"we felt that the Gaang harming the small business owner known as the cabbage guy was sending the wrong message about aspirational entrepreneurship, so we tweaked it to let the gaang support the man to take out a microfinance loan to set up a kiosk in ba sing se's second ring"
The cabbage vendor ended up becoming a multi-national capitalist oligarch. The gaang terrorizing his petite bourgeois ass was an act of proletarian praxis.
The comparison to Game of Thrones sounded a death knell.
that fucking show has done irreparable damage to fantasy media
tbf I don't think GoT will represent 1/100th of the damage LotR did to fantasy media (though for very different reasons that don't reflect as negatively on LotR). Capitalism loves fads, so the influence will fade to nearly the level of background noise in a decade or two (assuming we don't see some monumental event like WW3, which may shunt or perpetuate it depending on how it's absorbed).
Why take a beloved animated series and re make it live action? It was fine! Please come up with new ideas!
We're gonna make a change so that Katara's already a water bending master because in the origional show she faced constant sexism in the northern water tribe and we think we want to tone that down.
We're gonna make a change to the Emperor and the Dai Li so they resemble Xi Xing Ping and the Chinese communist Secret Police. Additionally we're also changing Lake Laogai into a concentration camp for the Sand benders who we've decided to call the Yuhgurs.
We're gonna make subtle changes to the Fire Nation to tone down the historical allegory that portrays them as Japanese Imperialists. To that effect, we're softening their image so they'll be perceived as liberators to the poor brainwashed and oppressed people of the Earth Kingdom.
We're gonna make a minor alteration to the storyline regarding the Airbenders with regards to ensuring historical accuracy by making the Airbenders a religious order that Aang was the born the religious head of, and that that it was Earth Bender death squads that exterminated them who in turn forced a young Aang to flee into that ball of ice.
But actually that ball of Ice is actually the fire nation, and he's there to petition them to reveal to the world the terrible war crimes of the Earth Kingdom.
Also the Firelord is Biden
Here's the deal Jack I'm the most pro-Earth-Kingdom firelord since FDR
Wow, it's almost like the characters come from a society which predisposes them to certain roles and behaviors which could provide the basis for character growth when those expectations are upended. You might even be able to pad out some episodes that way.
No, good TV is when they're frantically sprinting from one disaster to another with no time for dialogue.
God it would be so funny if they made Aang kill during the final fight just so it’ll be gritty
They'd have the Fire Nation just be like the USSR so it's okay.
Fire Nation will 1000% be pure China. Firelord Xi incoming
They already have anti-China shit in the original show. The part with the Dai Li conspiracy and brainwashing.
Actually even before that, the Air nation being 100% based on Western exoticism of Tibet, which apparently means racially predisposed to being peaceful spiritual nomads (who live in one of several settled places nonetheless for some reason) and get genocided because their reincarnation prophecy challenges political goals of empire.
IIRC in some interview the show creators even pull out the line "hate the political party, not the people" when the topic came up
They're taking characterization from everybody and giving Aang a vision to move the plot along? Way to throw shade at the series, ya fucking hack.
"We're gonna improve the writing by flattening the characters and using a cliched plot device!"
Anyway, I don't feel excited for a remake of the show in any form. It didn't need an adaptation. Heck, it doesn't even need an expansion or a sequel.
It just feels like they're smoothing out the edges to make atla an extended universe to fit into Paramount's collection of franchises.
I'm glad people of color are getting work and visibility though.
Also why would you draw comparisons to Game of Thrones, an adaptation infamous for the showrunners ruining it by deviating from the source material?
Also why would you draw comparisons to Game of Thrones, an adaptation infamous for the showrunners ruining it by deviating from the source material?
"I didn't finish watching the series; why, what happens?"
-- Live-action ATLA showrunners, probably
We couldn't just make it a kids show - also we had to "tone down" some things. 
