Simply put, Netflix’s take on Avatar: The Last Airbender is bad. At best, the show serves as a constant reminder of how amazing the original Nickelodeon cartoon was. At worst, it makes M. Night Shyamalan‘s 2010 The Last Airbender film feel like a mercy because at least that poor effort was only 2 hours long. Granted, there are some saving graces. Most of the cast is good, with relative newcomer Dallas Liu (PEN15) as Fire Prince Zuko, veteran character actor Ken Leung (Industry) as Commander Zhao, and the great Daniel Dae Kim (Lost) as Fire Lord Ozai being the prime standouts (yes, the show is very pro-Fire Nation, at least in making that the best part of this first season). Additionally, the bending visual effects look fantastic. But none of these pros are enough to bring balance to this world.
From the opening minutes, it becomes clear that this live-action remake aims to be both a dark and violent fantasy epic for the post-Game of Thrones crowd, while also trying to capture the silly and cartoony fun of the source material. However, this balancing act of sorts never fully clicks in the 8-episode season.
Lol surprising no one the show is ass
Rotten tomato score
Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead ruined television.
Fuck grimdark
no, executives ruined television.
True
Game of Thrones went downhill since season 2 and basically got bad with season 5 onward.
It's not even that good.
There were other shows besides it.
Why is it so aspirational? I feel bad for all the kids named Khaleesi
Oh goddamn, you just had to remind me of... that.
Man season 4 was excellent. It's in season 5, when they really diverge from anything in the books, that it takes a nosedive. That said, I can't really remember season 3's events, so maybe 3 wasn't so hot either
Season 3 was the red wedding, basically the climax of the first grand arc.
Dance of Dragons was a weak entry in the series and it showed. By then, it was pretty clear GRRM didn't want to write the main characters anymore and was working up entirely different stories in the margins. Getting away from the source material was Good Aktuly.
The fifth book is titled A Dance With Dragons. Dance of Dragons was the Targaryen civil war hundreds of years before the events of ASoIaF.
Also it was A Feast For Crows with most of the brand new point-of-view characters (Cersei, Brienne, Aeron, Victarion, Arianne, Areo Hotah, Arys Oakheart). ADWD had all the returning fan favorites (Dany, Tyrion, Jon, Bran, Theon). It wasn’t that GRRM was bored of writing the main characters, half of them died in ASOS and the cast had to be rebuilt in AFFC. In addition, ADWD and AFFC was originally intended to be one book but was split due to length, and all of the POVs were split apart - many of the favorites moved to ADWD. George liked writing the main characters just fine.
I wouldn’t be getting your fantasy reviews from someone who doesn’t even know the name of the book folks. Did you even read the books or are you going off show discourse and meta-commentary? The show started getting bad around season 4 and collapsed rapidly the further and further they got from the material. They weren’t even following ADWD at all, over half of it was made up and wrong and obscene (adding SA scenes where they made no sense just for shock value became very common, especially around Sansa and Cersei). They reversed character growth and flanderized everything into a bad cartoon. They had teleporting fleets, super villains with plot armor and atrocious cringy dialogue.
They absolutely needed the books and the show runners were 0 creativity hacks who floundered like idiots once they didn’t have GRRM guiding them.
Man I’m reading dance now, and I love it
That user is full of shit and doesn’t know anything about the books
The whole Quentyn Martell arc was unsatisfying for me. But if you enjoy it, more power to you.
God, the MCU and Game of Thrones really spawned a lot of rip-offs even though they weren't even that good to begin with!
Genuinely enjoyed the first seasons of both. Good acting, good directing, good set design, good pacing, good intrigue... and the fucking costumes in GoT. Every season they got better.
But so much of what was good in these series was the investment of a ton of time and effort and genuine love of the source material. Once that fell away in the later seasons, the shows just collapsed in on themselves until they were nothing but self-referenced tropes. Season 8 of GoT sucked because it was so obviously and disastrously rushed. It was clear the showrunners didn't want to do this job anymore, and it gutted the end product.
Only for the current cycle. Soon the iron will be hot for a "back to basics" fantasy story to get popular, and then all grimdark will be wiped away and we'll be left complaining about how every show has incredibly simplistic and unsatisfying morals.