Avatar: The Last Airbender first trailer is a huge improvement on the last adaptation, if not the original

Hollywood rarely lets a good thing lie—see the ever-increasing number of remakes and reboots—but the truth is, lots of fans wanted to see Avatar: The Last Airbender brought to life in live action. The reason M. Night Shyamalan’s attempt at adapting the animated series is remembered as such a notorious flop is not just simply that it was bad, but that it was such a particular disappointment to see a beloved series mishandled so badly. When Netflix announced it would take another stab at it with original showrunners Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino on board, fans rejoiced. Then Konietzko and DiMartino exited, and fans got worried again. Now we finally have a trailer for the series, premiering February 22, so let’s see how they did!

For the completely uninitiated—a demographic Netflix is surely hoping to entice with this remake—The Last Airbender is about a young boy, Aang (Gordon Cormier), with unique elemental powers. As the Avatar, he’s the only person who can control fire, water, air, and earth, but he disappeared as unrest began, returning 100 years later to a world largely subjugated by the Fire Nation. After making two friends from the Southern Water Tribe (Sokka, played by Ian Ousley, and Katara, played by Kiawentiio), he sets off on a quest to defeat Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim), stop the war, and save the world.

From the jump, the production value in this trailer is a positive sign: the Fire Nation ship traversing icy seas, Appa the flying bison soaring over treetops, and sprawling Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom cities all look impressive. The bending (which is the term for wielding each elemental power) looks great, and that was a major criticism of Shyamalan’s film. The actors, from what little we see of them here, feel appropriate for their roles (as opposed to the white-washed Sokka and Katara from the 2010 film). And there are tantalizing glimpses of some iconic Last Airbender moments, like Aang’s emergence from the iceberg, the Blue Spirit, the battle with King Bumi (Utkarsh Ambudkar), and even a tease of Aang going into the Avatar State.

Overall, there’s a lot for Last Airbender fans to get excited about here—yet it’ll never exactly be the Last Airbender Konietzko and DiMartino “had envisioned or intended to make.” The duo left the project because they “couldn’t control the creative direction of the series.” While they moved on to launch Avatar Studios at Nickelodeon, working on a slate of animated projects set in the Avatar world, Albert Kim stepped up as showrunner. His vision for the first season was to make a “conscious decision to show people this is not the animated series,” Kim said last year. “We had to sometimes unravel storylines and remix them in a new way to make sense for a serialized drama.”

That approach may breathe new life into the source material, or it may ruffle the feathers of Last Airbender loyalists. The maligned 2010s young adult film adaptation to more faithful television series pipeline has had some success lately (see: Percy Jackson And The Olympians), but we won’t know if Avatar: The Last Airbender fits the bill until February.