I had the amazing opportunity to attend the premier for the new Netflix adaptation of the beloved animated classic, Avatar the Last Airbender, where I was able to watch the first episode of this new series early, as well as see some of the cast, and walk the golden carpet for the premiere. It was a very cool experience and I had a blast!

I want to preface these thoughts with a note that I am still looking forward to watching the whole series when it is released on Netflix, and I only got to see the first episode of the 8-episode series.

I had a rollercoaster of expectations going into this, from low, to high and around and around again. Like many fans, I was originally optimistic when the initial announcement came out, then less so when the original creators left. The first trailer drop though did give me hope and a lot of excitement! As such I went into the premiere with that same excitement from the trailer.

It was clear from the way the cast, crew and executives at Netflix talked about this project before the premier started that there is a lot of love and passion put into this adaptation.

I really did enjoy the costuming, sets, and overall aesthetic of the show, it did feel like they took the original designs and brought them fully into live-action, which I appreciated as a cosplayer myself who has crafted some Avatar costumes before.

I’ve heard some complaints on the digital aspects of set like backgrounds and such, but I didn’t see any blaring issues with these. Some of the CGI and visual effects relating to bending and Appa were a little off-seeming to me, but not distractingly so.

Where it was rougher was the script, unfortunately. It seemed that the writers were trying to not use lines from the original show, but didn’t do well in improving on the show (which to be fair, can the original script be improved upon?) this also made it difficult to judge the acting fairly, as the actors were working with some really clunky wording.

They added a lot to this episode, which made the whole episode’s pacing feel off and rushed where it shouldn’t be rushed. I know pilots commonly have pacing issues, and I’m hopeful we’ll see improvements in pacing in the rest of the episodes!

That isn’t to say what they added wasn’t a good addition. The biggest addition to the episode was scenes at the Southern Air Temple surrounding an air nomad celebration of what would become known as Sozin’s Commet. I enjoyed the time spent at a lively Southern Air Temple, but also didn’t feel it added much to the plot beyond showing us more of the power Airbenders have.

Some of the characters had characterization changes that I personally wasn’t a fan of. Earlier reports on Sokka’s early episode sexism being removed garnered outcry from the fandom, and for good reason as that was a big aspect of Sokka’s early episode character growth. In the end, I don’t think removing this aspect from Sokka undercut his own growth, but it did feel like it affected Katara’s negatively.

Sokka and Katara’s conversations didn’t feel as authentic as they did in the orginal animated series, in which the orginal series managed to capture the sibling dynamic extremely well, but again the script here fell flat. Katara’s bending ability was also wildly inconsistent throughout the episode.

Overall, my initial personal thoughts are that this was a series that was made by fans of the series, but not those who truly understand the wider world of Avatar the Last Airbender that Mike and Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino have created.

As I said earlier, I will be watching the full series when it releases and am still interested in seeing where they take it over the 8-episodes of season 1, but ultimately I have come to the conclusion that ATLA is not made to be adapted. The original is to good already and there isn’t much if any room for improvement.

For now, I turn much of my hope for new ATLA content to the stuff coming out of Avatar Studios Bryan and Michael, as well as the upcoming Avatar Roku novels by Randy Ribay.