One thing I wish ATLA had addressed more with regards to the Air Nomads
Early S1 Spoilers:
Despite their pacifist nature, the Southern Temple nomads clearly fought back with lethal intent when attacked. Maybe that was just Gyatso, since he was already a bit of a wild card compared to the others it seemed, but there was definitely a body count.
One thing I wish ATLA had addressed more with regards to the Air Nomads
Early S1 Spoilers:
Despite their pacifist nature, the Southern Temple nomads clearly fought back with lethal intent when attacked. Maybe that was just Gyatso, since he was already a bit of a wild card compared to the others it seemed, but there was definitely a body count.
It reminded me of the end of Quigley Down Under.
"Just because I don't use a revolver, doesn't mean I can't."
Sorce on
+5
Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
gyatso took down at least a dozen firebenders on the day of the comet, by himself
when the time for fucking around has passed, airbenders stop fucking around
The fact that Zaheer never actually managed to beat Tenzin in a one-on-one fight. Prodigy or not, he was new to his powers and going up against the worlds only master airbender, and that experience was shown to count for something. All he could do was keep Tenzin occupied until his friends could come along and just pile on him.
It comes out in their forms as well, I feel. Zaheer moves like he's just fighting and uses the air to add extra range to his punches and kicks. Whereas Tenzin, like, airbends.
gyatso took down at least a dozen firebenders on the day of the comet, by himself
when the time for fucking around has passed, airbenders stop fucking around
It didn't even occur to me until I read that, that those guys were comet powered. Like, I sort of knew because they talk about it at the time, but there's a nearly a full 3 season gap between talking about the comet powered invaders and seeing their bones at the air temple, and actually seeing what the comet does.
gyatso took down at least a dozen firebenders on the day of the comet, by himself
when the time for fucking around has passed, airbenders stop fucking around
It didn't even occur to me until I read that, that those guys were comet powered. Like, I sort of knew because they talk about it at the time, but there's a nearly a full 3 season gap between talking about the comet powered invaders and seeing their bones at the air temple, and actually seeing what the comet does.
One thing I wish ATLA had addressed more with regards to the Air Nomads
Early S1 Spoilers:
Despite their pacifist nature, the Southern Temple nomads clearly fought back with lethal intent when attacked. Maybe that was just Gyatso, since he was already a bit of a wild card compared to the others it seemed, but there was definitely a body count.
A theme in ATLA, and continued in Korra, is that Aang doesn't actually know much about what the nomads were actually like. Because he was the avatar he was treated differently, and his survivor's guilt/childishness (because he was a child) meant that he never really grasped what the Nomads actually were, only what they said they were.
Not only is it a bad adaptation of the source material, it's probably the worst movie I've ever seen, and that's not a hyperbole.
But it made me think of how would someone competent make the movie? What would be cut out? What would need to be changed to fit in the movie and still make sense?
Condensing 20, 22 minute episodes into 2.5 hours would be a challenge, but it's very possible.
It's super easy.
episodes 1 and 2
Montage
North pole finale.
0
PaperLuigi44My amazement is at maximum capacity.Registered Userregular
General Avatar/Korra spoilers re: airbenders
My memory is a bit hazy, but bending the air straight out of people's lungs was in the wheelhouse right? I always imagined that the scary potential of airbending is what prompted the Air Nomad's lifestyle.
My memory is a bit hazy, but bending the air straight out of people's lungs was in the wheelhouse right? I always imagined that the scary potential of airbending is what prompted the Air Nomad's lifestyle.
It's super easy.
episodes 1 and 2
Montage
North pole finale.
Yeah, the sad part is that you would lose all of the world building in an attempt to make a movie. Which means all secondary and side characters get tossed in the trash. You'd lose most of the motivation and character of the characters, and movie 2&3 would be simple action movies instead of grand adventure.
+2
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
If you greenlit it now, you could either get an HBO series and age everybody up, or you could sell it on at least 3 sets of 3 trilogies.
Now, at what point you fail and so it stops the greenlight, I dunno.
More seriously it's easier to list things from season one that are easy decisions to exclude.
The Great Divide - nuff said
The Fortune Teller
Bato of the Water Tribe
The Deserter (maybe?)
