Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender Exec Teases New Take on the Avatar State
Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender is changing the rules of Aang's Avatar State, says its showrunner.
Avatar: The Last Airbender will soon be premiering a new take on the classic animated series with Netflix later this month, and the executive producer behind the live-action series is teasing a new take on Aang's Avatar State. Avatar: The Last Airbender's new Netflix series has been inching closer to its premiere, and in the weeks leading up to its debut those behind the new take have been teasing how much they're adjusting to the original story. This includes bigger and smaller elements, and it seems one thing that will also be tweaked is Aang's powered up Avatar State.
Avatar: The Last Airbender will be releasing with Netflix later this month, and showrunner and executive producer Albert Kim opened up to IGN about some of the adjustments and changes they've made to the original series to fit this new live-action serialized drama format. One of the changes is something that Kim teases that fans might not actually pick up as he explains that the team has changed the "rules" of Aang's Avatar State for this new Netflix series and "streamlined" how it works.
Changes to the Avatar State?
When asked about whether the Avatar State was hard to pull off in Netflix's Avatar: The Last Airbender, Kim explained that it was more about tweaking the rules of how it works, "Narratively speaking, the Avatar state, like Appa in a way, kind of has somewhat fluid rules in the animated series. And when you take a look really closely at when and how can Aang go into the Avatar state, it changes a little bit throughout. So we were very cautious about seeing that too much in the first season."
In approaching its uses in the first season, Kim explains that they adjusted for their story purposes, "...[I]n fact, we ended up tweaking the rules a little bit for our story purposes. And it'll be interesting to see whether fans pick up on that and what they think of that. But we kind of streamlined a lot of those rules, and came up with something I worked across on it." In terms of its visual presentation, executive producer and VFX supervisor Jabbar Raisani explained how the live-action series is interpreting the transformation.
"I mean, it comes down a lot to what's happening around Aang," Raisani began. "Anytime he's in the Avatar State, he's generating a lot of 'energy,' I'll call it. And that energy may be whipping things around him, it might be picking things up. You can feel the strength of what he's doing. It also comes down to sound design, making it really, really feel like it has a lot of power. It doesn't matter if he's a 12-year-old boy or a 50-year-old man, he feels like he's big and he's powerful. And a lot of that comes down to the VFX design and the sound design."
So visually it seems like the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender will be fulfilling the original take on the Avatar State, but how it works might be different. What do you want to see from the Avatar State in the new Netflix series? Let us know all of your thoughts about it in the comments! You can even reach out to me directly about all things animation and other cool stuff @Valdezology on X (formerly known as Twitter)!