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


Werthead
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9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

While I think Mako, and Asami, get very little growth, and Bolin gets some but not enough, I definitely feel Korra herself drew me in at least as much as Zuko did, and in some ways more. She's a fascinating character with an excellent arc, and that they did this for a teenaged woman character makes her stand out all the more.

I think part of the strength of the Korra show is that it focused more on the titular character and the supporting cast - especially the villains but also Aang's and Toph's family - than team Avatar. In the original show we cannot really say we understand Fire Lord Ozai's motivation all that well - and that's only in part because continues his grandfather's agenda. And I have to say that Iroh's change could have been covered in more depth. Did he ever want to be Fire Lord before his son's death? How exactly was his relationship with his father and Ozai? That's all kind of in the dark.

In Korra all the four villains have very interesting and convincing motivations.

That said - I'd agree that they could have done more with the gang.

9 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

There's very little of that here. The first story manages to remain legendary and epic, it's heroes age in ways that make sense to me, and the next batch of protagonists, while not delved into with the same depth, except for Korra and Tenzin, are fairly engaging and are fine as supporting characters.

Whatever comes next, I hope it has the dynamism and innovation in Korra, but also manages to give everyone in Team Avatar sufficient screen time so they develop the distinct personalities and arcs that the OG Team Avatar had.

I think there is a good chance that this whole franchise is only getting better. What's really great, overall, is that the world gets more and more complex with the seeds of that always being there. You get that with the backstory of Zuko's family in the original show, the Korra show is basically there in glimpses of the past we get in The Last Airbender about how there were other tyrants and threats long before 'the Fire Nation attacked'.

9 hours ago, sifth said:

As for Korra, she was alright, but not great, IMO. I felt like the writing for her was very inconsistent at times; I remember her having a case of amnesia in season 2 and them doing nothing with it, aside from making the rest of the cast look like total jerks, for not telling her that she and Mako broke up. I honestly think the best Korra scene in the entire show, is when she helps the guy on the bridge at the start of season 3 and think the show needed more of these moments. Much like how I felt that Man of Steel needed more scenes of Clark saving people; I felt the same with Korra as well. Also cutting Korra off from her past lives, was the shows biggest mistake, IMO. I wanted Korra to learn lessons from the other Avatars, the way Aang did and maybe have her learn new lessons from different Avatars, or maybe have Korra learn a different lesson from Roku, than Aang.

I think both that and her trauma after she was nearly killed by the platinum poison was supposed to demonstrate to the audience that the Avatar isn't some kind of demigod. They can be hurt, they can be killed, and the Avatar line as such can also be destroyed.

The really great part of that show was that Korra no longer cared about the past all that much. She transcended the whole Avatar thing to a point, and exploring how things go from there - as they do in the comics - is really great.

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

It's much more the thematically ambitious and interesting show, but it also falls short of its ambition. Avatar was in some respects a much more traditional show but it met and exceeded the potential of the premise. Korra had some very clunky pacing and storytelling, and Season 2 of the show is easily the worst season of the franchise, and Season 4 is only marginally better (Seasons 1 and 3 are decent, though).

That isn't really the way I remember it, but I think I'm going to rewatch the show in the near future.

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On 8/17/2021 at 4:41 PM, fionwe1987 said:

Interesting. I've heard the opposite, before. Where were they on storyboarding season 2 when they learned season 3 and 4 were green lit? That would be an interesting question for someone to ask.

Considering that Books 3&4 were already greenlit by the time book 1 aired, that book 2 released roughly a year after book 1 and that an episode (if I recall correctly) of this kind of animation takes roughly 1 year to produce, I would say that this is likely the case.

 

Overall I very much prefer The Last Airbender over Korra and I would go as far as to say that the only things Korra does better are technical animation quality (excluding the first half of season 2) and maybe music. The only good season is in my opinion season 3 and even it is not as good as standart ATLA. Add to that that dumb and fanficcy stuff like the "Dark Avatar", sudden Airbenders and first Avatars, and I really find myself wishing that they had not made Korra at all.

 

Edited by ASOIAFrelatedusername
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12 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

Overall I very much prefer The Last Airbender over Korra and I would go as far as to say that the only things Korra does better are technical animation quality (excluding the first half of season 2) and maybe music. The only good season is in my opinion season 3 and even it is not as good as standart ATLA. Add to that that dumb and fanficcy stuff like the "Dark Avatar", sudden Airbenders and first Avatars, and I really find myself wishing that they had not made Korra at all.

