“but… we already made that series. Let’s make something new”.

And I think that was actually the best call possible when adapting an animated show to live action. You know, do something crazy, kill Aang in the first episode. Write an alternate universe where Sokka becomes a cartoon level dictator. Show the story entirely from the point of view of Suki and the Kyoshi warriors joining the war against the Fire Nation, or a prequel from the point of view of the Order of the White Lotus searching for, setting up plots or trying to find the Avatar during the interim 100 years of Aang's absence. Almost anything else would've made for an extraordinary new creative addition to the universe, and would've been a more palatable translation from animated to live action. But all Netflix executives are creatively bankrupt.