Imprisoned
Good, but don't introduce any crucial recurring characters or plot points
The Northern Air Temple
Jet
The Warriors of Kiyoshi
The King of Omashu
The Waterbending Scroll
Do introduce recurring characters or plot points, but could possibly pare down many aspects or held to a later movie (for instance you could have the season 2 visit to Omashu be the first)
For Aang's ( and Zuko's) season 1 journey I'd say the crucial bits are
The opening 2 parter (though there's a fair amount of tv stuff that could be trimmed here)
The Southern Air Temple
Winter Solstice
The Storm or The Blue Spirit
The Waterbending Master
2 part Finale
That's like 3 hours of TV, though you can edit some out due to not needing some episode framing stuff. Also movies are long these days anyway.
It's super easy.
episodes 1 and 2
Montage
North pole finale.
Yeah, the sad part is that you would lose all of the world building in an attempt to make a movie. Which means all secondary and side characters get tossed in the trash. You'd lose most of the motivation and character of the characters, and movie 2&3 would be simple action movies instead of grand adventure.
In order to do any justice to it, you'd have to split each book into 2 movies, I think:
Movie 1: Book 1: Iceberg to The Blue Spirit
Movie 2: Book 1: Fortune teller through Siege of the North
Movie 3: Book 2: Avatar State to The Library
Movie 4: Book 2: The Desert through The Crossroads of Destiny
Movie 5: Book 3: The Awakening through Day of Black Sun
Movie 6: Book 3: Western Air Temple through Sozin's Comet
The first book definitely meanders a lot; and while this is later rationalized as being The Point, still definitely involves a lot of forgettable stuff.
Instead of a live action movie, the smart way to capitalize on Avatar's streaming popularity would be to make a 4th season of the (first) show, like what Clone Wars and Samurai Jack did after the fact. They could do similar storylines to the comics or go their own way completely, people would love it. And if people watch that, do a third, completely new show.
It's super easy.
episodes 1 and 2
Montage
North pole finale.
Nah I think its important that the movies would be kind of a road trip movie. I think the movies core idea or making the movie a series or 3-4 vignettes bookend by the first and last episodes was correct. I don't think the movie tries to do to much so much as it wastes so much time making sure that everybody understands what is happening that sooooo much time is wasted on repeated exposition. As I recall Zhao explains on three separate occasions just what his plan is for no reason.
Actually, I think the creators are in the process of developing a live action series on Netflix that is effectively a remake of the show. Or did I imagine this?
It's super easy.
episodes 1 and 2
Montage
North pole finale.
Yeah, the sad part is that you would lose all of the world building in an attempt to make a movie. Which means all secondary and side characters get tossed in the trash. You'd lose most of the motivation and character of the characters, and movie 2&3 would be simple action movies instead of grand adventure.
In order to do any justice to it, you'd have to split each book into 2 movies, I think:
Movie 1: Book 1: Iceberg to The Blue Spirit
Movie 2: Book 1: Fortune teller through Siege of the North
Movie 3: Book 2: Avatar State to The Library
Movie 4: Book 2: The Desert through The Crossroads of Destiny
Movie 5: Book 3: The Awakening through Day of Black Sun
Movie 6: Book 3: Western Air Temple through Sozin's Comet
I always saw Book 3 as split into two movies (similar to Deathly Hallows), and being cut exactly where you made your cuts.
As for the first book, you'd probably have to cut the Blue Spirit altogether. It's a great character beat for Zuko, but it's too much to include with your attempt to explain the concept of the Avatar and build out the world.
Or, if you did introduce Blue Spirit, then you don't have the reveal until Book 2
I get wanting to do a live action version. Adaptations of existing works have been part of live theater for a long time. See how many times and ways Shakespeare's work has been redone, either faithfully or remixed in some fashion. People want to take a story they love and do it with their own flavor.
And from a purely technical perspective, things like the above conversation about how/if you faithfully turn a full season of TV into a coherent movie are interesting. And I'd love to see (actually good) live action stunts and special effects bending.
My memory is a bit hazy, but bending the air straight out of people's lungs was in the wheelhouse right? I always imagined that the scary potential of airbending is what prompted the Air Nomad's lifestyle.
All of the bending styles have some really scary potential to them when it comes to body horror.
Air has the whole "put a vacuum around your head" thing.
Water has blood bending.
Earth bending affected minerals, minerals potentially including the calcium that makes up a considerable amount of your bone structure. (Really glad we didn't see that on screen, the thought of what that might sound like is... unpleasant)
Fire... well, it's not really hidden that people with the ability to create and control fire are really good at causing severe burns.
