MASTER BLASTER

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER The animation gets a shot at live-action redemption.

Gordon Cormier plays Aang, the current Avatar

If your only experience of Avatar: The Last Airbender is 2010’s regrettable M. Night Shyamalan movie, reset your expectations for Netflix’s imminent live-action series. ‘Our goal was to make sure our version was faithful in spirit to the animation,’ says new show creator Albert Kim. ‘At the same time, we knew we had to appeal to a new generation of viewers who had never seen the original.’

The feudal fantasy world of The Last Airbender is split into four nations represented by different elements:

Water, Earth, Air and Fire. Within each nation there are Benders able to manipulate their corresponding element. Only the Avatar can control all four, traditionally serving to keep the peace. The Last Airbender picks up a century after the disappearance of the current Avatar, 12-year-old Aang (Gordon Cormier), as the militaristic Fire Nation under Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim) is on the verge of taking over the world.

Featuring a predominantly Asian and indigenous cast, finding actors who could embody fan-favourite characters like waterbender Katara, her goofball brother Sokka, Ozai’s disgraced son Zuko, and especially Aang was a battle against the elements. ‘You want someone who captures the essence of that character, whether it’s the warmth or the childlike wonder or the humour,’ Kim says of Aang, a character who’s also a pre-teen martial-arts expert. ‘But we didn’t want some 20-yearold playing a 12-year-old kid!’

In the years since 2010, the Shyamalan film’s flimsy bending has been widely ridiculed – something visual-effects supervisor Marion Spates has a plan to avoid. ‘Our big goal was: if this was actually to be done in real life, what would it look like?’ he says. ‘For instance, with firebending, we used blow torches as a reference to get that kind of fidelity and detail.’

Bringing the fantastical world of Avatar, with its colossal flying mounts, imaginative locations and epic action to live action was no easy feat, with a near-two-year post-production period overseen by exec producer Jabbar Raisani. ‘It’s certainly the biggest thing that I’ve ever worked on,’ says the Stranger Things and Lost in Space vet. ‘The complexity and quantity of [VFX] shots that we’re dealing with – that’s really the challenge.’

‘If this was actually to be done in real life, what would it look like?’

MARION SPATES

The eight-episode first season is set to cover the animated show’s first 20-episode ‘book’. It won’t be a 1:1 retelling, but Kim assures that the show will stay true to the original series in the ways that matter. ‘It’s the process literally of going from 2D to 3D. We had to flesh out characters, and fill in gaps, and, in certain instances, go off in new directions,’ Kim nods. ‘It was a process of dimensionalising the characters, so that was really exciting.’