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Openly attacking a world leader at an event like that would be a really stupid move. Kuvira commands an experienced, mobilized, and fanatically loyal army that spans the largest continent in the world. Not only that, Republic City is practically in the Earth Kingdom, so they're right next door. Imprisoning her would not undo her words, but instead galvanize her forces against outside influence. They'd basically plunge themselves into open war without apt preparation and fortification, risking their own imprisonment and such if things went sour for them. That's not how politics really work.
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Oct 18, 2014 06:17
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I'm really glad this show's back on the classic standby of Imperial Fascism as an antagonist, because I think its the only style of civic philosophy the writers know how to handle with any grace. Of course, militant dictatorships are easy to write. They usually revolve around the cult of personality of a singular person (giving you an antagonist), with invasive and widespread influence (giving you a sense of pervasive danger), and attempt to silence dissent (giving you motive and means to antagonize the protagonists). It's a tried and true easy-bake recipe. Korra's been a politically-centric show from the beginning, but the scripting just doesn't have the chops for that sorta thing outside of fascist military dictatorships, unfortunately. If you're going to have a politically charged show, you have to be able to deftly describe each side of the debate. Even seemingly unreasonable philosophies, such as the Tea Party, have appealing sentiments that recruit people to their side. Otherwise, it'd gain little to no traction and wouldn't be a viable philosophy that could challenge a status quo, much less be the status quo. A major issue I see with the writing here is that the writers want to talk philosophy and use it as a device for their plots, but they don't really make an effort to understand, or at least articulate, their antagonists' motivational philosophies. Why would anyone actually believe in radical egalitarianism, or anarchy, or theocratic extremism? A college level thesis ain't needed; this is a show aimed at young people, after all. But, you don't have to devote screentime to the villain rattling off a manifesto. Likewise, the writers seem confused as to what they're trying to say with this show, and they are trying to say something, because they've focused on a different political and social philosophy each season thus far. They present us with a variety of villains with wildly different ideas, and even go so far as to paint a picture of a world where the status quo is questionable, to say the least. But when called to answer against the ideas the antagonists present, Korra and company come up empty handed except with a resounding "I don't know!". Republic City is shown to have problems with poverty and crime and equal representation of all demographics. The Earth Kingdom has a gestapo working under a old monarch who wanted to conscript a fledgling minority into an elite weaponized army, who was to be succeeded by an incompetent heir, all while the common people suffered. The White Lotus has secret prisons around the world, and apparently meddle in world politics. The New Air Nomads act as a global police force that may or may not recognize sovereign borders. The message here is that a lot of the world is very messed up, and in often very terrible ways. If the system is that terrible, then how can one rightfully defend it? The answer is that the writers simply end up defending the status quo, probably unintentionally. Which is really unfortunate. If they had spent more time understanding the philosophies that inspire their own antagonists' viewpoints, they could have articulated why Korra should defeat them, and thus define what this avatar actually believes in. Because what does Korra believe in? What's her opinion? What does she as a character think of the world, and how people should best get along? Roku thought the four nations should be that. Four nations. Aang was a staunch pacifist and was all about bringing people together to experience each others' cultures and traditions. What does Korra believe? From all the episodes I've watched, I can only tell that Korra believes that she is the Avatar and that she will punch any jerk who steps outta line. The Equalists believed that bending wrongfully divided people, placing benders above others. Their grievances and philosophy is not hard to understand nor demonstrate, but the writers didn't do much with it. Are benders really that privileged? Is society stacked against Nons so much that it breeds inequity? Do the non-benders get much of a say in government? Or is the inequity in society deeper, and benders are just an easy scapegoat? Is poverty and hunger and fear the root causes that make people's ears perk up when someone comes along spouting slogans? The lesson here some would say is too complex for children, but I say its an incredibly good thing to teach kids