Any good adaptation would have to feature the Warriors of Kyoshi, because it would have to feature Suki, who is a criminally underrated member of Team Avatar
Also like
The Kyoshi Warriors and their whole thing plays into the finale of S2 in a pretty big way
Honestly, in retrospect, I think that's the thing that most bothered me about Korra:
A lot of the higher-level bending stuff that's used in that series seems to be less rooted in the motions of actual martial arts than the original series was?
Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
Suki is a fantastic character and it kinda sucks that her first appearance isn't a great episode, fixing that is actually one reason to do another series
Honestly, in retrospect, I think that's the thing that most bothered me about Korra:
A lot of the higher-level bending stuff that's used in that series seems to be less rooted in the motions of actual martial arts than the original series was?
I'm not an expert but the feeling I get from watching the show is that they are still pulling from real world martial arts but from the way it developed in the more recent past. The way that styles started to blend and become less ornate.
Any good adaptation would have to feature the Warriors of Kyoshi, because it would have to feature Suki, who is a criminally underrated member of Team Avatar
Also like
The Kyoshi Warriors and their whole thing plays into the finale of S2 in a pretty big way
The trickiest part of any film adaptation will be how to handle the beginning of the show, where the first 10-11 episodes were very self-contained overall and almost every one contained some information and plot/characterization that paid off later (exception being the Great Divide, which could be skipped entirely without losing anything).
So even if you just go through the Blue Spirit in the first film, you still have to cover:
- Southern water tribe and backstory
- Zuko attack on southern water tribe
- The avatar/avatar state and what it means
- Zhao and the clash with Zuko/Iroh
- Southern air temple, Gyatso, Fire nation attacks on air nomads
- Momo (though, really, Momo could be left out of the story and nothing would be affected except for the Momo story at Ba Sing Se)
- Kyoshi and the Kyoshi warriors
- Omashu and Bumi
- Imprisoned earth benders/earth benders can't bend metal (though minor, they come back later and it's the only earth bending you see aside from Bumi until book 2)
- Spirit world
- Avatar Roku
- Waterbending training, specifically for Katara
- Jet and the freedom fighters
- Zuko's backstory with the scar
- Aang's backstory with leaving
- The Blue Spirit
Seems like a story with a lot of swells and falls, unless you rewrote more of it into a few specific arcs, flushed out the Blue Spirit a bit more (leaving it a mystery to the viewer potentially until later), but it's all super episodic.
Posts
Early S1 Spoilers:
when the time for fucking around has passed, airbenders stop fucking around
And why hasn’t there been a proper Avatar game yet?
The plot is absolute garbage but the combat system does alright, but it unlocks the bending styles over way too long a period
Good luck finding that game, though. Didn't the license expire or something and now you can't buy it any more?
Ok, why isn’t there an Avatar game that I can legally purchase in the present
Because Nickelodeon has bungled the management of this franchise at every single step, so why wouldn't multimedia projects be a part of that?
And this is why my Diablo 3 Monk is named Gyatso
What, you're not satisfied with the 360 game known for its easy to get achievement points?
A theme in ATLA, and continued in Korra, is that Aang doesn't actually know much about what the nomads were actually like. Because he was the avatar he was treated differently, and his survivor's guilt/childishness (because he was a child) meant that he never really grasped what the Nomads actually were, only what they said they were.
Not only is it a bad adaptation of the source material, it's probably the worst movie I've ever seen, and that's not a hyperbole.
But it made me think of how would someone competent make the movie? What would be cut out? What would need to be changed to fit in the movie and still make sense?
Condensing 20, 22 minute episodes into 2.5 hours would be a challenge, but it's very possible.
Coran Attack!
episodes 1 and 2
Montage
North pole finale.
Korra S3 spoilere
Yeah, the sad part is that you would lose all of the world building in an attempt to make a movie. Which means all secondary and side characters get tossed in the trash. You'd lose most of the motivation and character of the characters, and movie 2&3 would be simple action movies instead of grand adventure.
Now, at what point you fail and so it stops the greenlight, I dunno.
