Netflix has been enjoying the wave of the live-action adaptations’s success since One Piece. And now the streaming giant recently released another live-action adaptation of a popular hit anime series. The series in discussion Avatar: The Last Airbender was released on February 22, 2024, and is adapted from the popular animated show by Nickelodeon.
While the series did not enjoy as much success as the original animated series, it got quite a few positive reviews, and fans of the original series seemed to be happy with the adaptation considering its score on rotten tomatoes. As it’s only been a few days since the release, predicting the overall response would not be valid.
However, looking at the potential success, many fans believed that the reason for the success of the series was because it dared to show the darker side of the series that the original anime didn’t do. One of the showrunners of the live-action adaptation talked about this change recently in an interview.
Avatar: The Last Airbender Showrunner Talked About The Changes Made in the Adaptation
As the series was an adaptation of the original anime, it had quite a few changes that were not seen in the anime series. These changes were quite evident as it depicted that the story had a different sense to it. In an interview with Variety, Avatar: The Last Airbender Showrunner Albert Kim talked about the changes and why it was necessary to make these changes.
He stated:
“It was really important that we start that way. It’s a very clear signal that this isn’t a note-for-note translation. It’s within the mythology of the original, so fans will know what we’re doing, but we’re going off in a slightly different direction.”
According to Kim, it was necessary for him to make these changes so that the audience could understand that it was not an exact replica of the anime series. He wanted to make it clear that the series was bound to go off in a different direction and follow a more mature and dark theme that was a big distinction from the anime.
Albert Kim Talks About the Reason Behind Making The Series Much Darker Than Original
Kim also talked about how the live-action understood the dangers of bending and how it could get darker if the series could have explained that to the audience. He wanted to adapt the dark tone that fans see in the latter part of the original from the beginning itself.
He said:
“It wasn’t about aging it up. It was about setting the stakes for this world. One of the things we wanted to do was show how dangerous bending can be. Firebending should feel dangerous; it should feel something that could hurt you.”
He further stated:
“Also, as fans know, the tone of the original series starts shifting in the later seasons. It gets to some pretty dark places, so we had the benefit of hindsight. We knew that the fans understood where the show could go, so we were able to just start off in that place.”
According to Kim, as the original series already showed some dark elements in the later part of the series, the adapted version wanted to stay true to the original anime, which is why it started setting the dark tone from the beginning.
You can watch Avatar: The Last Airbender on Netflix.
