Avatar: The Last Airbender live-action show on Netflix (now sans its creators).

[fionwe1987]

2 minutes ago, AverageGuy said:

 

I think Beginnings was incredible on its own. Loved the animation, story was interesting. However, I do feel it was inconsistent in the greater context of the show. TLA shows the spirits interacting with the mortal world and being part of it, more akin to what you'd see in Native American animism or Japanese Shinto. Wan Shi Tong (the librarian owl in the desert), Hei Bei (forest/panda spirit in Winter Solstice), the legends of the Painted Lady, Tui and La/Princess Yue... none of them were locked away in some separate spirit realm.

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. 

2 minutes ago, AverageGuy said:

In Korra spirits feel more like strange beasts, which doesn't make them that unique in the Avatar world (what makes an Air Bison or a Badgermole different from a spirit? They have the strange shapes and magic abilities).

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.

2 minutes ago, AverageGuy said:

There was also a hint that there was more to energy bending when the Lion Turtle talked to Aang, but we only see it as their granting people bending-- and less of a direct role in teaching from dragons/bison/badgermoles. YMMV, but to me it felt like bad lore.

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. 

2 minutes ago, AverageGuy said:

I felt like that about a lot of Korra, though. So many things that were amazing on their own and then failed to come together. Granted there are rumors Nickelodeon was heavily interfering.

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. 

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, AverageGuy said:

I felt like that about a lot of Korra, though. So many things that were amazing on their own and then failed to come together. Granted there are rumors Nickelodeon was heavily interfering.

I think the absence of the other ATLA writers was also a problem. The Dragon Prince shows the same careful and coherent approach to worldbuilding that felt a bit sloppy, if not outright missing, in Korra.

There was also a little bit of an issue where Korra sometimes didn't even really feel part of the same world as ATLA. That's one thing Seasons 3 and 4 did at least address a little by exploring things beyond Republic City but there was a bit of a disconnect between the two. I think it was the fact that in one human lifetime they seem to have jumped forward in technology and culture about 200 years, which felt odd (I have a similar issue with Abercrombie's new trilogy, and the later Pratchetts, although those were more like 600 years worth of development in about 30 years of actual time).

[TrueMetis]

2 hours ago, AverageGuy said:

 

I think Beginnings was incredible on its own. Loved the animation, story was interesting. However, I do feel it was inconsistent in the greater context of the show. TLA shows the spirits interacting with the mortal world and being part of it, more akin to what you'd see in Native American animism or Japanese Shinto. Wan Shi Tong (the librarian owl in the desert), Hei Bei (forest/panda spirit in Winter Solstice), the legends of the Painted Lady, Tui and La/Princess Yue... none of them were locked away in the spirit realm. In Korra spirits feel more like strange beasts, which doesn't make them that unique in the Avatar world (what makes an Air Bison or a Badgermole different from a spirit? They have the strange shapes and magic abilities). There was also a hint that there was more to energy bending when the Lion Turtle talked to Aang, but we only see it as their granting people bending-- and with their involvement less of a direct role in teaching from dragons/bison/badgermoles. YMMV, but to me it felt like bad lore.

I felt like that about a lot of Korra, though. So many things that were amazing on their own and then failed to come together. Granted there are rumors Nickelodeon was heavily interfering.

Going from semi-primodrial beings to cute and cuddly in Korra was weird, like wasn't Korra supposed to be more mature? Kind of feels like it was the opposite in a lot of ways. And that's without going into the addition of the evil Satan avatar to Christianize the whole thing for no reason.

Also Energybending was a bad enough addition to TLA, then Korra made it explicit that energybending could be used to grant people bending, so why was Tenzin the only airbender?

Man I wish we had gotten Ehasz's book four instead.

[karaddin]

I love Korra and prefer it to ATLA, mostly down to the character of Korra herself. I don't think S1 is the strongest, I'd put 3 at the top myself, but there was a lot in 1 that was great. The problems that were there are almost entirely down to the budgeting and thinking they only had a single season so they didn't set things up properly and had to rush her getting her bending back in the finale. That scene on the cliff when she's clearly contemplating suicide for the sake of the avatar cycle is devastating when you dwell in the emotion of it, but it's so rushed it barely gives you a chance to recognise that's what's happening. 

