Rebooting one of the worst live-action adaptations in the history of the moving image means that there’s no other direction to go but up, although that doesn’t mean Netflix’s impending update is guaranteed to atone for all of the egregious mistakes made by M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender.
It almost certainly won’t be any worse, but longtime fans of the source material are understandably concerned about a streaming service with a track record for axing so many episodic fantasies after a single season taking on the iconic saga, and that’s without mentioning the company’s spotty history of turning animated titans into flesh-and-blood success stories.
Without question, though, it’ll easily be the finest live-action airbending we’ve ever seen, thanks entirely to Shyamalan conspiring to spit out one of the worst blockbusters of the modern era. It somehow managed to turn a profit despite being irredeemably awful and so far beyond salvation the merest hint of a sequel sounded more like a threat, but it nonetheless endures as a five-time Razzie winner and universally-despised dud of historic proportions.
And yet, people are watching it again, which might have something to do with Netflix offering a recent update of its own Last Airbender. Per FlixPatrol, the monstrosity that has the potential to cause physical pain to anyone with an affinity for its inspirations is back as one of the most-watched features on Paramount Plus, for reasons anyone unfortunate enough to have seen it already will no doubt fail to comprehend. Let’s just hope Netflix doesn’t end up falling into the exact same traps come next year.