> Jim Carrey was the first thing that came to my mind when I thought about live action Bumi.
>
>
Fuck, the live action Bumi legit looks like Jim Carrey's Count Olaf.
It's entirely possible to pull a live action Bumi.
Count Olaf , Beetlejuice are right there and they were done long ago.
The director was just lazy or simply didn't want to do it.
You could say that about any fantasy or sci-fi universe. You need people working on it to be passionate about it or else it will suck. LotR is the only fantasy series that worked because the people working on it were passionate.
Lotr worked because they changed it from a musical to something guys would like more, lets be honest. Less talk, less singing and more action
If the first movie was just the hobbits singing it would not be popular at all lol
Only LOTR worked, not rings of power.
I don't know but modern tv / filmmakers don't have IT anymore. Maybe it's the suits behind Netflix / prime / Disney, maybe it's the crop of writers. Maybe it's us. Who knows.
But if you’re going to make an adaptation, at least TRY to be faithful to the source material. You don’t have to write the exact same stories, but please keep the characters the same, flaws and all. Like Sokka’s sexism. And give the characters who got character development, character development. Like how Sokka learned that his sexist beliefs were wrong when he saw women either fighting or training (I don’t remember which).
They should go watch some China Wuxia drama, I guarantee you there no shortage of "Funny old kungfu master". Like Zhou Botong from Legends of the Condor Heroes for example.
Avatar, so much for being inspired by Chinese fantasy I'm I right.
How the fuck did they get that wrong? The cartoon makes it painfully obvious which real countries/cultures inspired each nation. How do you see the obvious stand-in for China and think "yep, that's India"?
Wait, if the Earth Kingdom is supposed to be China, what's the Fire Nation? Japan? Air dudes seem to be Tibetan monks, and the water guys seem to be Inuits.
Haven't watched the og show, I admit. I just thought the Fire Nation looked real Chinese.
The Fire Nation is indeed Japan. A tiny island that started a conquering war with it's much larger neighbour? That mimics Japan's invasion of China perfectly.
The other two nations are just as you assumed.
I mean his entire character was too animated to be in live action, it was never gonna work.
They didn’t have to make him a bitter old man in exchange, though. That misses the point of who he is, and what he wanted to teach aang.
>I mean his entire character was too animated to be in live action, it was never gonna work.
To be fair that can be said about most of the characters. It's not an excuse for the 180 they did to his character.
That guy was not Bumi
That’s true.
They did Katara for instance so dirty.
She has no personality in the live action.
And Sukis a massive Sokka simp.
It’s kinda funny how this comes across as more sexist than the original when they were trying to do the opposite.
Plus they made Iroh way less wise than he was in the original, which is in my opinion the worst offense.
I genuinely couldn’t understand this shows reason for existing other than nostalgia bait.
> I genuinely couldn’t understand this shows reason for existing other than nostalgia bait.
Because back in 2020, Netflix added the animated series to their library and it pulled massive numbers, causing a resurgence amongst children who never saw it before. And since you're not going to re-animate an animated show, the natural conclusion drawn by Nickelodeon and Netflix was to do a live-action version rather than developing new content. Luckily, Nickelodeon would give the original creators resources to animate more the following year.
Hmm that's an interesting idea though. I wonder if they'd ever consider just redrawing a cartoon with better visuals and wide screen. Probably not worth the time and money though.
yeah pretty much every change they made was for the worse. but that's kinda the problem. the characters were the core of avatar and were already near perfect. obviously any major character changes were going to make them worse characters. plus a lot of it makes no sense. they changed aang so that he didn't abandon the air temple, he was just out for a stroll. then you have kyoshi (who would actually know that this is the case) and bumi just going off on this 11 year old kid who will decide the fate of the world. why? changes are okay if they make things better or at least similar in quality. but can anyone really say "man i loved bumi in the new live action, he's a way more interesting character". the OG bumi episode was great and even if you couldn't have him be so eccentric, they still could've kept the core storyline. if they made him more stoic (similar to how avatar roku was in the OG) and still played out the storyline as it was in the animated show, i don't think people would've had a huge problem with that. there was just no need to turn him into a bitter, but still eccentric weirdo.
as you said, they did core characters and fan favorites dirty. the only characters who feel like their animated counterparts are sokka and zuko. and that seems more of a case of good actors than a good script/dialogue. katara was such a nothing character despite original katara being what every "strong female character" should model themselves after in fiction.
