The weird thing about the live action Last Airbender is that it felt like an abridged cartoon Airbender. If you hadn’t watched the original, so much would just fly straight over your head.
Like, at that point, why even do the original story? Just make an actual sequel / spin-off / whatever. There’s tons of additional Avatar material in comic books they’ve been putting out since… what? 2011?
Same thing with Star Wars. LucasArts and Disney churned out crap for so long. The stubborn refusal to license the Timmothy Zhan novels and make them into a show/movie is baffling.
One important note about the mouse shitting out live action remakes, they want to hold the copyright for as long as possible.
They don’t care if Aladdin with Will Smith only makes a 10% return (Hollywood accounting), because they’ve renewed their claim on the IP and merchandising the blue corpse of Robin Williams Genie far exceeds any film profits. They make more than $5 billion per year just on licensing fees.
That’s not how that works. 1. Aladdin isn’t an original Disney story. Like Cinderella, it’s an old story and anyone can make a version of it. 2. The timer on the animated film can’t be reset. It’s running and will continue to run. Steamboat Willie is the prime example of this. That version of Mickey is now in public domain, but later versions are not.
Winnie the Pooh isn’t an original Disney IP either. Yet if you put Pooh in a recognizably Disney style Pooh costume they’ll sue you. You can sell merch of shirtless Pooh all you like.
It’s still protecting the Disney version of the IP. It’s why the live action remakes still share a visual language with the animated originals.
You can make an Aladdin movie if you like. But god help you if there is a Blue Genie with characteristics recognizable to an objective observer as being similar to Genie®.
Steamboat Willie is public domain, but Mickey Mouse® is not.
That doesn’t mean Steamboat Willie is fair game either, Disney can still argue it’s a trademark, and likely will, since they’ve made it the new intro clip to every Disney IP.
Here’s an writeup covering it in more depth, from The Carey School of Business at Johns Hopkins:
Still no, because the timer started with the first release of the first product.
Yes, but now there are 2 versions of Genie with two different copywrite timelines. Both are still currently protected. (I will admit I haven’t looked up if Genie is a registered trademark; still talking about copywrite here.)
Yes, but the Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse character isn’t the same as the registered trademark of Mickey Mouse…but
I'm a bit confused about what it's for. Are they intending on expanding anything from the original series? If not, what does it offer over the original?
To be clear here I'm not saying it's bad. I have no idea. I haven't watched it and don't care all that much for the original either (which, to clarify again, does not mean I think the original is bad, it was just never special to me personally). I just don't understand the intention.
More specifically though, there’s this sense of media hierarchy where some mediums are considered superior/more digestible/mainstream than others. Think back to the 2000s, everyone wanted that live action cowboy bebop remake with Keanu reeves, same kind of thing.
I couldn’t tell you why this exists, very often the original media was good because of the medium it was presented in. I’d argue avatar is one of those cases, but that’s me.
I'm happy you liked it, but its really quite bad. It ruins character arcs, has bad acting and terrible dialogue, and it apparently never heard of the show don't tell rule.
That’s a hot take. I couldn’t make it through the trailer when they mispronounced the main character’s name. How could they have respected any of the rest of the material? I’ll still pass on watching it.
EDIT: OH this is about the live action TV Series not the Movie! …Still pass
The made a sort-of sequel called ReBoot: The Guardian Code, and from what heard it was terrible, so I exercised my limitless not-watching-that potential.
Probably call it Reboot, but add a : and put a bunch of stupid words afterwards, and make it a horrible live action hybrid thing thats incomprehensibly stupid.
You actually have to watch the live adaptation of the anime one piece if you haven’t. I went in expecting to hate it… looked forward to hating it. It was good
Find something you love then watch a sequel/reboot/adaptation written by a different team with contempt for the source material. For me it started with ghost busters 2016, but tlou part 2 and the witcher Netflix really helped too.
This is the thing that kills me most, especially when it comes to video game remakes. I don’t want to go back and replay a good game from my childhood with slightly better graphics. I want to go back to a game that I loved, which had a ton of flaws and weird issues, and see it get the final release it deserves. So far the closest we’ve come to that has been Dragon’s Dogma 2, but I’d kill for something like an Arcanum remake, or the original Vampire: The Masquerade game, or Timesplitters.
I think the issue is that suits see art as a product to sell and get rid of, whereas creatives see a process that could use 2-3 more iterations. In our minds, it makes more sense to go back, give it a few more iterations, but suits just call it a profit failure and move on.
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