Editor’s Note: The following contains minor spoilers for Netflix’s ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender.’

The Big Picture

Albert Kim discusses staying faithful to the spirit of the original
Avatar: The Last Airbender
series while adapting for live-action.
Netflix’s
Avatar: The Last Airbender
had to consider a new narrative approach when it came to combining storylines for cohesion.
Casting a perfect Aang was crucial, and Kim talks about how Gordon Cormier embodied the character naturally.

It’s not easy tackling adapting something that is beloved by fans. Whether you’re a director stepping into a beloved franchise to reboot the series or a showrunner turning an animated show into a live-action show (after an already abysmal live-action movie), someone is going to end up disappointed. This is the challenge that showrunner Albert Kim was faced with when tasked to bring Avatar: The Last Airbender to life. Set in a world where some people are born with the power to manipulate natural elements like water, earth, fire, and air — called “benders” — the series follows Aang, the titular last airbender, who wakes up after being frozen in ice for 100 years to a world engulfed in war and turmoil. As the Avatar, a unique individual who can bend all four elements, it is his task to bring peace to the world.

We spoke with Kim about the challenges of adapting the series and what he considered to be essential to keep in the series versus what could be changed and expanded on. He discussed larger changes to characters like King Bumi (Utkarsh Ambudkar) and how he combined storylines for the shorter season. Kim also discussed what it was like casting Gordon Cormier as Aang and touched on bringing Azula (Elizabeth Yu) in earlier while giving Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim) some more personality. Finally, he touched on the romance between Katara and Aang (as seen in the animated series) and whether that would stay the same in the show.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (Live-Action) A young boy known as the Avatar must master the four elemental powers to save the world and fight against an enemy bent on stopping him.Release Date February 22, 2024 Creator Albert Kim Seasons 1

Staying Loyal to the Spirit of the Animated ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’
COLLIDER: When it comes to adapting Avatar: The Last Airbender, there were elements that I could totally see from the original animated series. What did you think needed to be in there? And then what did you feel like you could update when it comes to this live action series?

ALBERT KIM: There wasn’t really any set litmus test, like, ‘Alright, this is the element that will carry on and this won’t.” It was more about trying to understand what the spirit of the original was. And that’s kind of what I told everyone, whether it was the writers or the directors, or the crew, you know, what we want to do is be faithful to the spirit of the original, rather than being a note-for-note translation of it, because that was never going to be possible. So, when you took it that way, and then there was sort of the formal challenge of adapting what was 20 half-hour episodes of animated television to an 8-hour serialized drama for Netflix, certain pieces started to fall into place when we did that.

One of the first things I did was lay out all 20 episodes on the whiteboard as to what the plots were, and then just took a look at it as if it was one, long narrative thread rather than individual episodes. And when you do that, certain elements start to pair off thematically, whether it’s like Jet and the Mechanist, being both characters who are good at heart, but driven to extreme behavior by war. And the interesting theme that emerged was that they would be adversaries, even though they’re both good characters. So that’s a conflict that we decided to play.

When you start looking at the entire season, that way, certain threads start to appear. And so, like I said, there wasn’t any kind of like, “We have to include this, we have to include that.” Although, I will say there are certain things that I personally said, “I’m going to include that.” Like, I was always going to have cabbage man in there, you know, there was no way we’re losing the cabbage man. So like I said, yeah, we’ll work him in.

But that was kind of the process. And then along that way, there are certain things — I think the hardest decisions we have to make is what to leave out. I’m sure we did not get to someone’s favorite episode, or character, or scene, or even sequence. And I feel their pain, because I wish we could have gotten to a lot of those. But it was just some of those hard choices you had to make. Because in addition to, as you saw, adapting some of the elements from the original, we added new material, we’re going off in new directions narratively, and we needed to give those room to breathe as well.

Was There Ever a Plan To Stretch Out the Season’s Plot?
Image via Netflix

Just picking up off of that, obviously, a lot of showrunners would like longer seasons. But did you ever considering splitting the first book in half and spending a little bit more time, given the shorter seasons that we have in the live-action?

KIM: I don’t recall ever having that conversation with Netflix. For one thing, I joined the process when the show had been in development for a little bit of time with the original creators. And so I think that was the parameters that were laid out even when I joined. But even after that, I don’t think we ever discussed going longer. I mean, Netflix has their own criteria for the length of the season and the length of episodes and things like that. So, those weren’t always my call.