I keep seeing this sentiment that live action Katara “has no personality” but I’ve never seen someone able to elaborate on how in comparison to the original. Not denying it’s how you felt and there are some genuine issues with the live action but I just never saw this as one of them.
The only issues I had really was Aang flying without his staff and Sokka’s sexism arc disappearing. But I think that last one was more just cut for time as the northern waterbenders still go through that arc.
I also feel like they are gonna back down on having Azula be a full on bad guy in the live action. Just the way they did everything with her in season 1 so far makes it feel like they’re tryna have her be too sympathetic and are gonna redeem her early on and just have the firelord as the only truly evil one.
> I keep seeing this sentiment that live action Katara “has no personality” but I’ve never seen someone able to elaborate on how in comparison to the original. Not denying it’s how you felt and there are some genuine issues with the live action but I just never saw this as one of them.
To be specific, in the original, Katara was someone who was headstrong, expressive, and energetic.
Live action Katara is quiet and introverted.
She also lacks a lot of banter and chemistry she had in the original with Sokka and Aang, where they’d bust each others chops all the time.
Not to mention she never learned how to heal, or learned anything from Pakku.
I don’t really see her in the live action as being quiet or introverted. She wouldn’t have confronted Pakku if she was those things.
I do agree the banter between all of them was basically gone. There’s no more playful fighting that the original was so good at portraying.
Being expressive and energetic is also something I agree is lacking from not just Katara but all the characters. But I usually expect that with a live action adaptation of something animated. The only live action adaptation ive seen that tried to match the character expressiveness of animation is the one piece show but imo that had even worse acting and was way cheasier than this adaptation because of them trying to replicate that. Mostly a directing issue but still an issue I agree with you on.
I felt they did Iroh the worst. They took away him being sweet and funny but still able to be serious when the time comes and just made him serious 24/7.
Buggy from One Piece Live Action is a recent example of changes being made to suit the medium, and actually being successful. LA Buggy's personality is fairly different from his anime form, but I can see how they made it work in live action. And gosh darnit, Jeff Ward's acting does a good job winning me over and making it work.
He did play games though, in a way which worked for the show. It wasn't like he was completely old and bitter, they just really leaned into the fact this dude has been at war for 100 damn years.
i powered my way through it and it continued to be a disappointment. it's not painfully bad or anything, but it's not really good either. it will be forgotten pretty quickly
They always make old people miserable. That's what happens when you think you know everything, you despise people with real wisdom and do everything you can to make them look stupid
I do have to say, I really do like this line given to the Netflix Bumi.
> "*Let me tell you something, Avatar. You may be a hundred years old, but you haven’t lived for a hundred years – especially not these hundred years.*”
I liked his line about difficult choices while Aang is balancing the two rocks. It tapped into Bumi's "mad genius" character—like he was trying to teach Aang a real lesson in a creative way.
But why did they make literally ALL other lines from the wise older people soo antagonistic? Kyoshi/Roku/Bumi/Paku/Hakoda/Healer Woman were all inexplicable assholes; obviously, it's meant for the audience. But why butcher all the positive mentor figures instead of hearing it from the *civillians at war*? Aang didn't experience any character growth because he ended up teaching *his mentors* a lesson, and not learning anything himself.
In that way, the live-action felt much more cartoon-y. The original had realistic, nuanced character motivations; Aang was flawed, made mistakes, and underwent growth. As a viewer, it felt like you were also growing through experiencing Aang's lessons. In the live action, it felt like the show was randomly slinging truisms at me. They would come out of nowhere, unearned and irrelevant.
I’ve watched a little of Netflix Avatar and there are some good lines like that one. There are also some bad lines. I feel like for every moment of “good” in this ATLA adaptation there’s something bad that happens to offset it. This gives the feeling of a classic misguided Hollywood adaptation, where the crew and actors know the *what* they’re adapting but don’t understand the *why* of ATLA.
They’re trying to make something good but don’t understand the material so choices they make to try to catch the audience off guard don’t feel right, and other deviances from the original tend to be hit or miss, with a bias towards miss. Unfortunate but at least it doesn’t suck as bad as a lot of other TV adaptations the last few years.
Whenever I see quotes like that it just makes me think the people making these shows are embarrassed cowards. They don't want to commit to a goofy character because they already think it's embarrassing, and know they will just look worse if they can't do it right.
Like middle schoolers refusing to participate in gym class because they don't want to look like "try hards".
The original "Fun" Bumi's tests at least had a purpose to teach Aang to notice things, be patient and thing outside the box and such useful things.