"a live action adaptation of an animation is going to suck like every other adaptation (including 
) has sucked"
Hexbears: 
A Netflix live adaptation of an anime-inspired show, that has already had a very shitty live adaptation. Plus the showrunners apparently want it to be Gambo Thrones. This shit was doomed from the start and whoever suggested it should have been fired.
idk what is wrong with showrunners, it is like they have never enjoyed a TV series in their life, you don't have to race towards the finish line in only 8 episodes, you can pace yourselves
Percy Jackson did this just now by kind of just having Percy realise the next thing to do out of nowhere. They did this every episode after episode one, sometimes multiple times per episode. Just chill. Let it happen. It's OK. Calm down.
We're going to take this beloved story and remove everything that made it charming, I'm sure everyone is going to dig it!
That gives him much more narrative compulsion going forward, as opposed to, "Let's make a detour and go ride the elephant koi"
It's been a while since I've seen ATLA, but wasn't goofing off like that a major aspect of Aang's personality?
Just completely throwing away the characters in all but name and looks, and substituting them with bland husks with no personality.
Yeah, the entire point is that he's unwilling to accept his responsibility as the Avatar, so he goes on these side adventures to goof off.
Plus, this serves the incredibly important function of giving the show an excuse to flesh out its world building.
Yeah, he's coping with the reality that his life was left behind a hundred years ago when he accidentally sealed himself in ice for that long. He's going to places he'd visited and witnesses how they changed in his absence. He's trying to do those fun things because he wants to feel like how things were before he was revealed as the avatar.
Say what you will about the themes, but they knew what they were doing with the characterization.
These are not the reason it’s going to be bad.
It’s going to be bad because it will try and be gritty in a setting that is goofy for the most part and a BEAR is a weird animal because it’s just a plain old bear.
Yes, avatar can be serious at times, but the characters.
These are not the reason it’s going to be bad.
It's going to be bad for the reasons you say, but removing the stories and character arcs that deal with sexism and patriarchy is one of the reasons it will be bad. I'm sorry, but I stand by that.
wouldnt it be funny if this was all from a producer or whatev thats just really bad at interviews and they're overstating what thry did to make it seem more enticing/their own?
The original animates shows producers bailed out on helping because it was going so poorly and it kept getting delayed for issues. I have high expectations of a dumpster fire, but I'll at least watch the first episode.
It obviously isn't because of 
, and I don't believe it's just something intrinsic to adapting one medium to another (notable exceptions like Dune notwithstanding (it's all internal monologue and nuance, and you really can't do much with that in a video format (I don't consider the old Dune movie to be the same thing really, but it's still a masterpiece in its own right and dear to me))), because I've seen that done very well before, and I've never gotten a satisfying answer why this keeps happening.
They get some guy who wears those Hollywood-ass glasses to every interview (with the squareish trapezoidal frames of transparent plastic), with that Hollywood-ass haircut (not-short-not-long tousled-ish) who admits and/or demonstrates that they don't understand or even like the source material, and lo and behold it shows through in their writing.
Check me if I'm being boomerish but I just can't buy that any of these shows/movies/media are getting by on any semblance of merit, nor a genuine preponderance of 
types (who I'm skeptical exist as such, I think they're just movie enjoyers who take what they can get) who want this either. I think the media companies are just that good at gaslighting and advertisement, then patting themselves on the back about what a good job they did.
Often the casting, costuming, effects and so on are on point, obviously costing several millions, but it's built on a foundation of "This is what MATH can do! (applause)" writing that I feel absolutely comfortable critiquing because, yeah, I could do better than that actually and I'm a terrible writer. Why not just.. write a good show instead?
I think that writing in general is just way more subject to being diluted and going bad than other aspects of film/tv-making, mainly because it's harder to judge good writing from bad for most people.
So half the writing team get swapped out for nepo cases because the producers can't tell the difference. Half the script ends up subject to the demands of said producers which makes things worse because they think they're better writers than the people they hired to write. The fact that there's a "writing team" at all prevents a strong authorial vision from existing - this isn't a huge problem in episodic TV, since each episode can kind of stand on its own, but for modern streaming shows and movies it's a big one.
But... Sokka's sexism was a character flaw. They treated it as such in the show. He gets humbled and moves past it!
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Here's a list of tons of leftist movies.