 

Yea, I remember the beginning of season 2 being a bit of a mess animation wise. Nike rushed that season into production so fast, they couldn't get Studio Mir to animate it all. They were forced to use Studio Pierrot for those episodes and dam did the difference in quality stick out to me. Rather sad as well, since plot wise, I think beginning of season 2 had the more interesting story.............until it devolved good Avatar vs bad Avatar in the second half. It's like they were allowing us good story or good animation that year, but never both at the same time.

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  • 2 months later...
1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Spectacular casting choices here. Also amusing as Paul's character on Kim's Convenience was called Appa.

Yeah the casting is great! I read they're going to be shooting in Mandalorian style "green" screen, though, which is disappointing. The landscapes of Avatar are obviously hard to recreate in real life, but I'm not sure the fully digital background will do the live action show any service. 

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1 minute ago, fionwe1987 said:

Yeah the casting is great! I read they're going to be shooting in Mandalorian style "green" screen, though, which is disappointing. The landscapes of Avatar are obviously hard to recreate in real life, but I'm not sure the fully digital background will do the live action show any service. 

True, but it'll help enormously with locations like the Air Temples, Ba Sing Se, the Divide, Serpent Pass etc. Exotic and strange scenery is such a huge thing in Avatar that I can see the argument for it.

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8 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Yeah too bad the writing is gonna ruin it now that the original creators have been chucked off the project 

They resigned, apparently because of creative conflicts with Netflix (possibly over casting and character ages), most of which seem to have oddly been resolved in the way they originally wanted by the new creative team (some rumblings that Nickelodeon may have also started talks to lure them back to the animation side of things early on). 

Also, as Legend of Korra demonstrates, though the original creators can produce great material, they were only partly responsible for the success of the show and floundered a bit when they were left on their own. Aaron Ehasz was a key part of the success, and so was Dave Filoni in the first season.

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I wouldn't say LoK conclusively demonstrates anything though. Part of the issues with it, at least, were with not being given a full series order at first. And them being unable to explore a Korra-Asami romance early on.

Take those away, and I think Korra would be a much more cohesive show. Even with those constraints, it's managed to be a damn good show. Hopefully, given that they were lured back to Nick, they have those kinds of issues sorted, and will have the money and the creative freedom to do more original storytelling in the Avatar world. 

I quite liked how they blended technology and bending, and I wouldn't mind more of that in future seasons. 

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16 hours ago, fionwe1987 said:

I wouldn't say LoK conclusively demonstrates anything though. Part of the issues with it, at least, were with not being given a full series order at first. And them being unable to explore a Korra-Asami romance early on.

Take those away, and I think Korra would be a much more cohesive show. Even with those constraints, it's managed to be a damn good show. Hopefully, given that they were lured back to Nick, they have those kinds of issues sorted, and will have the money and the creative freedom to do more original storytelling in the Avatar world. 

I quite liked how they blended technology and bending, and I wouldn't mind more of that in future seasons. 

They were fine with having self-contained seasons and every book was greenlit before the first episode of Book 1 aired.

Quote

From discussions around the first season, it sounded like Korra grew from a miniseries into a regular series. Could you take advantage of that in Book Two? Knowing there would be more, are you aiming to craft a giant arc similar to The Last Airbender?Konietzko: It is a similar format to other TV shows, like 24: new season, new challenge, and new bad guy. Nickelodeon came to us at the end of 2009 with a twelve episode “mini-season” already green-lit for a new series. They let us do pretty much whatever we wanted with it, as long as it was in the Avatar universe and featured bending. Their one request was that each of the Books have its own contained arc, which was fine with Mike and me. I think it was important to the network because initially they didn’t know how many of these mini-seasons they would want to pick up! They wanted to test the waters. But they grew confident as we progressed and we were eventually lucky enough to get them to pick it up through Book Four before we even premiered Book One.

https://www.vulture.com/2013/09/legend-of-korra-creators-on-the-series-plans.html

Quote

Book Four: Balance, the final season, was produced in parallel to the previous two seasons. The crew, at one point, worked on approximately 30 episodes at the same time: post-production for season 2, production for season 3 and pre-production for season 4.[47]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Korra#Development

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  • 10 months later...

