At least Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender nailed this one interaction
Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender speedruns the whole first season of the animated show in eight episodes, which means cutting some scenes, patching other episodes together, and adding a whole new prologue. Results may vary: On the one hand, integrating some favorite characters earlier on makes for some fun reveals, but also makes for some weird pacing and exposition delivery.
The biggest and most glaring drawback, though, is that the rushed pace really buries some good character development and doesn’t let the young actors shine. And the thing is, we know that the young actors — particularly Dallas Liu and Gordon Cormier, who play Zuko and Aang — have a good grasp of their characters based on one really good scene that the show did add. It’s a glimmer of what could be, and hopefully an indication of where the show could go.
[Ed. note: This post contains spoilers for Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender and the original animated series.]
It happens in the sixth episode, “Masks,” which follows some of the plotline from “The Blue Spirit” in the original (but in Netflix ATLA fashion, adds in a few extra plotlines from the first season). But one crucial plot point remains the same: While masked, Zuko rescues Aang from Commander Zhao’s clutches.
The Netflix version, though, adds an additional scene between the two of them as they hide out from Zhao and his troops. Aang asks Zuko about the calligraphy brush that he uses; in this version of the story, he’s stolen Zuko’s carefully kept notes about the Avatar and is impressed with Zuko’s penmanship. This sparks a conversation about their childhoods, and it’s generally a lovely little pocket of character development and a chance to see the actors actually deliver on what makes their characters so dang compelling.
The Netflix Aang is sanded off. Gone is his adventurous spirit and his playful nature. Instead, the writers want to pile on the guilt he feels. We’re reminded at every moment that Aang disappeared when the
Read more on polygon.com
