Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024)

Our Review

Netflix’s live action take on the impossible: adapting one of the most beloved animated series ever made. Gordon Cormier leads a mostly excellent young cast through a gorgeously realized world of bending nations, and when it works, firebending on a real budget is genuinely spectacular. The heart episodes land, the score honors the original, and season one covers the Water book with real respect.

The debates are real too: some pacing choices, some casting discourse, and the eternal question of whether anything needed to replace the cartoon. It doesn’t replace it, but as a companion piece it earned its renewal for the Earth book.

Our take: 8/10.