fionwe1987

Not quite what I meant. I think Korra's patchiness is way more related to Nick just never being sure it would be a hit, and giving it incremental one season orders. I don't think the issue is with writing, especially when it's a rewrite of an existing show anyway. I'm thinking more that there are live series related things that Bryke wouldn't have been familiar with, and I'm wondering if that caused Netflix to interfere.

It's possible, of course, that they also don't have enough life show experience, and so Netflix was interfering more. Also, would Paramount really throw more money at them for an animated movie than Netflix did for the live action show?

Does that pass the sniff test? Wouldn't Netflix be wise to such tactics?

Yup. We even have it in the first episode that Republic City was built as a center for balance between the four Nations. That's what Aang envisioned, and I'm pretty sure the Gaang themselves never saw non-Benders as a lower class. And yeah, Sokka was someone who overcame his feelings of inadequacy. And it's worth nothing that he had plenty of political power and influence as a non-bender. It's entirely possible he never again felt the staggering imbalance in power between benders and non-benders.

Even the show makes that point. I always felt that episode with Tarrlock trying to arrest normal people for protesting a powercut was under developed and underutilized. They really should have had Korra examine those events more, but we were 5 episodes from the end, so they had to rush. Again, I'd think a longer, deeper season 1 would have Korra grappling with her loss of bending, and understanding how not having bending can be such a crippling disadvantage to non-Benders, and pushes for a more equal set of laws and the decision to move to a different form of governance. In fact, I'd think a transition to that would have made for a far better start to season 2.

As a non-Westerner who prizes these shows for being one of the few without a Weatern-centeic viewpoint, you've lost me here. Maybe you only know Westerners who see the show, and have thus concluded "everyone" watching the show saw Christian parallels. Nothing about Raava is like the Christian God. She seems to have contempt for humans, at best, and thinks they wreck everything. She has to learn they are good for more than that. She's clearly, therefore, neither the creator of the world, and most especially not the creator of humanity. Their design, especially as they are fighting each other, practically screams Yin and Yang, not a famous Christian symbol, last I checked. And, of course, there is nothing Christian about God having to fuse with a human to defeat the Devil, let alone reincarnating repeatedly, or worse, being reborn out of the heart of the devil. All this may well be my lack of deeper knowledge of Christian theology showing, but as a Hindu (by upbringing) watching the show, powerful forces of light and dark in constant conflict that comes to a head at regular time periods, where the Spirit of light is regularly reborn as a human to keep darkness at bay doesn't code as Christian. It reminds me of Krishna (Vishnu's Avatar) telling Arjuna that he takes birth age after age to keep destroy evil and establish good. If you never watched Avatar the Last Airbender and wondered "who was the first Avatar, why is this spirit alone capable of using all 4 elements? What allows it to access past memories, while other spirits aren't able to?", I don't know what to say. Those were very obvious world building questions, and the answers make perfect sense in world, and continue the deep borrowing from Hinduism, with the design borrowing from other dualistic concepts in Eastern cultures. Maybe you're overfitting to Christianity because that's what you're familiar with? If you're right this is a show for Western audiences, would people even know who Shiva is let alone that he has a third eye? But 3rd eyes and destruction aren't linked to Shiva alone. Kali is also often depicted with the 3rd eye, and she's even more associated with vengeance and destruction than Shiva. Literally every Hindu I know who has seen this (and that's a lot, because my extended family has a lot of fans) has only commented that it is cool to see a Western show depict something like this. All that said, I wouldn't mind them delving deeper into this. Why are combustion benders so rare? Why are they ostracized? They danced around it with P'li, but this is really an aspect of the world building that is ripe for deeper delving. These are separate issues. I like that they grappled with Aang's need to be nonviolent, before kind of ruining it by having an escape hatch for him. But that he didn't kill Ozai in head-to-head combat is obviously a result of it being a kids show. But while they may have designed Energy ending to come up with this escape hatch, I see no reason to let it go into the nonsensical direction of the Avatar being able to grant bending to everyone. That would literally make them God's, and I don't see how it would not create nonsensical plot issues to have them have that ability. If they can give just anyone bending, how do they decide who to give it to? Why not give everyone bending? So keeping it to taking away and restoring bending for someone born with the ability sounds perfectly right to me. Like Sokka had perfect control over how Republic City was set up, and intentions can never be tainted by reality and political machinations. Gotcha. How is this remotely anything like Ozai? I think if they'd claimed Aang didn't favor his only Airbender child, I'd have called bullshit. I felt this storyline was entirely realistic and believable. We have no idea how Katara dealt with Aang neglecting his other kids. But I suspect she got it, and even if she called him out on it often, sympathized with what was driving him. As for the Civil War, I agree. The retcon of Toph saying Katara was too old to interfere never sat well with me. Toph, after all, interfered when her kids were in trouble. I don't buy Katara sitting in the sidelines. I'd imagine this is a product of S2 being a 14 episode story, too. If not, then yeah, this is definitely a weakness in the way they aged her character. You do. Being a cop in the Avatar world has a totally different valence than in ours. Just because she's a kid who is leery of rules due to her upbringing doesn't mean she'd have to live her life in that same headspace. I could totally see Aang or Katara not thinking of the need for cops in their new city, but Toph being the person to rise to the occasion as crime inevitably crops up. Especially after seeing Toph in Season 4, I'd argue they did a great job keeping the character a believably older version of the kid we knew, and as a believable retired cop. It's not like Aang abused his kids. I don't see what universe would have Zuko interfering in his parenting. All these seem very childish and definitely based on extreme reads of what are very believable flaws in the adult versions of the characters.