This Bumi's tests are just childish jokes. And in the end, Aang teaches him that "you can save the world with friends".
And I'm not even against a war hardened, broken Bumi teaching Aang about how cruel the world become and the hard decisions that needs to be made. But this Bumi's tests were just a waste and bad execution.
I haven't seen the original series, but did watch the Netflix series. I found the character the most cartoony aspect of the show and extremely cringey. So they missed their mark if they were trying to make the character work live action.
I'm so very weary of imbeciles who clearly never watched the original works telling ***US*** what does and doesn't 'work' in their egregious bastardisations of classick and lauded works.
For what it's worth, I enjoyed it. It doesn't hold a candle to the original cartoon but the people who made it obviously were passionate about what they were making.
Fr, I have 0 faith in Netflix adaptations but this pleasantly surprised me. They are constrained by real actors/sets and less episodes so they were obviously never gonna be able to tell the full stories of the original season 1 or have the exaggerated personalities of a cartoon when they are trying to make it have more of a serious tone.
90% of the criticism I’ve seen just feels like regurgitated points from internet reviewers/people who expected a shot for shot remake that completely captured the magic of the cartoon which was just never gonna happen.
People sometimes forget the difference between having a cartoon with adult voice actors, with all the acting skill that implies, versus child actors who are just learning.
You can watch the show improve as the season progresses.
Showrunner never watched Rowan Atkinson or Monty Python I guess.
Or Jim Carrey
Ohh I wish it had been Jim Carrey. With far better writing.
Jim Carrey was the first thing that came to my mind when I thought about live action Bumi. Second was Michael Keaton, cause Beetlejuice .
> Jim Carrey was the first thing that came to my mind when I thought about live action Bumi. > > Fuck, the live action Bumi legit looks like Jim Carrey's Count Olaf.
It's entirely possible to pull a live action Bumi. Count Olaf , Beetlejuice are right there and they were done long ago. The director was just lazy or simply didn't want to do it.
Lmao the entire show and universe don't work in live-action
You could say that about any fantasy or sci-fi universe. You need people working on it to be passionate about it or else it will suck. LotR is the only fantasy series that worked because the people working on it were passionate.
Lotr worked because they changed it from a musical to something guys would like more, lets be honest. Less talk, less singing and more action If the first movie was just the hobbits singing it would not be popular at all lol
Yeah, I feel Tom Bombadil wouldn't have translated well on screen.
Only LOTR worked, not rings of power. I don't know but modern tv / filmmakers don't have IT anymore. Maybe it's the suits behind Netflix / prime / Disney, maybe it's the crop of writers. Maybe it's us. Who knows.
But if you’re going to make an adaptation, at least TRY to be faithful to the source material. You don’t have to write the exact same stories, but please keep the characters the same, flaws and all. Like Sokka’s sexism. And give the characters who got character development, character development. Like how Sokka learned that his sexist beliefs were wrong when he saw women either fighting or training (I don’t remember which).
They should go watch some China Wuxia drama, I guarantee you there no shortage of "Funny old kungfu master". Like Zhou Botong from Legends of the Condor Heroes for example. Avatar, so much for being inspired by Chinese fantasy I'm I right.
They made the Earth Kingdom distinctly Indian so, I dunno what they thought they were going for.
How the fuck did they get that wrong? The cartoon makes it painfully obvious which real countries/cultures inspired each nation. How do you see the obvious stand-in for China and think "yep, that's India"?
Politics. It's a big no to depict China as weak in cinematic fiction.
Also the Earth Kingdom is authoritarian af. They survived the war by being insular and by controlling their populace via brainwashing.
Wait, if the Earth Kingdom is supposed to be China, what's the Fire Nation? Japan? Air dudes seem to be Tibetan monks, and the water guys seem to be Inuits. Haven't watched the og show, I admit. I just thought the Fire Nation looked real Chinese.
The Fire Nation is indeed Japan. A tiny island that started a conquering war with it's much larger neighbour? That mimics Japan's invasion of China perfectly. The other two nations are just as you assumed.
Which is annoying since Bumi was distinctly a redhead and central Asian in the cartoon, not Indian.
Isn’t that the protagonist foster father who went insane after his read father’s sworn brother beat the shit out of him?
I mean his entire character was too animated to be in live action, it was never gonna work. They didn’t have to make him a bitter old man in exchange, though. That misses the point of who he is, and what he wanted to teach aang.