But yeah, I don’t think we talked about taking the first season of the animated series and stretching it out any longer. It was my call as to how we told that story. Like I always knew, I wanted, like the original, our heroes to start in the Southern Water Tribe and end in the Northern Water Tribe, which meant pretty much replicating the original series. So that was the process by which that came about.

Gordon Cormier Was the Perfect Aang in ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’
Image via Netflix

I just want to talk about the casting process a little bit and, specifically, working with these young actors. I really loved Gordon [Cormier] in this series. I feel like it can be really difficult casting Aang because so much rests on his shoulders, and it has to be a young actor. Can you talk about working with him and what you saw in him that would be perfect for this role?

KIM: With Gordon, what you see is what you get. I mean, he is Aang. It seems a little cliché to say that, but he really is like when the camera’s shut off, he acts the same way. You yell cut, and he jumps off, and he runs around, and he hops, and he used to sit on my chair all the time. II would go back to my chair, and he’d be sitting there like, “You don’t mind, right?” And then, he would hop off. If he’s telling a story, he’s acting it out. I mean, he was Aang.

In the process of auditioning, it was one of those things, where, because we were casting a very young actor, and because we were looking at specific ethnic communities, and also because of the auditioning process was conducted in top secret, so they couldn’t know what show they were auditioning for. I had to write fake scenes for all of them. I wasn’t really listening to specific lines during the audition, it was more about looking into those personalities and seeing who was it that captured the essence of Aang, and every time we just kept coming back to Gordon.

He didn’t know he was auditioning for Aang, so, he wasn’t playing to that character at all. He didn’t know it was Avatar. So, like I said, it was more about looking past the specifics of the scenes that he was playing and more about the essence of who he was. I gotta say, I think that’s where we ended up with all of our characters. I think Ian [Ousley] has that natural sardonic sense of humor in person that his character does. And same with all of them. So like, that’s how the casting process went about.

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Kim Explains Major Changes to Characters Like King Bumi
Image via Netflix

And speaking a little bit about the series and things that did change, I noticed when I was watching through the series, that there are some characters who have different personalities compared to their animated counterparts. King Bumi really stands out to me as becoming more antagonistic. Can you talk about some of these decisions to change the direction of some of the characters? And can you tell me how that fits into your narrative?

KIM: Well, in the original series, King Bumi, is a really fun, eccentric character, and he puts Aang through a series of tests ostensibly to teach him the lesson that the Avatar has to be prepared for anything. And they’re fun. Everyone enjoys that episode, and that’s the reason why we wanted to do it. But for me, when I sat down to look at who Bumi was as a character, what was interesting to me was that this was a man who’s lived for over a century, and endured a century of war, and has grown disillusioned, and what’s really pained him throughout this is the idea that he was abandoned by his friend. He’s still hurt at the fact that Aang the Avatar wasn’t there for him.

On the flip side, Aang feels the burden of not having been there for his friend, like he wasn’t there and what happened to Bumi is a microcosm of what happened to the world in general. That’s his responsibility as Avatar. So, those emotional stories were the most interesting thing to me about that episode. So, in order to draw those things, it resulted in the story retelling and the changes we made. So, for instance, in the original series, Aang doesn’t find out that he’s Bumi until the very end of the episode. To us, it was more interesting if they knew who each other was at the start, so you could play that hurt. How you betrayed me and how a character like Bumi would go about getting that — he is not going to just come outright and say that, he’s going to prove it to him. Here’s what happened to me. Here’s what you missed. Here’s the pain that has happened while you were asleep, or frozen.

It’s when we approach the stories from that character perspective that some of those changes start to click in. So yeah, and at the same time, we had those elements from the original we wanted to work in. And so, even though we don’t show Flopsy, we put big statues of Flopsy in his throne room, right, and like paintings on the walls. So it’s a little bit of an Easter egg, I guess. But it’s also an homage to the original episode. So all of those changes were done in the interests of making the characters’ journeys be a little more grounded, I guess.