Where do you get the hilarious notion that darkness as evil and lights as good is an exclusively Christian concept? Not sure what you mean by the last part, either. Raava and Vaatu have a very classical light/dark duality, including Raava being reborn from Vaatu's heart, and despite Vaatu being dispersed by Korra, evil and darkness remain in the world, indicating he's in her. There's no eliminating either of them, and the world is a constant struggle between the two. That fits Zoroashtrianism better than Christianity. Yeah because Shiva is the only deity with a third eye... Why is it dumb? By screwed you mean not having them be perfect adults and parents? I'd rather have the more realistic take, thanks.

Wasn't this only true for Season 1? I'm pretty sure DiMartino and Konietzko wrote all of only season 1. They were able to hire additional writers for the other seasons, though Ehaz himself was missing. That isn't quite true. They went from the introduction of airships and combustion engines, trains and submarines to cars and planes and electricity in 70 years. That's not 200 years of development. Remember, steamships were already a thing from the first episode of ATLA. In our own world, the jump from steamships to electric lighting and automobiles was about 100 years. That seems to fit perfectly well in ATLA. But there's no doubt Korra's world really is different. The invention of the radio has made it a much smaller place. But all of it seemed fairly logical, and the comics, even though they're uneven themselves, support this development path for the world of ATLA. It's hard to credit it, but our own world changed about that much in about 100-120 years. There's nothing Christian about it. Gods reincarnating on Earth to kill demons is as Hindu as it gets, which is where the concept of Avatars come from anyway. It seems pretty clear Avatars, and strong Bloodnenders, can take people's bending away, and reverse that procedure, but don't quite have the ability to outright grant it to people. I wouldn't have minded having that, but not at the cost of losing Korra. It's atrocious and stupid to want to erase the show. ETA: about Zaheer. He may not have killed Korra as a child. But he definitely wanted to end the Avatar even then, so it would have come up eventually, anyway. Doesn't change the fact that he's the best villain in both shows. Followed closely but Amon and Azula, for me.