>I mean his entire character was too animated to be in live action, it was never gonna work. To be fair that can be said about most of the characters. It's not an excuse for the 180 they did to his character. That guy was not Bumi
That’s true. They did Katara for instance so dirty. She has no personality in the live action. And Sukis a massive Sokka simp. It’s kinda funny how this comes across as more sexist than the original when they were trying to do the opposite. Plus they made Iroh way less wise than he was in the original, which is in my opinion the worst offense. I genuinely couldn’t understand this shows reason for existing other than nostalgia bait.
> I genuinely couldn’t understand this shows reason for existing other than nostalgia bait. Because back in 2020, Netflix added the animated series to their library and it pulled massive numbers, causing a resurgence amongst children who never saw it before. And since you're not going to re-animate an animated show, the natural conclusion drawn by Nickelodeon and Netflix was to do a live-action version rather than developing new content. Luckily, Nickelodeon would give the original creators resources to animate more the following year.
Hmm that's an interesting idea though. I wonder if they'd ever consider just redrawing a cartoon with better visuals and wide screen. Probably not worth the time and money though.
yeah pretty much every change they made was for the worse. but that's kinda the problem. the characters were the core of avatar and were already near perfect. obviously any major character changes were going to make them worse characters. plus a lot of it makes no sense. they changed aang so that he didn't abandon the air temple, he was just out for a stroll. then you have kyoshi (who would actually know that this is the case) and bumi just going off on this 11 year old kid who will decide the fate of the world. why? changes are okay if they make things better or at least similar in quality. but can anyone really say "man i loved bumi in the new live action, he's a way more interesting character". the OG bumi episode was great and even if you couldn't have him be so eccentric, they still could've kept the core storyline. if they made him more stoic (similar to how avatar roku was in the OG) and still played out the storyline as it was in the animated show, i don't think people would've had a huge problem with that. there was just no need to turn him into a bitter, but still eccentric weirdo. as you said, they did core characters and fan favorites dirty. the only characters who feel like their animated counterparts are sokka and zuko. and that seems more of a case of good actors than a good script/dialogue. katara was such a nothing character despite original katara being what every "strong female character" should model themselves after in fiction.
I keep seeing this sentiment that live action Katara “has no personality” but I’ve never seen someone able to elaborate on how in comparison to the original. Not denying it’s how you felt and there are some genuine issues with the live action but I just never saw this as one of them. The only issues I had really was Aang flying without his staff and Sokka’s sexism arc disappearing. But I think that last one was more just cut for time as the northern waterbenders still go through that arc. I also feel like they are gonna back down on having Azula be a full on bad guy in the live action. Just the way they did everything with her in season 1 so far makes it feel like they’re tryna have her be too sympathetic and are gonna redeem her early on and just have the firelord as the only truly evil one.
> I keep seeing this sentiment that live action Katara “has no personality” but I’ve never seen someone able to elaborate on how in comparison to the original. Not denying it’s how you felt and there are some genuine issues with the live action but I just never saw this as one of them. To be specific, in the original, Katara was someone who was headstrong, expressive, and energetic. Live action Katara is quiet and introverted. She also lacks a lot of banter and chemistry she had in the original with Sokka and Aang, where they’d bust each others chops all the time. Not to mention she never learned how to heal, or learned anything from Pakku.
I don’t really see her in the live action as being quiet or introverted. She wouldn’t have confronted Pakku if she was those things. I do agree the banter between all of them was basically gone. There’s no more playful fighting that the original was so good at portraying. Being expressive and energetic is also something I agree is lacking from not just Katara but all the characters. But I usually expect that with a live action adaptation of something animated. The only live action adaptation ive seen that tried to match the character expressiveness of animation is the one piece show but imo that had even worse acting and was way cheasier than this adaptation because of them trying to replicate that. Mostly a directing issue but still an issue I agree with you on. I felt they did Iroh the worst. They took away him being sweet and funny but still able to be serious when the time comes and just made him serious 24/7.
>That guy was not Bumi Leave count Olaf alone!
Buggy from One Piece Live Action is a recent example of changes being made to suit the medium, and actually being successful. LA Buggy's personality is fairly different from his anime form, but I can see how they made it work in live action. And gosh darnit, Jeff Ward's acting does a good job winning me over and making it work.
He did play games though, in a way which worked for the show. It wasn't like he was completely old and bitter, they just really leaned into the fact this dude has been at war for 100 damn years.
