In today’s “nothing is unique” news: Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender reboot is looking pretty gritty
Aang #Aang
Avatar: The Last Airbender Screenshot: Avatar: The Last Airbender/YouTube/Nickelodeon
Watch the main titles for the original Avatar: The Last Airbender, and “gritty drama” will probably not be the genre that comes to mind. The mid-aughts series, created by Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, closes its main sequence with Avatar Aang Looney Tunes-style crashing into a boulder while attempting to maneuver a small tornado he’s using as a scooter. Although the series grappled with heavy themes like war and cultural genocide, it was always buoyed by genuine goofy comedy that only added to the realism of the friendship between the series’ scrappy and adventurous teen protagonists; the titles cemented that.
Matthew Mercer and Marisha Ray on “The Legend of Vox Machina”
That being said, if new main titles for a long-germinating Netflix ATLA live-action update that debuted today are any hint to the series’ tone, it’s looking like a real departure from the fun of the original (with no air scooters in sight). The titles reveal the symbols for the series’ four bending elements—water, fire, earth, and air—before introducing ATLA’s new main title by printing it on a burning flag waving against an onyx background. The new series is set for a 2024 debut.
From House Of The Dragon to The Little Mermaid, the world of existing IP has taken a weirdly dark turn, literally and figuratively: realism and severity trump whimsy and silliness at every turn. (A special exception can be made here for Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey, the opposite of prestige programming, which blatantly grabs for grit and violence and in doing so achieves a sort of quasi-camp.)
Water, earth, fire, and air have never looked so dark and weathered as they do in these titles, which doesn’t inspire much confidence in the rebooted ATLA’s ability to capture the whimsical, slapstick spirit of the original Nickelodeon animated series. Grittier doesn’t always mean better: ask M. Night Shyamalan.