at an early age. Children understand unfairness, because life can be very unfair. But its important to teach them, with shows they like such as Korra, that maybe the easiest answer isn't the right one. Blaming an easy target for the greater wrongs of society is something people do on the daily, and its bred many terrible results. Spending 12 episodes really delving into this issue would be amazing. Korra should have been introduced to a non-bending everyman or two. She gets an insight in how they live their lives, and see how hard things can be for them, or the invisible advantages others with bending possess. On top of that, just because benders get some advantages doesn't make them bad people. She gains a deeper understanding in the plight of people, and how Amon's easy solution allows him to take advantage of them. Instead, we get 12 oddly paced episodes where Korra continuously runs in blind and swinging, and attempts to bring down Amon without understanding why he got to where he was in the first place. Her bullheaded behavior is met with predictable results. She loses her bending, and is devastated by it. Not being able to bend 3 of the 4 elements is a horrible, terrible fate for Korra. She doesn't even seem to get that she is still a bender, and one of the handful of her type. She's still amazingly special and unique. Then, at the very end, she magically has everything returned to her, well, just because. Season 2 is the lowest point. I won't spend a lot of time talking about it because I wish the writers would have gone a different direction entirely, but what's done is done. Unfortunately in this season, they go farther into the lazy antagonist method. Unulaq is a crazy priest who wants to uncork the bottled Ultimate Evil and make himself a god and usher in 10,000 years of darkness. Yawn. Not only is this boring, but its a strange departure from the asian influence the show usually demonstrates. Rava and Vaatu are supposed to be two sides of the same coin, order and chaos, but the show describes them in terms of Light and Evil. This is more a western style dichotomy of Good and Evil, instead of Order and Chaos, which are two innately neutral things that require each other for balance. Yin and Yang is the philosophy that things that seem separate are actually one in the same, and they define each other, and the way they wrote these two spirits really shows a shallow understanding of what that means exactly. Vaatu is depicted as a source of evil and destruction, instead of a source of dynamic change. It's too bad they sorta mucked up the Avatar mythology here. The avatar should be a unified being, representing equal amounts of these spirits. They seek balance balance between Order and Chaos, between Stasis and Change, Flexibility and Rigidity. Not just The Obviously Good Guy who beats up The Obviously Bad Guy. Season 3 was really quite great, but they pulled their standard (by this point), last-second reveal of the villain's motives. They should've just expressed his ideas early on. This would allow them to explore the philosophy and why it appeals, then having Korra meaningfully reject it and counter it with her own ideas. Zaheer expresses dissatisfaction with the world's status quo. Foolish, boorish rulers ignore the plight of the common person. Zaheer wants to create a world where every person should be able to seek his or her own path. Korra says she doesn't agree, but can't give more of an argument. So Zaheer's philosophy will cause chaos and people will get hurt? Just as Zaheer argues, rulers continuously oppress and subjugate their own people. The Fire Nation genocided an entire culture for the glory of their country, led by a dynasty of tyrannical despots. These are actually pretty good points. Why is he wrong Korra? Instead of providing answers of any sort, the show literally stuffs a sock in Zaheer's mouth. What I'm saying here is that the writers keep dabbling in all this politicking, but they don't seem to have the chops to really explore any issues they bring up. And its' not as if the answer would be to recreate CSPAN coverage, with long boring speeches on podiums. In good writing, we'd be shown why this idea or that idea is wrong. We'd have it demonstrated for us. I'm just glad the writers are back to a subject they can actually handle.
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Oct 19, 2014 02:54
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ImpAtom posted:"Some leaders are bad, ergo we should kill all leaders and destroy the concept of government" is not actually a viewpoint that is generally something that needs to be defended again. It's a stupid black-and-white philosophy. They are not good points at all except insomuch as they argue 'some leaders are bad." They don't even understand anarchy as a political philosophy. Instead of "kill all leaders!", the writers should have stressed "Everyone should be free to make their own way. Governments make that impossible." A proper philosophy of any kind believes in something, not just against something. That's my point. Zaheer believed in total freedom, and that should have been emphasized more.
