Avatar: The Last Airbender remake will spend "a lot more time" with Fire Nation characters

Netflix is gearing up for the release of Avatar: The Last Airbender, its live-action remake of the animated Nickelodeon classic. This Avatar is not about blue aliens, but rather a kid named Aang who can control all four elements: earth, air, water and fire. He is the Avatar, the last airbender. It's up to him and his friends to stop the tyrannical Fire Nation from taking over the other three nations of the world, all of which are inspired by East Asian or indigenous cultures.

If you're familiar with the original series, then everything you remember is here in the new trailer: beloved characters like Aang, Katara, Sokka and Zuko; bending that doesn't look silly; and even Aang's flying bison pal Appa. But showrunner Albert Kim has changed some things for this new show, as he explained while breaking down the trailer for IGN.

For instance, we'll be seeing a lot more of the Fire Nation in this remake; they're the bad guys, but they produce some of the best characters, starting with Zuko, a Fire Nation prince who has been banished by his father, Firelord Ozai. Zuko is determined to find the lost Avatar so he can impress his dad and return home. "Zuko is arguably the most popular character from the original series, and so this story is as much about his journey as anyone's," Kim said. "And in general, we actually spend a lot more time with the Fire Nation and the Fire Nation characters in our first season than they did in the original animated series."

We'll also see more of Ozai himself, who's more of a shadowy, distant figure early in the original show. "You see him a lot more than you actually saw in the animated series...because we feel like we needed to balance out that part of the story," Kim said. "You get to realize how formidable a figure he is and an opponent he is." We'll also see the literal fire-fight that resulted in Zuko's banishing, something saw only "obliquely" in the animated series. "We decided this was something that was very important for us to see...It makes you understand a lot more about Zuko's character when you see it in real life." That's coming in Episode 6 of 8, very likely in flashback form.

Speaking of flashbacks, this new version of Avatar: The Last Airbender will show us the Fire Nation attacking the Southern Air Temple, an event that happens a full century before the main story kicks in. This was the beginning of the war that Aang and his friends must bring to an end. "One of the reasons we're doing this adaptation is to fill in the gaps, and this to me was one of the big gaps in the original series," Kim explained. "For us, I felt it was very important we see...the genocide of the air nomads. This is the event [where] the Fire Nation attacked and everything changed."

Even a relatively minor antagonist like Admiral Zhao, whom Kim thinks was lacking "humanity" in the original show, gets more play in the new series, in part thanks to actor Ken Leung, whom Kim assures us kills it in the part. The Fire Nation is coming to impress.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Netflix remake release date

The Fire Nation characters are very intense. Against them are positioned our heroes, who are generally a lot more easy, breezy and happy. "They are just kids," Kim reminds us. "Aang's a goofy 12-year-old and Katara and Sokka arne't much older, and we wanted to make sure we conveyed that, because that's a really important part of not just their characters but the story. And if they are gonna be these harbringers of hope, then they needed to express that through their childlike sense of optimism."

The original show had a lot of drama, but also a lot of humor, and I'm glad to see Kim and company seem dedicated to maintaining the balance. We'll see how well they pull it off when Avatar: The Last Airbender hits Netflix on February 22.

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