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

[Werthead]

Korra I think was much more ambitious, tonally and in terms of what it was trying to do, than Avatar, but I don't think it maximised its potential, though it came close on occasion. Avatar is pretty traditional - it's really the Hero's Journey played straight - but it maximises what it could do with its tone and characters. Avatar was also much more consistent, whilst Korra could be very choppy in quality.

[fionwe1987]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Korra I think was much more ambitious, tonally and in terms of what it was trying to do, than Avatar, but I don't think it maximised its potential, though it came close on occasion. Avatar is pretty traditional - it's really the Hero's Journey played straight - but it maximises what it could do with its tone and characters. Avatar was also much more consistent, whilst Korra could be very choppy in quality.

Yep. I admire the ambition, in Korra, and salute their decision to not settle on a formula. In fact, for all that "same soul born again and again to save the world" sounds like the basis for a highly repetitive set of stories, the creators have managed, by rotating the cultures the Avatar is born into, as well as their gender identity and sexuality, to make this an exciting way to explore very different identities, in conversation with each other. 

Korra herself is a huge personal favorite. Flawed, complicated, but with a very nicely done arc that, at its heights, genuinely matches what they did with Zuko in ATLA. The secondary characters is where LoK falls a bit, though I'd argue there's plenty of good ones there, and Mako is the chief failure and the writers never really made anything of him. 

Edited September 29, 2022 by fionwe1987