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Oct 19, 2014 03:08
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Like in Season 4, we are left with this quandary: The World Leaders want to put an unqualified, incompetent prince on the throne to succeed an obviously corrupt Earth Queen, and Kuvira wants to rule with an iron fist. Either a dictator with a secret cultural police force that lets most of their citizens rot in poverty and crime, or a dictator with a more overt military. Both are lovely answers, but we're plainly meant to believe that Kuvira is wrong because she manipulates circumstances to her favor. Unlike Raiko who was manipulating Wu to his favor. Nobody involved her is right. The common people are going to suffer either way. But Tenzin says "Boy I'd feel better if Korra was here." Why? What's Korra big ideas on how people should live? The show goes to lengths to demonstrate how corrupt the status quo is, but turns around and celebrates Korra for defending that status quo. That's my entire point. What's Korra fighting for? The writing presents us with antagonists that basically amount to easy targets that distract us from the fact that Korra isn't really helping anybody or really solving anything. I believe if they handled it a little more deftly early on, we could have had a better show overall. What Korra should have learned by now that the best way to fulfill her role as an Avatar is to provide an example by which people can live by, outshining the easy message of revenge and violence other "leaders" offer. I think this season may delve into that, and not a moment too soon. Toph showing up and telling her that her accomplishments didn't mean squat was great. Because they didn't. The world is still messed up. Toph even says herself that she spent years fighting crime and it didn't matter, and that the true lesson is you can't fight other people's battles for them. You have to provide an example of how to do it themselves. Win their hearts and minds, and appeal to their better natures, so that they don't give into hatred and violence and fear. And that's what the show's been missing, which is my entire point. Instead of the writers showing the dangers of seductive ideas (which would require the aforementioned eloquence in understanding/describing them) that can be countered with demonstrating a Better Way, the writers opt out for the easy Monstrous Bad Guy that can be defeated by punching. Season 2 is the worst, but its almost the most honest in how they've been writing this show. Bad Man wants to UNLEASH EVIL, Korra hits him a bunch, and he goes away. In The Last Airbender, the Dictatorial Fascism was headed by Ozai, who was indeed a monster man. But the writing was skilled enough to show us how and why people followed him. Fear. Pride. Indoctrination. We get lots of well rounded Fire Nation people, we get lots of grey areas. We see that simple hitting the bad guy enough will not truly end the conflict. Iroh even says that. If he or Zuko or anybody but the Avatar were to put down Ozai, the monster man, it would not cease the bloodshed; it would be rather seen as a continuation of it. Aang even goes a step further by finding Another Way that allows him to retain his agency, and elevate the victory to a place where the four nations could begin to heal. He was a truly realized Avatar that excelled beyond the limitations of the four elements in a world gone imbalanced. He embraced the good in each element, in Air he found the freedom to think outside the box, without being so ungrounded that he allowed a stronger enemy to corner him and wipe him out, as they did his forebearers. In Earth, he found a grounding to facing his responsibilities without being rendered inflexible, as the rulers of Ba Sing Se had become. In water, he remained adaptive and fluid, allowing him to survive his enemy's strikes, without running away, as the water tribes had done. In fire, he found the power to end the conflict decisively without descending into murder, and in fact preserving the life of the Fire Lord, unlike the savagery that had gripped the Fire Nation and forgotten their roots. In this, we see that Aang goes above and beyond the flesh of the conflict, and changes its soul, which allows the cycle of violence to end. He follows his beliefs, and comes out the other side self-actualized. How can Korra do that if she doesn't believe in anything?
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Oct 19, 2014 03:44
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X_Toad posted:Doesn't that problem only arise when it comes to Amon? Unalaq didn't have followers because he was a charismatic leader with appealing ideas, he only inherited his authority over them and used a false pretense to mobilize them, with his final plan being something else entirely. Zaheer and the Red Lotus strike me as idealists and theoreticians, who wants to create a world based on an abstract concept. Only Amon's movements seemed to have really been born out of real social issues that the show could have really expanded upon instead of simply using them as a "justification" of Amon's incredible resources. I think Unulaq could have been an interesting villain had they played him as a straight theocrat. The civic issue that created him was a crisis of spirituality in a setting where spirits are manifest. In the avatar world, disrespecting or ignoring the spirits leads to dire consequences. The conflict could come from Unulaq's drive to control how people interact with the spirit world. Instead of making him into a boring 10,000 Year Reign of Super Evil villain, make him into Kung Fu Pope Gregory IX. People would follow a spiritual leader that promised to punish "heretics". That sorta thing would be right up the Avatars domain of duties. The conflict originates with Korra's lack of spirituality creating a vacuum of faith based leadership in a world that is rapidly progressing. Unulaq steps in to seize power and establish his version of spirituality, which people hop onto. It'd also make for more Grey areas with who is right. I know I didn't but Desna and Eska's crisis of loyalty when they were faced with the idea that their dad was Spirit Hitler. "Oh, he's going to destroy the world? But he's our dad!" That'd be more believable with the dad in question having more human motives.
