The True Master of the Elements
Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender speaks to a longing C.S. Lewis described—and can remind us of our promises in Christ.
He can part water, command fire and wind, and move mountains. He’s not a super-Christian—he’s Avatar Aang, master of the four elements and protagonist of the Netflix’s live-action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA), which began streaming Thursday.
Watching a live-action remake of a beloved animation is fraught with trepidation. In a poor adaptation, humor is either awkwardly forced or axed completely; costumes and casting choices can take on a cosplay veneer; and condensed, mashed, or added storylines suggest a fan-inspired medley put on by a high school drama club. The new ATLA, while a marked improvement from the 2010 travesty, sadly slips into these foibles more often than not.
I hate to render that verdict, because I wanted so badly to love this show. And that longing is part of a greater desire to see imagined worlds in the “real world”—to be, as C.S. Lewis famously wrote, “united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it,” to “get in.” Merely looking at a rendering of beautiful stories, the mythologies with which “we have peopled air and earth and water with gods and goddesses and nymphs and elves”—or, in this case, benders and Avatars—isn’t enough.
As Lewis recognized, at its heart, this longing is rooted in Scripture (Rev. 22:1–5). And it’s why, even with repeated disappointments (I’m looking at you, Dragonball Z, Beauty and the Beast, and Ginny Weasley), I’ll still watch live-action adaptations every time.
I first followed the story of Aang and his friends nearly two decades ago, when Avatar first aired as an animated series ...