I watched the 1st episode yesterday and something felt off the whole time. I could not put my finger on it, but interestingly, I was able to understand what after I watched "Enter Magneto" episode form X-Men animated series from the 90s. There are 2 main things, that I feel "wrong".
First thing is that there is a lot of talking for the sake of telling things. X-Men from the 90s is dated, for sure, but even that series used little things to tell you more about characters, their emotions, about the world and its rules. Facial expressions are the obvious things: they were exaggerated to make them more obvious due to limitation of the medium, but they worked. In "Enter Magneto" Beast is in prison and his intent to stay there is clear way before he actually voices it to Magneto.
In the new Avatar? We had something like a 2 minute rant from Aang about how he does not want to be an avatar. His emotions on the matter are clear and understandable, when said out loud, but... There was not that much things shown to really make them believable, to make them have weight. I may be misremembering original show here, but I believe we saw way more little things showing how "connected" Aang was to his tribe, how happy he was with it, and... That he was still a child. Original also showed us the guilt that Aang had after learning about genocide, while new adaptation seemingly brushed it off.
Second thing is that it's... Too clean. And this is true not only for this show, but for a lot shows and movies in recent decade or so. There is even a good YouTube video about how recent media is too "clean". There is practically no dirt or dust or blood or debris anywhere. Everything is just picture perfect, and to me that ruins the immersion.
With animation lack of details is understandable: there is a lot of manual work going into each frame even with modern technology, and bringing in the imperfections "the right way" is difficult. It is definitely possible ("Invincible" adaptation is good at that), but difficult and we understand it almost intuitively, so it does not ruin suspense of disbelief, when we see it. But with live action? Dirtying clothes or skin should not be that difficult, and it can make it more realistic and relatable.
There are some other minor things, too. For example, wind does not look as exciting here, simply because it's not as visible. It looks like dust magic rather than wind. They also re-ordered certain things. Not in terms of chronology, but in terms of when a thing is told to the viewers. It does not necessarily make things worse, but it does not bring anything either.
This brings me to a thought, that we need to stop with adaptations for the sake of adaptation. When you adapt a story from one media into another you need to elevate it in some way. You can criticize, say, "Attack on Titan", "My Hero Academia" or "Demon Slayer" anime adaptations for quite a few things, but what they did really good, and what really hooked lots of people was that they elevated the respective manga. These adaptations utilized the technics of the new media to make things look exciting, to increase your heartrate, when you see something truly insane.
But what has new Avatar brought compared to original? Special effects? I mean, they are not bad, but original show was not about magic, really. Magic was just part of the setting, a tool. Did it bring stellar performance from actors? Yes, it may be to premature to judge based on 1 episode, but I would say no. To be honest, I disagree with majority on "how good the casting is". I think only uncle Iroh felt good, but others - kind of "meh". Even Gran-Gran looked as if it was a young woman who was aged with make-up.
So no, I do not think this is a good adaptation, that everyone was expecting to get. Good thing, that I did not have expectations for it.