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Oct 19, 2014 22:30
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The underlying theme and challenge for Korra is to make the Avatar relevant again. Since the first episode, we've seen that, either by intent or accident, that the Avatar is considered archaic and irrelevant by society at large. Despite knowledge of the Avatar's identity since a young age, she's been sequestered away, sheltered from society. She doesn't seem to have been schooled at all in even basic diplomacy or politics. She's met with disrespect, demands, and dismissal by nearly every person she meets besides her close friends. This is a far cry from the previous perception of the Avatar as a global institution that we see in previous incarnations (to the point I almost want to chalk it up to poor wiring). People used to revere the Avatar as a sacred being, even after a century of absence during an era of crisis. The word of the Avatar carried immense weight. Now the Avatar is treated as a simple mix of celebrity and politician, or a novel curiosity of a bygone era. What I hope to see with season four is the writers deconstruct Korra's superhero complex. She's acted for the most part with this viewpoint that the Avatar swoops in, beats up the bad guy, solves the problem, and BAM balance. The very first thing she does as Avatar is capture some common ne'er-do-wells. Just like a superhero! But that doesn't really help. She spends the next few seasons reacting to threats and problems like she's a comic book hero. Speak boldly, fight bravely. Be loud, throw some punches. But she didn't fix anything, not really. She didn't truly help anybody. The true power of the Avatar isn't the strength of their bending, or their ability to commune with spirits. These are just executive powers and badges of office. The true power of the Avatar has always been, we've seen, in the political. As a public institution. Kyoshi defeated Chin the Conqueror not by directly striking him down, but defying his right to rule, allowing him to break himself as he threw himself against the Will of the Avatar. Roku put Sozin in his place by defying his expansionist principles. Aang ended the war by bringing low Ozai by an action the went beyond a simple display of battle prowess. True, these were all backed up by the powers of the Avatar, but the point still stands that they were actions that lent credibility and legitimacy to the Avatar as a political leader that all others deferred to. And every foe had been defined by a unifying motive and Creed: the time of the Avatar is over. It's an obsolete idea that has no use in this modern era. Korra, in order to succeed, must prove them wrong. Korra has up until now acted as a pugilist. A cop. A fighter. Not a leader that works to provide answers and solutions to problems, but a hammer that simply beats down problems as the pop up. Even now she can only think of the Avatar as a super hero, which means someone who wins battles with blows. She asks Toph to get her back into Avatar "Fighting Shape". I think, no matter the expressed identity of the Dark Korra, it's a metaphor for Korra's perception of what the Avatar is "supposed" to be. It's savage violence and brute strength. It's going it alone, borne of her rejecting the help of others (after all, she was unable to beat any of the antagonists in season 3; her allies all came together to aid her). Korra sees it haunt her constantly as she tries to go it alone without enlisting and leading others. Toph, in her role as wise mentor, says one of the best lines "Get over yourself. The world doesn't need you!" But she leaves our the last bit: Korra needs everyone else.
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Oct 20, 2014 06:15
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Reading the responses, I reconsidered my own viewpoint. The superhero thing was somewhat off-base, true. But there's some stuff going on re: expectations versus results. But I still believe that Korra's main challenge is proving to the world that the Avatar can offer real, long-term solutions. That it's a relevant office, not some relic of a world outgrowing spirituality. If she beats up Kuvira, what then? Kuvira, unlike the other villains, doesn't have a House-of-Cards that is built upon deception. Will her followers just pack up and go home like Amon's if Korra hits Kuvira hard enough? Korra needs to make some decisions, pull rank on the world. She's the avatar, and here's how it's gonna be. They're really setting it up to play out with some third option Korra is going to provide in lieu of two really lovely choices. The set-up is that the Third Solution is going to be pretty important, and not to be brushed over like they did with the establishment of the RC presidency (we get Amon's defeat, the Equalists dissolve, and then there's a President all in the course of a sentence). We're not even sure that Korra had anything to do with that, and it just sorta happened on its own with other people deciding that stuff. The current conflict is one of a lack of balance. The world is on the edge of war. There's no good, internal solution to be found, which is why the Avatar has a dog in this fight.