I have to say the final casting is looking pretty tight: 

Main Cast
  • Gordon Cormier as Aang, the Avatar.
  • Kiawentiio Tarbell as Katara.
  • Ian Ousley as Sokka.
  • Dallas Liu as Prince Zuko.
  • Paul Sun-Hyung Lee as General Iroh.
  • Daniel Dae Kim as Fire Lord Ozai.
The Avatars
  • Yvonne Chapman as Kyoshi, a prior incarnation of the Avatar.
  • C.S. Leek as Roku, a prior incarnation of the Avatar.
  • Meegun Fairbrother as Kuruk, a prior incarnation of the Avatar.
The Southern Water Tribe
  • Casey Camp-Horinek as Gran-Gran, matriarch of the Southern Water Tribe.
  • Rainbow Dickerson as Kya, Sokka and Katara's mother.
  • Joel Montgrand as Hakoda, Sokka and Katara's father.
The Northern Water Tribe
  • Nathaniel Arcand as Arnook, the chief of the Northern Water Tribe.
  • Amber Midthunder as Princess Yue of the Northern Water Tribe.
  • Irene Bedard as Yagoda, a Northern Water Tribe healer.
  • A. Martinez as Pakku, a Waterbending master.
  • Joel Outlette as Hahn, a Northern Water Tribe soldier.
  • Sebastian Amoruso as Jet, the leader of the Freedom Fighters.
The Fire Nation
  • Ken Leung as Commander Zhao.
  • Elizabeth Yu as Princess Azula.
  • Momona Tamada as Ty Lee.
  • Thalia Tran as Mai.
  • Ryan Mah as Lieutenant Dang of the Fire Nation Navy.
  • Francois Chau as the Great Sage of the Fire Temple.
  • Hiro Kanagawa as Fire Lord Sozin.
The Earth Kingdom
  • Maria Zhang as Suki, commander of the Kyoshi Warriors.
  • Tamlyn Tomita as Yukari, Suki's mother.
  • Danny Pudi as the Mechanist, an inventor from the Earth Kingdom.
  • Lucian-River Chauhan as Teo, the Mechanist's son.
  • Utkarsh Ambudkar as King Bumi of Omashu.
  • Arden Cho as June, a bounty hunter.
  • James Sie as the Cabbage Merchant.
The Air Nomads
  • Lim Kay Siu as Gyatso, an Air Nomad.
Spirits
  • George Takei as Koh the Face-Stealer.
  • Randall Duk Kim as Wan Shi Tong, the spirit who guards a great library.

 

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46 minutes ago, Myrddin said:

I was looking for Toph until I remembered she didn't show up until Book 2. 

I never convinced my wife to watch the cartoon. We're looking forward to this. 

Ty Lee and Mai also don't appear until Season 2, neither does the library spirit and Kya also doesn't show up in flashbacks until Season 2, though Hakoda appears in S1 flashbacks so that does make sense to have her in early. Azula also appears at the very end of Season 1, but doesn't speak until Season 2. So there was scope to bring in Toph early but I assume they want her to be a big new character for the Remake Season 2 (assuming they get that far).

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I doubt they will be frame-to-frame faithful to the animated series. There's a lot that won't translate well from a animation to the screen. And I'm sure they'll try to explore some stories in greater depth.

I can't see them not expanding time at the Southern Air Temple, especially the flashback, for instance. It's going to be one costly location to build for the little screen time it gets in the animated show. 

Same with Zuko's flashback in the Fire Nation palace. Clearly we'll get a lot more of the Ozai-Zuko-Azula dynamic a lot earlier, given the casting reveals. 

What I'm not sure of is if expanding the story like that won't end up hurting it. Does it make sense to make Zuko sympathetic too early? You risk that the moment you introduce Azula and Ozai. 

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So is the series gonna be as good as M. Night Shyamalan's movie? :D :leaving:

 

As for LoK...I never really enjoyed the show as much as ATLA. It felt disjointed on many levels.

The setting/technology jump, I feel like this added to this rather hectic pacing, while Last Airbender had a rather more pleasent leisurely pace, with flying around on Appa. I mean, the cars and stuff also made her polar bear (forgot the name) kinda redundant. Then there was the age. Korra and her gang were a good bit older than Aang, which I think also took away a bit of the charm/innocence and occasional goofyness of the predecessor. 

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17 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

So is the series gonna be as good as M. Night Shyamalan's movie? :D :leaving:

I don't understand this. What movie?

17 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

As for LoK...I never really enjoyed the show as much as ATLA. It felt disjointed on many levels.

The setting/technology jump, I feel like this added to this rather hectic pacing, while Last Airbender had a rather more pleasent leisurely pace, with flying around on Appa. I mean, the cars and stuff also made her polar bear (forgot the name) kinda redundant. Then there was the age. Korra and her gang were a good bit older than Aang, which I think also took away a bit of the charm/innocence and occasional goofyness of the predecessor. 

It was choppy especially with the show runners having no clue how many seasons they'd get, but they still pulled off a pretty good series that has a lot of what made ATLA good, in my opinion. I'm glad they changed the vibe of the show, though. 

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