone into it with absolutely no expectations whatsoever or intention to necessarily go past the first episode if it didn't catch my attention. While it was firmly unnecessary when ATLA existed as an entire piece of art as its creators intended it...it's not half bad? Like, talented cast including the newer actors, decent cinematography/costumes/etc, but what worked most about it for me is that it takes a very similar approach to the WoT TV show in regards to its source material.

Namely, it's working with a closed canon and it's very clearly trying to adapt the entire story rather than do a 1:1 adaptation of each section. So, like WoT, it's unafraid to chop and change up the story order, to introduce characters earlier who only came into prominence later in the original work, to give more depth and space to its villains, and to straight-up write new material rather than trying to stick meticulously to the original text wherever possible. It also does a lot of work to tidy up some of the less-well-aged parts of its source, which lands probably 90% of the time. Basically, it's doing the work to keep me as someone who knows the original story well interested by giving me new scenes and things to chew over without losing the essence of the original. If you're going to do a fairly unnecessary high-budget live-action remake of a twenty-year-old cartoon series, that's not a bad way to go about it.

Let it not go without saying that it has also cast Asian and Native actors as well as handing the story over to Asian-American/Canadian writers and directors and that does matter. Unlike WoT it doesn't have a gay agenda, but to be fair the first season of ATLA (original flavour) barely had a romantic agenda period.

As I said: it's not necessary, but it's not at all bad, and I will watch the next season at least on purpose. I think if we're going to be trapped in remake/adaptation hell for the foreseeable future we can do worse than have them made by people trying to give some new dimensions to the story. I also think the people making this show would do a hell of a job with a Legend of Korra live-action show, and that is a story that didn't get its full due originally and would benefit from being made for an older audience. Plus, the gay agenda is right there. If this show does well enough to greenlight a Korra show...I could find some genuine excitement about that.