Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender has not been given the all clear for a second season just yet. (…)
That said, there were certain logistical factors of making an epic fantasy drama of this scale that forced [showrunner Albert] Kim to account for the possibility of more seasons: one, his core four actors are aging up on screen before his eyes, and two, it takes time to both film and produce a single season of Avatar.
“All three seasons of the animated series essentially take place in the course of one calendar year,” Kim says of the original Nickelodeon animated show. “There was no way we could do that. So we had to design this first season, especially, to accommodate the possibility of some time elapsing between the first and the second season.”
Part of that strategy involves Sozin’s Comet, which fans of the original series are already familiar with and newbies can spot cutting across the night sky in the trailers. “The comet was their ticking clock,” Kim explains. “We removed that particular ticking clock from our show for now because we couldn’t know exactly how old our actors would be for the subsequent seasons. We definitely thought about that going into season 1 so that we can accommodate for puberty, adolescence, time passing — all of those fun things that happen to real-life human beings that don’t happen to animated characters."
Just make the clock 4 years instead of 1? Or don’t give a date?
It kind of diminishes the quick growth of the gang, but it’s not like they can stop the cast from growing.
An Avatar would spend many years on one element alone, so pretty much mastering all of them in a few years is still an impressive feat.
This adaptation, while promising superior visual spectacle in comparison to the movie that doesn’t exist, is however a mistake. My prediction is that it will flop. Not because it is technically bad, but because the show runners and writers are cowardly corporate plants. They will not dare do anything creative, innovative or cool with the concept. They should’ve told a new original story in universe, or done the Scott pilgrim takes off approach and just have fun with the retelling of the same story. Instead, we will have the vanilla oatmeal equivalent of a series. Passable, even good by all accounts, but ultimately boring and bland.
I still don’t have any hope for it even being faithful to the original despite how good the trailers look. Don’t forget, very early on, the original creator walked away from the project because he didn’t like what they were doing with it.
Great idea to remove the thing that forces our characters to actually do something. Maybe they should also remove the 100-year war so they can have more fun on their way.