But nothing in the show contradicts that. There are, in fact, spirits both dark and good roaming the world in Book 2 itself. It isn't like the closed portals mean no spirit can get through. It just means there isn't free traffic between the world, and humans have a hard time accessing the Spirit world, and vice versa. Well, and their ability to be in either the spirit world or the real, and to possess people. That's pretty much exactly how they are in Avatar too, and several spirits literally have animal forms in the mortal world. I'm confused. The Lion Turtle literally tells Aang that before the age of the Avatar, they used to bend the cosmic energy within themselves, and then gives Aang a literal demonstration. Exactly that happens in Beginnings. And just because the Lion Turtles grant you bending ability doesn't mean you're a prodigy. We see Wan learning Firebending from a Dragon, and it isn't hard to imagine similar learnings from other representative animals for the other bending forms. I think pretty all of that is rushed execution of solid concepts. The one thing just seems plain bad is the teenage angst/love quadrangle of the first two seasons, but that thankfully wasn't allowed to dominate beyond those seasons.

Just basing this on Reddit and just the general reactions to the seasons when the aired. As for me, I never felt the issue with Season 2 was the spiritual stuff. Beginnings 1 and 2 are excellent flashback episodes, and nothing they reveal contradicts the previous show in any drastic way. And I am a huge fan of the consequential way they had the rise of Unalaq result in Korra losing her connections to the past Avatars. That was a gutsy, and gut wrenching move. My issue with Book 2 was more that Unalaq didn't get much development, and the whole civil war aspect was rushed and silly, and blended in with some more love triangle shenanigans to make the early part of the season a mess. Add in that another studio animated the first half of the season, and I truly felt that part was bad and hurt the rest of the story.

Well, if that's the "uneven" they produce, I want a ton more. Korra's chief flaw is that it consists of 12-13 30 min episodes instead of hour long ones. The need to rush through too much plot literally causes all the flaws. Season 2, the worst of the bunch, really suffers from not having 2 seasons to cover the storyline. Do that and they'd have time to develop more.of some of the background for the season to hang together a lot better. In many ways, I think Korra would have been the better show to go to live action. The extra time would help the show deepen, while retaining all of its fantastic beats. ETA: never understand the minority of folks who think season 1 is better than 3 or 4. There's just no way that's true.

The Avatar can already channel the energy of a nuke to open an inter-dimensional portals, so I don't think there's much to worry about an Avatar becoming overpowered. They're the continuous rebirth of the Spirit of Light. Able to reshape continents, stop volcanoes, and give or take away bending. All of which makes me think it would be interesting to see an Avatar who ends up being not firmly on the side of good. How would the world deal with that? Could be a fascinating story.

The belief that non-white and non-Western people cannot be imperialist/colonial is so ludicrous, and undercut by her own points about memories of Japan's imperialism. And her point that because Indigenous people in the real world are fighting environmental damage and pollution, it is uncomfortable to see cultures inspired by them in a whole other universe being depicted as polluters is bizarre. Doesn't she get that this isn't a cultural/race thing but an economic thing? Nothing makes Indigenous people inherently incapable of being focussed on industrial progress and resource extraction to the detriment of ecology. Economic and political events of the past few centuries has made it so white/Western cultures have done so in our world, but that isn't a result of their race or geography at all. The more I think about it, the more pissed off that article makes me feel.

Haha yeah I think a lot of people who don't do animation as a rule have told me they watched Avatar because of the pandemic and were shocked at how much they loved it. Wow. So much wrong with that article. I sincerely hope they don't read it before working on their next show.

Very much so. And the tragedy of the 100 year war is deepened in contrast to the quiet moments of joy and solidarity that are blended into the story. And the arc of Aang coming to terms with himself as an agent of vengeance and violence, it makes no sense if he isn't a goofy, sensitive kid. If they mess with that, they're complete morons. ETA: hope you're enjoying the show!

Cost doesn't seem to have been the issue, though. And Avatar definitely has its quieter moments. And I think any fan would say that an expansion of the story to Live Action should spend more time on character moments, not expensive set piece battles, of which there's more than enough already. I think the bigger issue was always going to be tone. The animated series is weighty and complex but also genuinely lighthearted. But a lot of that will be harder to pull off in live action, and I can imagine part of the frustration was maybe Netflix trying to cut that element down.

Yeah I don't think I'll be watching the live-action version, especially if casting was the flashpoint. What a complete mess. I can't believe Netflix is being this dumb.