The other big problem with S1 is that the equalists are right, and the implementation of elections doesn't remotely cover all their complaints.

15 hours ago, A True Kaniggit said:

I despised Zaheer. 

Man was a child killer. 

What child killing? Are you referring to the plot to kidnap Korra? I thought the plan was to raise her in the Red Lotus, not kill her at that point. So just child abduction and raising them as a child soldier, clearly much better 

[A True Kaniggit]

57 minutes ago, karaddin said:

 

What child killing? Are you referring to the plot to kidnap Korra? I thought the plan was to raise her in the Red Lotus, not kill her at that point. So just child abduction and raising them as a child soldier, clearly much better 

Yeah, I’m exaggerating. He didn’t actually personally kill any kids I know of (though I’d assume he caused the deaths of thousands by killing the earth queen)

I have to rewatch it. I thought his intent was always to kill her after capturing her as a child. But it has been a while, so you’re probably right. 

Edited August 17, 2020 by A True Kaniggit

[karaddin]

51 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Yeah, I’m exaggerating. He didn’t actually personally kill any kids I know of (though I’d assume he caused the deaths of thousands by killing the earth queen)

I have to rewatch it. I thought his intent was always to kill her after capturing her as a child. But it has been a while, so you’re probably right. 

Yeah I'm not sure if I'm remembering something that's actually in the show, or if it was ambiguous and the child soldier thing was a theory. The thing that is definitely in the show as that the whole Unalaq/Dark Avatar plan was going way off the Red Lotus script and not what Zaheer had wanted to do with Korra with their original plan.

[fionwe1987]

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think the absence of the other ATLA writers was also a problem. The Dragon Prince shows the same careful and coherent approach to worldbuilding that felt a bit sloppy, if not outright missing, in Korra.

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.

Quote

There was also a little bit of an issue where Korra sometimes didn't even really feel part of the same world as ATLA. That's one thing Seasons 3 and 4 did at least address a little by exploring things beyond Republic City but there was a bit of a disconnect between the two. I think it was the fact that in one human lifetime they seem to have jumped forward in technology and culture about 200 years, which felt odd (I have a similar issue with Abercrombie's new trilogy, and the later Pratchetts, although those were more like 600 years worth of development in about 30 years of actual time).

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. 

3 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

And that's without going into the addition of the evil Satan avatar to Christianize the whole thing for no reason.

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. 

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Also Energybending was a bad enough addition to TLA, then Korra made it explicit that energybending could be used to grant people bending, so why was Tenzin the only airbender?

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. 

Quote

Man I wish we had gotten Ehasz's book four instead.

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.

Edited August 17, 2020 by fionwe1987

[TrueMetis]

20 minutes ago, fionwe1987 said:

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.

But Raava's not a god, and Vaatu's not a demon. They're spirits, the spirit of peace and light and chaos and darkness respectively. It's eminently clear that they were attempting a duality thing like with Tui and La and failing spectacularly. Instead of an actual duality, dark is bad and evil, light is good. Very Christian.

But hey, if you watched that and thought that the creators understand Hinduism enough to make that sort of connection then I admire your optimism. They gave Shiva's third eye to two assassins, So I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.

Quote

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.

And that's dumb. Either have there be air nomad survivors (we see a lot of grey eyed people running around) or have the 11th hour superpower Aang got have more of an impact than just letting Aang pretend his hands are clean.

Quote

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. 

Erasing the comics really, Korra could only be improved by not relying on a back story that screwed over most of the Gaang.

[fionwe1987]

8 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

But Raava's not a god, and Vaatu's not a demon. They're spirits, the spirit of peace and light and chaos and darkness respectively. It's eminently clear that they were attempting a duality thing like with Tui and La and failing spectacularly. Instead of an actual duality, dark is bad and evil, light is good. Very Christian.

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.

