Daniel Dae Kim will play the Big Bad in Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender
The Hot Zone star will play Fire Lord Ozai, father of series antagonist Prince Zuko, and leader of the hostile Fire Nation
Aux News Avatar: The Last Airbender
Netflix’s live-action TV adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender is adding some star power to the mix this week, with Deadline reporting that Lost and Hawaii 5-0 star Daniel Dae Kim has signed on to star as Fire Lord Ozai, the primary antagonist of the series.
Kim joins a cast that already has its Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Zuko lined up, with young actors Gordon Cormier, Kiawentiio Tarbell, Ian Ousley, and Dallas Liu playing the young heroes/enemies who end up being heroes. One of the key principles of the Netflix adaptation has been to avoid some of the casting missteps that afflicted M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, which cast white actors as several non-white characters from the original series. (New Zealand actor Cliff Curtis, who’s Māori, played the part of Ozai in Shyamalan’s film; go-to cartoon villain Mark Hamill voiced him in the original show.) This will be Kim’s second run at the franchise; he previously played a character in a single episode of the animated series.
Although he’s rarely glimpsed in the early seasons of the show, Ozai is the primary architect of Avatar’s central conflicts, pushing his Fire Nation armies—and his kids—into direct conflict with young hero Aang. In other words, we expect to see a whole bunch of scenes of Kim coldly staring at people before he finally gets to start eating some scenery and throwing fireballs around.
Netflix has made some slow steps forward on Avatar in 2021, even as it operates in the shadow of a 2020 announcement from original series creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, who stated that they were stepping away from showrunning the new series over creative differences with Netflix. (“Whatever version ends up on-screen,” DiMartino wrote in an open letter at the time, “It will not be what Bryan and I had envisioned or intended to make.”)
Netflix has yet to set even a tentative air date for the series.
11 Comments
Still not sure if I should be hopeful about this series or go ahead and write it off as another trainwreck. DiMartino and Konietzko stepping away is a very bad omen to me.
Good thing we can always just rewatch the original series instead. Never a bad idea!
i suspect that they partially walked away because nickolodeon was making them their own studio https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Avatar_Studios#:~:text=Avatar%20Studios%20is%20a%20production,as%20co%2Dchief%20creative%20officers.&text=The%20studio%20will%20produce%20brand,%2Doffs%2C%20and%20theatrical%20films.
I’m hopeful. It couldn’t possibly be worse than the movie.
Still can be a good show if you step away from your expectations of it being anything like the cartoon.
The casting decisions have all been good so far, but unfortunately this series still seems like a really, really, really bad idea
His third stint on the franchise, actually. He had a recurring role as Asami’s father on The Legend of Korra.
Well, now we know what his face looks like, two and a half seasons early! Series ruined.
The fundamental issue with adapting The Last Airbender into live action is that it’s a story about kids who are martial arts experts. Meaning you have to cast kids who can act (not easy) and who look the part (not much wiggle room after M. Night) and who are all good at martial arts. It’s a tall order to find, like, a kid who fits that criteria, and it’s needed basically the entire main cast; as far as I can tell, only the kid playing Zuko has any experience with the martial arts.
Combined with the whole “well why the fuck would I watch a live action version of a story whose effects will always look better in animation” of it all, making a new story is the only way this show has a chance in hell of being good, and the material is right fucking there. Just do the Gaang as young adults with new stories about the new state of the world. The comics are a great foundation, but aging up the characters lets you cast actors who can actually convincingly pull off the physical actions required by this story and give us something new.But nope, they’re just gonna make shit.
They can hire kids who can dance and teach them martial arts, it’s much easier, and there are plenty of drama school kids whose parents try to force them into becoming a triple threat.
I still don’t think a live action ATLA is worth the effort, but that’s a strong casting choice right there.