Which, I get wanting to wash away the previous live action attempt, but I don’t see the appeal in a straight adaptation of the show
I’d rather get the story of the next Avatar
Or at least some kind of twist or play on our expectations, like how no TMNT series is ever quite the same
I'll give it a chance but I'm not stoked about it
The Great Divide - nuff said
The Fortune Teller
Bato of the Water Tribe
The Deserter (maybe?)
Imprisoned
Good, but don't introduce any crucial recurring characters or plot points
The Northern Air Temple
Jet
The Warriors of Kiyoshi
The King of Omashu
The Waterbending Scroll
Do introduce recurring characters or plot points, but could possibly pare down many aspects or held to a later movie (for instance you could have the season 2 visit to Omashu be the first)
For Aang's ( and Zuko's) season 1 journey I'd say the crucial bits are
The opening 2 parter (though there's a fair amount of tv stuff that could be trimmed here)
The Southern Air Temple
Winter Solstice
The Storm or The Blue Spirit
The Waterbending Master
2 part Finale
That's like 3 hours of TV, though you can edit some out due to not needing some episode framing stuff. Also movies are long these days anyway.
She's so good that it feels like she was always there, even though that is definitely not the case
In order to do any justice to it, you'd have to split each book into 2 movies, I think:
Movie 1: Book 1: Iceberg to The Blue Spirit
Movie 2: Book 1: Fortune teller through Siege of the North
Movie 3: Book 2: Avatar State to The Library
Movie 4: Book 2: The Desert through The Crossroads of Destiny
Movie 5: Book 3: The Awakening through Day of Black Sun
Movie 6: Book 3: Western Air Temple through Sozin's Comet
Nah I think its important that the movies would be kind of a road trip movie. I think the movies core idea or making the movie a series or 3-4 vignettes bookend by the first and last episodes was correct. I don't think the movie tries to do to much so much as it wastes so much time making sure that everybody understands what is happening that sooooo much time is wasted on repeated exposition. As I recall Zhao explains on three separate occasions just what his plan is for no reason.
I always saw Book 3 as split into two movies (similar to Deathly Hallows), and being cut exactly where you made your cuts.
As for the first book, you'd probably have to cut the Blue Spirit altogether. It's a great character beat for Zuko, but it's too much to include with your attempt to explain the concept of the Avatar and build out the world.
Or, if you did introduce Blue Spirit, then you don't have the reveal until Book 2
Coran Attack!
And from a purely technical perspective, things like the above conversation about how/if you faithfully turn a full season of TV into a coherent movie are interesting. And I'd love to see (actually good) live action stunts and special effects bending.
All of the bending styles have some really scary potential to them when it comes to body horror.
Water has blood bending.
Earth bending affected minerals, minerals potentially including the calcium that makes up a considerable amount of your bone structure. (Really glad we didn't see that on screen, the thought of what that might sound like is... unpleasant)
Fire... well, it's not really hidden that people with the ability to create and control fire are really good at causing severe burns.
Also like
A lot of the higher-level bending stuff that's used in that series seems to be less rooted in the motions of actual martial arts than the original series was?
I'm not an expert but the feeling I get from watching the show is that they are still pulling from real world martial arts but from the way it developed in the more recent past. The way that styles started to blend and become less ornate.
The trickiest part of any film adaptation will be how to handle the beginning of the show, where the first 10-11 episodes were very self-contained overall and almost every one contained some information and plot/characterization that paid off later (exception being the Great Divide, which could be skipped entirely without losing anything).
So even if you just go through the Blue Spirit in the first film, you still have to cover:
- Southern water tribe and backstory
- Zuko attack on southern water tribe
- The avatar/avatar state and what it means
- Zhao and the clash with Zuko/Iroh
- Southern air temple, Gyatso, Fire nation attacks on air nomads
- Momo (though, really, Momo could be left out of the story and nothing would be affected except for the Momo story at Ba Sing Se)
- Kyoshi and the Kyoshi warriors
- Omashu and Bumi
- Imprisoned earth benders/earth benders can't bend metal (though minor, they come back later and it's the only earth bending you see aside from Bumi until book 2)
- Spirit world
- Avatar Roku
- Waterbending training, specifically for Katara
- Jet and the freedom fighters
- Zuko's backstory with the scar
- Aang's backstory with leaving
- The Blue Spirit
Seems like a story with a lot of swells and falls, unless you rewrote more of it into a few specific arcs, flushed out the Blue Spirit a bit more (leaving it a mystery to the viewer potentially until later), but it's all super episodic.