8 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

But hey, if you watched that and thought that the creators understand Hinduism enough to make that sort of connection then I admire your optimism. They gave Shiva's third eye to two assassins, So I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on that one.

Yeah because Shiva is the only deity with a third eye...

 

8 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

And that's dumb. Either have there be air nomad survivors (we see a lot of grey eyed people running around) or have the 11th hour superpower Aang got have more of an impact than just letting Aang pretend his hands are clean.

Why is it dumb? 

8 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Erasing the comics really, Korra could only be improved by not relying on a back story that screwed over most of the Gaang.

By screwed you mean not having them be perfect adults and parents? I'd rather have the more realistic take, thanks. 

[TrueMetis]

10 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

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.

I don't have that notion, but this was a western show, created by westerners, for westerners. Everyone and their grandmother looked at what was happening there and went "that's God fighting Satan." People who like LoK thought that, people who don't like LoK thought that, non-western fans thought that. I've got a pretty wide group of fans I interact with and you're literally the first I've seen dispute the obvious Christian parallels. If the creators meant to invoke something else, they failed, badly.

Quote

Yeah because Shiva is the only deity with a third eye...

With that specific design and as a force of destruction? Yeah pretty much. Like the above, if they meant to invoke anything else but Shiva they failed.

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Why is it dumb?

I thought I had covered that, but in more detail Energybending exists only so Aang doesn't have to properly tackle the challenge put before him, not just in the value of human life, but in his people's philosophy. This might be excusable if it turns out to not just be for that but to also help in restoring the balance that they were always banging on about. They even set up a group of non-bender earth kingdom refugees in the NAT that Aang thinks have the Airbender spirit and never made that connection. That's bad writing.

But no, Energybending only exists so Aang doesn't have to kill (well kill directly, he's certainly indirectly killed a bunch of people, but the show never really explores that either) a benefit I will note they don't give to Toph, Sokka, and Suki who kill the fuck out of a whole bunch of people during the fight on the airships. So it's not even like the show has decided at the end to put in a "killing is bad" message, no this is all about not challenging Aangs simplistic (and selective) understanding of air nomad philosophy. Well just ignore that Gyatso killed the fuck out of a whole bunch of firebenders so there's clearly more to it than that. Instead Aang gets to cling to his childish view of the Air Nomads.

Quote

By screwed you mean not having them be perfect adults and parents? I'd rather have the more realistic take, thanks. 

It's not a matter of perfect, they were very much not perfect in the show, and that was great. They were screwed because they become completely different people and not in a "characters change as they grow older way"

Can't say much about Suki, cause she doesn't get to show up.

Sokka, a nonbender, was instrumental in setting up Republic City a city that would latter have an anti-bender rebellion. Sokka's been the non-bender surrounded by benders, he'd know whats up. And he's smart enough to set things up better than that. And smart enough to not let it happen in his own family.

Aang has apparently taken a page out of the Ozai guide to parenting, blatantly favouring one child over the others. He does this so much and so badly that the air acolytes do not know that Aang had more than one kid, so much that his kids are in the forties and are still pissed at each other over this, and so badly Bumi goes to a statue of Aang and says he hopes Aang is proud of him despite not being an airbedner because he'd come to the conclusion that the only thing Aang cares about is the ability to Airbend.

Katara at some point lost her spine, allowing Aang to do all of the above and sitting out of the actual civil war going on in her home. Apparently having gone from "I don't want to heal, I want to fight." to "I'll just go to the the healing huts with the other women." Like even if she's decided she's to old fight (which has never been a thing in the series before) she should have still been an active participant.

Toph become a cop. Do I really need to say anything else?

Zuko comes out probably the best, Was a good parent, still actively participating in things, but like Katara and Sokka, saw Aang being a shit parent and did nothing about it.

[fionwe1987]

5 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

I don't have that notion, but this was a western show, created by westerners, for westerners. Everyone and their grandmother looked at what was happening there and went "that's God fighting Satan." People who like LoK thought that, people who don't like LoK thought that, non-western fans thought that. I've got a pretty wide group of fans I interact with and you're literally the first I've seen dispute the obvious Christian parallels. If the creators meant to invoke something else, they failed, badly.

