Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender live-action remake has created an astounding hype since its announcement. Based on Nickelodeon’s acclaimed action adventure of the same name, the upcoming Netflix show was reportedly maintaining loyalty to its source material.
However, certain changes were inevitable. Particularly, the network could not adhere to one trait of a major character in the show prompting the live-action creators to change it. Still, the change involving Sokka is significant.
Avatar: The Last Airbender Made One Subtle Change
Ian Ousley joined Avatar: The Last Airbender to play one of the show’s primary characters, Sokka. Ahead of the premier, the 21-year-old actor recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly alongside his co-stars from the show revealing the details of his character. To begin with, Ousley was more keen on soaking Sokka in laughter, “I wanted to make sure that Sokka is funny,” he told the outlet. But making him funny wasn’t necessarily a tough job as the animated character is known to have a bit of chuckles on his face. But “there’s more weight with realism in every way,” the actor added. His co-star Kiawentiio Tarbell, 17, who played Katara in the upcoming show gave the readers one important change in his character arc.
“I feel like we also took out the element of how sexist [Sokka] was. I feel like there were a lot of moments in the original show that were iffy,” she told the outlet.
Ousley accepted the changes with open arms, “Yeah, totally. There are things that were redirected just because it might play a little differently [in live action],” he responded to Tarbell’s comment on his character. As of now, it’s hard to predict every aspect of the character but the subtle change indicates that Netflix is more keen on playing it safe than to invite any negating controversy.
Emotion As A Core In Avatar: The Last Airbender
For the primary cast members of the live-action remake, the show will dwell on human emotions in a far greater way than the original series. “I think we wanted to make them feel like real people with real emotions,” Dallas James Liu who played Prince Zuko told EW. “Avatar: The Last Airbender is a fantasy world so I think we really got to have fun in bringing all of the bending all of the unique animals and uh the environments to life,” he added. Tarbell agreed.
“Yeah I think giving it a new level of emotion in the OG you can’t really see as much emotion on a face like as you can in like real life so it’s like it’s it’s fun to bring that to life as well and like build new layers into scenes that we already know and love, you know?”
Again, Ousley believes the core human emotional values come naturally, “I think it kind of just happens naturally,” he said joining the conversation.
“Like with uh the way that the story is told where we’re having more relationships and getting to see like some of those like conversations. And like building character on its own, um, it’s cool to like, be able to be funny in a in a way that like real people would be funny and uh feel those real emotions of like what the character is actually going through.”
The show also stars Gordon Cormier, Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Elizabeth Yu, and Daniel Dae Kim. Albert Kim-created and Bonnie Benwick’s executive-produced fantasy live-action comedy adventure series will debut on Netflix on 22 February 2024.
