Just Like Us, Ken Leung Can’t Keep His Avatars Straight
Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender is now streaming (for some reason) and the responses are coming in hard, fast, and exactly how you’d expect them.
Indeed, if you were to take every animated television series and order them by how much they needed an episodic live-action adaptation, you’d have to look pretty far down the list to find Avatar: The Last Airbender, which has a massive and devoted fanbase.
But apparently, the original show’s popularity hasn’t eclipsed everyone’s radar, because Ken Leung, who plays Commander Zhao in the new series, originally thought he was joining James Cameron’s franchise, according to recent remarks he made to Deadline.
“When I first heard it was for Avatar, I thought I was going to be blue. Looking back, I kind of love that I came in blank because when you have ideas, you can corrupt a pure process.”
Not to speak for Leung, of course, but I reckon airdropping into Pandora would have been far more preferable than suiting up for an entirely unnecessary live-action adaptation of a property that, quite famously, was mercilessly dragged the last time someone tried to make a live-action version.
Seriously, Netflix: what do you possibly have to gain from taking a crack at this story, specifically? What aspect of The Last Airbender do you sincerely believe you could pull off better than the original show? One Piece was a mostly understandable adaptation. The 1000+ episode anime is overwhelming for newcomers, to say nothing of how much uniquely genuine care was put into its live-action adaptation. but there’s absolutely no logistical or creative reason to warrant the existence of the live-action Last Airbender show. If some folks write off the 61-episode original series solely because it’s animated, then they deserve to miss out on it.
And yes, I know the actual reason for this endeavor has to do with guaranteed viewership numbers by way of curious, soon-to-be-disappointed fans (and curious newcomers), but that only exacerbates my point.
(featured image: Robert Falconer/Netflix)
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