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?

5 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

With that specific design and as a force of destruction? Yeah pretty much. Like the above, if they meant to invoke anything else but Shiva they failed.

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. 

5 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

I thought I had covered that, but in more detail Energybending exists only so Aang doesn't have to properly tackle the challenge put before him, not just in the value of human life, but in his people's philosophy. This might be excusable if it turns out to not just be for that but to also help in restoring the balance that they were always banging on about. They even set up a group of non-bender earth kingdom refugees in the NAT that Aang thinks have the Airbender spirit and never made that connection. That's bad writing.

But no, Energybending only exists so Aang doesn't have to kill (well kill directly, he's certainly indirectly killed a bunch of people, but the show never really explores that either) a benefit I will note they don't give to Toph, Sokka, and Suki who kill the fuck out of a whole bunch of people during the fight on the airships. So it's not even like the show has decided at the end to put in a "killing is bad" message, no this is all about not challenging Aangs simplistic (and selective) understanding of air nomad philosophy. Well just ignore that Gyatso killed the fuck out of a whole bunch of firebenders so there's clearly more to it than that. Instead Aang gets to cling to his childish view of the Air Nomads.

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.

5 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

It's not a matter of perfect, they were very much not perfect in the show, and that was great. They were screwed because they become completely different people and not in a "characters change as they grow older way"

Can't say much about Suki, cause she doesn't get to show up.

Sokka, a nonbender, was instrumental in setting up Republic City a city that would latter have an anti-bender rebellion. Sokka's been the non-bender surrounded by benders, he'd know whats up. And he's smart enough to set things up better than that. And smart enough to not let it happen in his own family.

Like Sokka had perfect control over how Republic City was set up, and intentions can never be tainted by reality and political machinations. Gotcha. 

5 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Aang has apparently taken a page out of the Ozai guide to parenting, blatantly favouring one child over the others. He does this so much and so badly that the air acolytes do not know that Aang had more than one kid, so much that his kids are in the forties and are still pissed at each other over this, and so badly Bumi goes to a statue of Aang and says he hopes Aang is proud of him despite not being an airbedner because he'd come to the conclusion that the only thing Aang cares about is the ability to Airbend.

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. 

5 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Katara at some point lost her spine, allowing Aang to do all of the above and sitting out of the actual civil war going on in her home. Apparently having gone from "I don't want to heal, I want to fight." to "I'll just go to the the healing huts with the other women." Like even if she's decided she's to old fight (which has never been a thing in the series before) she should have still been an active participant.

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. 

5 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Toph become a cop. Do I really need to say anything else?

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. 

5 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Zuko comes out probably the best, Was a good parent, still actively participating in things, but like Katara and Sokka, saw Aang being a shit parent and did nothing about it.

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. 

[Rippounet]

17 hours ago, karaddin said:

The other big problem with S1 is that the equalists are right, and the implementation of elections doesn't remotely cover all their complaints.

Ah, always thought I was the only one to think that the equalists made some good points!

14 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

I don't have that notion, but this was a western show, created by westerners, for westerners. Everyone and their grandmother looked at what was happening there and went "that's God fighting Satan." People who like LoK thought that, people who don't like LoK thought that, non-western fans thought that. I've got a pretty wide group of fans I interact with and you're literally the first I've seen dispute the obvious Christian parallels. If the creators meant to invoke something else, they failed, badly.

Sorry, it never occurred to me that there was a Christian parallel to the Raava-Vaatu dualism. Like fionwe I saw a very obvious Yin-Yang symbolism, including the fact that they both exist within each other.

I have no idea where the Christian parallel is supposed to be here... ?

From the Avatar wiki:

Quote

Vaatu and Raava appear respectively to be representations of darkness and chaos and light and peace in the yin-yang (Taìjí tú) concept in Chinese philosophy, which is used to describe the way in which opposite forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world. In this case, the concept accounts for the duality associated with the fact that Vaatu represents darkness and chaos, while Raava represents light and peace. Her attributes, however, are ironically closer in Taoist thought to the ideal of darkness (yin) than that of light (yang); Raava is female and relatively reasonable, if abrasive and initially discriminatory, as opposed to male and aggressive.

