I hate how Hollywood thinks live action is the highest form of visual media. Like you want remake avatar? Up the budget for animators, pay the shit out of your voice actors, and pay some writers to add some darker themes. Would be better than any of the live action have been.
Yeah but they weren't allowed to show or too directly imply death. That's why Jet's "death" scene was bizarrely vague. Getting rid of that restriction on the original writers would probably be interesting.
I've only seen 1 episode so far, but IMO the format shift is worth it for the visual effects. Like, Sozin just straight up incinerating that guy would not have worked so well in the anime. And the actors seem quite good (the leads at least). My only real complaint is with the writing. And I mean, it's not as if the original didn't also have some pretty badly written lines in the first episodes. Adding in an actual 100 years earlier segment at the start is a big improvement, and it also gives us a taste of the kickass action scenes that are to come. At least for the intro to the show, live action seems significantly better than animated was.
Besides, a lot of those movies aren't actually meant to be watched. They're made by Yakuza owned company that have to do some production to "prove" they aren't just laundering money.