Bringing Azula and Ozai in Early Establishes Important Storylines
Image via Netflix

Yeah, definitely. I liked your decision to bring Azula in earlier. I think that’s a great move, because now the audience can understand who she is. She doesn’t just appear in the second season and become this fully formed character. But I also noticed that Fire Lord Ozai… It feels like he’s playing a larger part in this story as well. Will we see his story have any changes? Because, I don’t know, maybe it’s Daniel’s [Dae Kim] performance, but there’s a little bit of sympathy that I have for him and I don’t know if I’m supposed to have sympathy for him.

KIM: I think that’s great. I mean, I think that’s the idea of dimensionalizing all these characters is always great. Whether or not he’s the villain, you know, you want to be able to feel that he’s relatable in a way in that you understand how he got there. And to me, again, we had the benefit of hindsight of knowing what the characters will become and where Ozai goes. And like how important the family dynamic is, or the Fire Nation storyline.

And like Zuko’s entire character arc is tied up in the dynamics of his family. So being able to see the roots of that, by bringing in Azula earlier and showing what Ozai is doing in terms of being a manipulative parent, which — just speaking for myself, is very familiar to an Asian person — the parental expectations that come with that felt like a really good way to establish the storylines not just for this season, but possibly from going forward.

7:39 Related Does ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Fire Lord Ozai Actually Think He’s a Good Father? Daniel Dae Kim and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee break down what it’s like to play dads in ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’.

Kim Expresses Relief For Not Having To Exploring Katara’s Romance

I have to ask this question, because I have wondered this myself, and also because I saw some of your interviews. But talking about the direction of Katara, who I think a lot of fans have interpreted in the original series as a little bit motherly — it’s probably too motherly of a role for the character. And I’m glad that I’m getting the sense that she’s not leaning so much in that direction for the live-action show. But speaking on that, her romance with Aang is something that is reflective of that mothering dynamic. Are there any plans to change that up? I know some fans enjoy Katara and Zuko, I’m just going to put that out there…

KIM: [Laughs]

…but I’m curious if you have any insight on that.

KIM: I will say, hopefully, I’m smart enough not to get involved in that debate, because I know how passionate both sets of fans are. And I was fortunate in that it wasn’t a big issue in the first season for us. Because, you know, practically speaking, there are certain things you can do with animated characters that you can’t with live action ones when it comes to something like that.

It’s not something that we hit very much head on in the first season there. If you look carefully, there are little hints, especially in the final episode of what Katara is saying about Aang. So, we are obviously aware of where it goes in the original series, but it’s more of a future issue and a future storyline to be dealt with. So I was, even for myself, I was very relieved to put a pin in it, so I wouldn’t have to deal with it in the first season. But yeah, it’ll be interesting to tackle that one.

Adjusting Characters for Live-Action Does Not Take Anything Away From the Story
Image via Netflix

Yeah, I understand. And I saw some of the fan backlash that came out from your comments about Sokka. And I’m just wondering if this fan backlash scared you a little bit, when it comes to interacting with the fans?

KIM: I understand the reaction. I think it’s because people, in that particular instance, are acting in a vacuum. Like, they haven’t seen the episodes yet, and they’re so hungry for information. So they look through the trailers, the footage, and our comments in our interviews, and they can seize upon all these things to get an idea of what might be happening. But what I’ve been telling people is watch the episodes, and then we can have that discussion. Because, for now, it’s all kind of vapor, you know? It’s not like something that’s concrete that we can talk about, because I think they’ll come to see — whatever the comment was — that it was either blown out of proportion or slightly out of context.

And like you, having seen the series, I think you understand what I’m saying. We didn’t sap Sokka’s character arc in any way or make them less flawed. If anything, things were played maybe slightly more subtly in a more grounded way than it would be in an animated series. So, that’s about it. And I saw all sorts of crazy things like, so Pakku is not going to be sexist? Again, having seen it now, I think, you know, we play exactly that same conflict.

But there are things that we drew upon from the original series. Even in the original series, the Southern Water Tribe is slightly more progressive than the Northern Water Tribe is, right? Because the Northern Water Tribe is a little more conservative and enclosed, that’s reflected in our series as well. And I think you can see, even from the first two episodes, Sokka’s attitudes, maybe not so overtly stated, are rooted in old viewpoints and culturally passed down conceptions of all that stuff. So, that’s all there. Again, let’s watch the episodes and then we can have that discussion.

All episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender are available to stream on Netflix.

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