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Oct 20, 2014 17:21
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Aang finding Another Way, despite a lot of people's insistence on Deus Ex Machina, is actually a very valid and thematically sound event. Hayden Childs of the Onion's A.V. Club sums it up in his watch-through Hayden Childs posted:In the final battle, Ozai is portrayed as huge and muscular, towering over the tiny Aang. At the turning point, he throws everything he has at Aang, who is wrapped up in an egg-shaped rock. Here the iconography of the show is at its finest. We are all shaped by our beliefs and our experiences. Someone who has been brought up to be an egomaniacal monster may have power, but that power will be transient. Massive Ozai calls himself the Phoenix King, but it is little Aang who emerges from the fiery shell and is transformed. It is Aang, trained in all of the types of bending, who enters the Avatar State (yip yip) and becomes a nucleus of elemental power. It is Aang, brought up to believe in the sanctity of life in all of its forms, who puts aside the power of the Avatar State to neutralize Ozai with some quick earthbending moves on his own steam. It is Aang who risks his own life to spare Ozai’s, all on the centennial of his people’s genocide. That’s why this ending is a great one. The answer to Aang’s problem may pop out of a deus ex machina, but the question itself, late starter though it may be, is built on solid characterization. Aang is a recognizable human being, a gentle and sweet child. Having him murder Ozai would betray everything we know about him. It is consistent with Aang's characterization and the theme of the sanctity of all living beings that he find Another Way in the finale. The show spending all these episodes with Aang standing by his principles, those of love, respect for life, brotherhood and unity, then forcing him to sacrifice those would be a cynical and nihilistic sucker punch. The lesson here is not the pragmatic "Well, children, if you find yourself in a situation where you must kill a motherfucker, you best do it." Most children are not going to find themselves in that situation all the way into adulthood. The confrontation with Ozai is one where the main character has everything tested by everything he seeks to avoid. It's really about Aang, not about the world. Ozai is a power mad dictator, lording over the globe, killing as he sees fit in the pursuit of personal glory. That's why Ozai has very little characterization of his own. He's one of the view characters in the entire show that works as a symbol. He's symbolic of the Imperial Machine of the Fire Nation. He's symbolic of the corrupting influence that power without measure can have. He's symbolic of what Aang would become had he used his powers to take the Firelord's life, convinced of his own moral superiority in doing so. Aang killing the Fire Lord would tell children "Well, your beliefs and principles are all well and good, but when it comes down to it, they don't really matter." That's the Easy Way put in very dramatic terms the show centers around. Killing the Fire Lord is the easiest way to stop him, and would go against everything Aang stands for as a person. Just like giving into your darker nature is the easiest way to get through life. The show beseeches us to find a way to hold onto our moral centers against the onslaught of the world, of everything and everyone telling us that we our values are meaningless. Though its hidden, Aang is able to uncover another option, one that lets him solve his issue, his personal crisis of principle, without sacrificing himself. Korra hasn't even found what her principles are yet.
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Oct 20, 2014 17:48
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Aang knew more loss than anyone in the story. The Fire Nation committed genocide on people he personally knew less than a year ago (in his context). He'd already sacrificed plenty over the course of the story. He'd paid for his flaws (running away, denial of his nature) by sacrificing his entire culture. Making him pay further during the climax with a further sacrifice of self (all he had left of his entire nation) would be needlessly gratuitous, cynical, and belaboring the point. Aang only had himself, really, left from the trauma the Fire Nation put him through. Any more and it'd be approaching misery-porn.
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Oct 20, 2014 18:05
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ImpAtom posted:
It's rather rich that you just got done spending several posts criticizing the finale of ATLA for not choosing a traumatic choice that compromises to some degree Aang's ideals/morals, and then examining the long-term psychological effects, then comparing people with similar ideas on Korra to bronies and saying it's disgusting behavior. Take the log out of your eye, man.
