This adaption, while not perfect due to nothing coming close to the show in terms of perfection, is not bad at all. It's shorter than the show so of course they had to make things flow quicker and things were cut out. But for a 7 episode take on season 1 I was impressed.
Im only 4 episodes in so I can't give a full review but I think the problem is there were some choices that were made that ruined the heart of what was good about the show. Uncle iroh and saka are not funny at all. I just saw the 4th episode which has the caves of omashu and the singing hippies were hilarious but got mostly removed. It's like they think laughing would cheapen then shows seriousness or something. There is no love connection between aang and katara. And they added a bunch of storyline from season 2 for some reason.
12 and 15 year olds can have crushes. Why do we have to act like children don't experience love between friends? It's part of growing up and part of the human experience.
Yeah it's not the best thing since sliced bread, but it was a decent TV show (in a vacuum.) Which was about the best we could hope for when they said they want to appeal to Avatar fans AND Game of Thrones fans.
maybe they regard it as a separate revenue stream, so they can doubledip into what their demographics and marketing departments tell them are two completely independent audiences, cartoons vs live action. There's gotta be some reason because there's nobody who wants this, nobody who thinks it's a good idea, and nobody who is not filled with trepidation and a vague nausea at its release, who is also a fan of the original show.
I also don't believe it can be true that there is a subset of people who are too manly/serious and "absolutely will not watch cartoons" that overlaps with "would watch this obvious adaptation of a children's show".
But yeah, they don't think that way I guess. Anyway I'm just glad it's not another butcher job. Gonna give it a while before I watch it, I want them to understand this is nobody's priority. (An Earthbender Avatar, however.... that's day 1 binge territory)