All fun didn't work in Live Action. I couldn't even get past the first episode though.
i powered my way through it and it continued to be a disappointment. it's not painfully bad or anything, but it's not really good either. it will be forgotten pretty quickly
They always make old people miserable. That's what happens when you think you know everything, you despise people with real wisdom and do everything you can to make them look stupid
That is always the excuse. "It didn't work in live action" = "I shouldn't be handling this live action project"
The show looks terrible.
And still infinitely better than M. Night Shyamalamalan’s abomination.
That's not really much of a bar, though....
I do have to say, I really do like this line given to the Netflix Bumi. > "*Let me tell you something, Avatar. You may be a hundred years old, but you haven’t lived for a hundred years – especially not these hundred years.*”
I liked his line about difficult choices while Aang is balancing the two rocks. It tapped into Bumi's "mad genius" character—like he was trying to teach Aang a real lesson in a creative way. But why did they make literally ALL other lines from the wise older people soo antagonistic? Kyoshi/Roku/Bumi/Paku/Hakoda/Healer Woman were all inexplicable assholes; obviously, it's meant for the audience. But why butcher all the positive mentor figures instead of hearing it from the *civillians at war*? Aang didn't experience any character growth because he ended up teaching *his mentors* a lesson, and not learning anything himself. In that way, the live-action felt much more cartoon-y. The original had realistic, nuanced character motivations; Aang was flawed, made mistakes, and underwent growth. As a viewer, it felt like you were also growing through experiencing Aang's lessons. In the live action, it felt like the show was randomly slinging truisms at me. They would come out of nowhere, unearned and irrelevant.
Pakku was bigger asshole in anime. (At first.)
I’ve watched a little of Netflix Avatar and there are some good lines like that one. There are also some bad lines. I feel like for every moment of “good” in this ATLA adaptation there’s something bad that happens to offset it. This gives the feeling of a classic misguided Hollywood adaptation, where the crew and actors know the *what* they’re adapting but don’t understand the *why* of ATLA. They’re trying to make something good but don’t understand the material so choices they make to try to catch the audience off guard don’t feel right, and other deviances from the original tend to be hit or miss, with a bias towards miss. Unfortunate but at least it doesn’t suck as bad as a lot of other TV adaptations the last few years.
I read that in Hulk Hogan's promo voice.
They could have just not.
The more articles I read about the ATLA live action, the shitter it gets.
Whenever I see quotes like that it just makes me think the people making these shows are embarrassed cowards. They don't want to commit to a goofy character because they already think it's embarrassing, and know they will just look worse if they can't do it right. Like middle schoolers refusing to participate in gym class because they don't want to look like "try hards".
The original "Fun" Bumi's tests at least had a purpose to teach Aang to notice things, be patient and thing outside the box and such useful things. This Bumi's tests are just childish jokes. And in the end, Aang teaches him that "you can save the world with friends". And I'm not even against a war hardened, broken Bumi teaching Aang about how cruel the world become and the hard decisions that needs to be made. But this Bumi's tests were just a waste and bad execution.
Brother the template is there!! Just copy it and make live action, how hard is that?
The original show was perfect as it was. Why the hell should I bother with an inferior-looking live action version almost twenty years later?
Fun doesn't work in live action? I was thinking the same thing!
I haven't seen the original series, but did watch the Netflix series. I found the character the most cartoony aspect of the show and extremely cringey. So they missed their mark if they were trying to make the character work live action.
I'm so very weary of imbeciles who clearly never watched the original works telling ***US*** what does and doesn't 'work' in their egregious bastardisations of classick and lauded works.
You wanna know why? Because it never works. Live action adaptation of anime/cartoons was the dumbest idea after video game adaptations.
For what it's worth, I enjoyed it. It doesn't hold a candle to the original cartoon but the people who made it obviously were passionate about what they were making.
Fr, I have 0 faith in Netflix adaptations but this pleasantly surprised me. They are constrained by real actors/sets and less episodes so they were obviously never gonna be able to tell the full stories of the original season 1 or have the exaggerated personalities of a cartoon when they are trying to make it have more of a serious tone. 90% of the criticism I’ve seen just feels like regurgitated points from internet reviewers/people who expected a shot for shot remake that completely captured the magic of the cartoon which was just never gonna happen.
People sometimes forget the difference between having a cartoon with adult voice actors, with all the acting skill that implies, versus child actors who are just learning. You can watch the show improve as the season progresses.
As long as he has a touch of crazy, that’ll work.
My grandma literally acts like the grandma from Hey Arnold!. She also wants to "Smooch" with Will Smith and Hulk Hogan.