My HONEST review of ATLA Live Action season 2.
It was good as fuck. And maybe I’m in the minority but to ME it was good asf. Perfect? No. But good for what it was, definitely.
I feel like people don’t understand how difficult it is to condense a season that is 20 something episodes long into seven episodes and for it to make sense in cohesive. and that’s exactly what this show did and that takes incredible skill and commitment first of all.
And I know people are gonna be like “oh but they didn’t need to adapt it. They didn’t need to make it seven episodes long.”
Maybe they wanted to adapt it because they wanted to. Like who cares? Watch it or don’t. Truthfully don’t nobody have to do SHIT but we do things anyway because we want to. That’s literally the reason why we make art in the first place.
But I think ATLA Netflix did a great job with season two and they did a better job with season two this season one—this might be unpopular opinion—the reason for that is is because the original series season one wasn’t that damn good to begin with so it shouldn’t be shocking that the live action season one wasn’t all that great. It was good, but it wasn’t great.
Also, unpopular opinion, I prefer live action Azula than OG series Azula. I think the live action gave her a lot of nuance and depth. She’s a little bit more scarier in my opinion. I feel like in the OG series. She was more entertaining than frightening like it took until season three of her breakdown for her to actually look terrifying to me, but throughout the live action series I think Azula is pretty terrifying and kind of well evil.
And y’all are gonna hate me again, but I’m sorry, but that whole Zuko and Katara scene in the prison was so much more buzzy in the live action than the OG series , like I don’t know what they were thinking. I don’t know if it was the acting that elevated it or the little more crumbs they presented in the scene, but it was really good. It felt way more vulnerable and emotional and just heavier and buzzier like my Zutara senses were buzzing the whole time like it was a high inject that shit into my veins.
Like OK they left some things out, but I think they did a good job of taking certain aspects and then putting them together and it all felt cohesive. It made sense like for example the scene where they went to the library in the spirit world or whatever stuff like that, they combined that with multiple things like Zuko and him getting all sick, then Toph and Aang fighting. It made sense with Jet dying—they condensed all of that into that moment that episode it made sense. It didn’t feel out of place to me. It just made sense.
And another thing I really like about the live action is that they took it a bit that further with some of the horror elements like that owl scene was terrifying. I literally screamed. And then the whole scene with Joo Dee—terrifying.
And then so many beautiful shots and cinematic sequences and how they just framed everything. Everything looked breathtaking. Everything looks so good.
And I can say watching it I felt some of that magic watching avatar for the first time during Covid like I remember feeling that, like oh my God this is happening and THIS is happening. They recreated that for me in a different way, so it’s like I’m experiencing the same thing but also told in a different way or format that still gets me that same feeling.
At least for me. Idk about y’all but I had a blast and can’t wait to see how they’re gonna recreate season 3.