• Furthering the yin-yang comparison, Vaatu and Raava are said to contain vestigial elements of each other within themselves, from which they can regenerate after being defeated. Similarly, each side of the yin-yang symbol bears a small dot of the opposite color, symbolizing how each side bears a part of the other and how one cannot exist without the other.
• This duality is also apparent in their names and color schemes. In Sanskrit, vatu (वतु) is an interjection meaning "silence!", which is the opposite of the noun ravaḥ (रवः), which means "sound". The two spirits are also negative images of each other.
• Raava and Vaatu are also comparable to the Zoroastrian concept of moral dualism, Raava being similar to Ahura Mazda in her representation of morality and light.

• I've only read this Wiki entry today tbh, but it was always obvious to me that Raava-Vaatu were inspired by Asian philosophy... am genuinely puzzled as to why anyone would see Christian symbolism there...

[fionwe1987]

10 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

Ah, always thought I was the only one to think that the equalists made some good points!

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. 

Edited August 17, 2020 by fionwe1987

[karaddin]

@fionwe1987

Quote

Like Sokka had perfect control over how Republic City was set up, and intentions can never be tainted by reality and political machinations. Gotcha. 

I think it's pretty understandable to think his focus was on preventing the kind of conflict that has defined the world he grew up in - one between bending flavours. So we get a council of all 4 bender types so no one people can override the others.

Yes he was the non bender of the Gaang, but that was treated as a psychological anxiety he overcame and was never actually oppressed by the others for it. It wouldn't have loomed as large of a threat as the idea of another war between bending flavours so that's where his focus stayed.

[fionwe1987]

12 hours ago, karaddin said:

@fionwe1987

I think it's pretty understandable to think his focus was on preventing the kind of conflict that has defined the world he grew up in - one between bending flavours. So we get a council of all 4 bender types so no one people can override the others.

Yes he was the non bender of the Gaang, but that was treated as a psychological anxiety he overcame and was never actually oppressed by the others for it. It wouldn't have loomed as large of a threat as the idea of another war between bending flavours so that's where his focus stayed.

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. 

[Werthead]

Despite the problems, the cast looks spot-on, and they've restored everyone to their right ages after the furore over the casting sides.

I've seen a lot of fancasting for Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as Iroh which would be an epic choice.

Edited August 12, 2021 by Werthead

[IFR]

The casting looks good, aesthetically. That's not shocking, since Netflix prioritizes diversity. What will also not be shocking is when the show turns out to be a shadow of its animated predecessor, since it seems that Netflix also prioritizes reducing promising ideas into unexceptional and often insultingly awful dreck. 

The original creators departing due to creative differences is the biggest red flag to me, considering Netflix's track record. What I prognosticate will occur is that M Night Shyamalan will be able to at long last pass the baton to someone who was able to miraculously lower the bar on Avatar adaptations even further.

I do hope against all odds, though. I like the idea of of live action Last Airbender. But I anticipate that we'll get the usual Netflix treatment.

I guess I'm a bit curmudgeon today.

Edited August 13, 2021 by IFR

[Werthead]

There have been significant, and not implausible, rumours that the original creators' departure may have been less-motivated by concerns over creative control and more over the absolutely massive payday Paramount was lining up to lure them back to the animated shows. Given they couldn't just say, "yeah, we're out" without breaking contract, they would have had to have made a major fuss to be able to leave Live-Avatar without getting sued by Netflix. That might just be a bit too cynical, though. Still, given Netflix's reputation for leaving creators to get on with it without a huge amount of oversight even if it tanks their show, it does sound weird that "the suits" were supposedly interfering with this project to the point the creators had to leave.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Arent Sokka and Katara supposed to be black? Or am i going colorblind.. 

[Maltaran]

3 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Arent Sokka and Katara supposed to be black? Or am i going colorblind.. 

No, the water tribes were based on the Inuit, and the actors cast, although not Inuit, are both native Americans