Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the best tv shows ever made. Not the best animated shows. Not the best americanime. The best shows. Period. End of story. It was ahead of its time and somehow the perfect, formative media for its audience when it first came out in 2002.

And it’s been cursed with one hilariously awful adaptation and one apparently divisive, maybe kind of mid adaptation. I don’t know, really, because I did not watch it.

That’s right. The live-action ATLA dropped today, and while I absolutely love ATLA – I just can’t bring myself to care enough to look.

Even getting beyond some weird writing decisions by the new showrunners, and the original creators leaving the show midway through production, I just don’t know if I think that this show needs to exist.

I think ATLA worked precisely because of its medium. Bending, the show’s magic system, is visually addictive in the show’s originally pseudo-anime style, relying heavily on real-world martial arts for inspiration and elevating them with superhuman feats.

When you bring that to live action, you run the risk of looking goofy. As silly as five guys doing synchronized air karate for fifteen seconds to summon a single rock.

I have seen a few clips of the new ATLA, and, while it looks good compared to The Last Airbender (a low bar), I just don’t see a real need for it to exist.

Even with higher production value, what exactly is the point? To get my dad, who won’t watch an animated movie, to watch?

The original ATLA was lightning in a bottle, and I don’t think we’re catching it twice.