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Oct 20, 2014 19:09
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ImpAtom posted:It's rather rich that you ignored the fact that I said repeatedly that wasn't my interpretation of the ending. In fact in the very post you're responding to I said that I liked Avatar because it didn't go in that direction. Then why are you spending so much time defending and talking about singe viewpoint you neither hold nor agree with?
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Oct 20, 2014 19:20
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ImpAtom posted:Because I'm pointing out that people in this thread are doing exactly that with regards to Korra and that people did the same thing with TLA. I mean this argument started with the whole "Korra is acting too superheroic" thing. I see. Thank you for your services.
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Oct 20, 2014 19:27
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The metal in Korra is totally a metaphor for her own fear. This is called a narrative device. It's much more illustrative to an audience if what's holding a character back is expressed in a literal internal poison, instead of merely an abstract, purely mental hang up. The big challenge of season 4 is Korra must conquer her fear and grow as a person and that other people can't fight your battles for you. If the thing holding her back is fixable via an external medical procedure performed by someone else, it really flies in the face of that. Itd be dreadfully dull. The show has set up that Korra's issue is not just physical, but mental, but entirely internal that she must fix herself. It's called a metaphor.
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Oct 21, 2014 20:35
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The game I'm really interested in is Grand Theft Auto: Republic City. Five stars and Korra comes after you.
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Oct 23, 2014 05:06
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I think Korra hiding/training to overcome her fear for several more episodes (3-4) would be ideal. It would allow a lot of the other plots to simmer to a boil. Kuvira continues her expansionist campaign with Varrick's experiments. Bolin and Mako's relationship continues to strain. The three air bender kids get some screen time looking for an avatar that doesn't want to be found (it'd be sorta cheap and too easy if they found her in a single episode). If this takes place over 4 more episodes, you'd still have 5 more left in the season. That would be sufficient time for both a satisfying climax and epilogue.
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Oct 23, 2014 19:18
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Hell, add bending and an early 20th century aesthetic to Sleeping Dogs, and you'd have GTA Republic City. Easy.
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Oct 23, 2014 23:06
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SpiderHyphenMan posted:It haunted her around the world for six months. This is pretty much spot on. Agreed. And Toph's description of the why of Korra's enemies eluding her is exactly what I was getting at for so long. At the core of each enemy, there's an ideal. The show has sorta toed around this, and by extension, toes around why people would join up around these fanatics. Zaheer's philosophy was, at its core, one of freedom from control, and yes, that has fundamental validity. It's not just "kill all leaders". He wanted freedom for all, and the means to that end was the abolishment of government. He went off the deep end in the execution, but complete freedom itself is a philosophy that can intrigue. Korra seeing things in shades of grey will allow her to see Kuvira not just as a monster that is Doing Things Wrong, but a person fueled by ideals. A person pursuing those ideals in unbalanced ways. This is the episode where we hopefully see how Korra is diverging from Kuvira. Bolin was right, despite Mako's disbelief, that Korra and Kuvira were much the same pre-episode 4. Korra would just rush in, bully those she disagreed with, and hit things until they lined up. She was a fascist, even if unintentionally, with her "my way or the highway" perspective. She's come a long way. What I imagine is Korra will encounter Kuvira, and ask for parlay and debate. Kuvira will be shown to be unreasonable and forceful when the now-more reasonable Korra disagrees with her, and that's when violence will erupt. Kuvira will be discredited when she can't simply silence dissent and overpower dissidents such as Korra. Fascism isn't very good at handling opinions that disagree with it without relying on force.
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Oct 25, 2014 19:45
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Also a legitimate resolution for the political crisis is a United States of Earth thing. We see independent States being dissolved in exchange for protection. Korra could establish a federal type government that offers protection and support to all Earth Kingdom lands but allows them a degree of autonomy.
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Oct 25, 2014 20:01
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Something a bit bothersome: it feels like nothing was really gained by this little kid mini-adventure. Korra was ready to come back to civilization on her own without being found by anyone else. I was expecting a little tension to arise had they found her before she was ready to return. They didn't find her until she was ready to be found, which was already illustrated by her vanishing without a trace for six months and nobody having the faintest idea where to look. It feels really quite redundant. It feels like the only purpose it truly served was to provide Korra a quick ride home on the back of a bison. I think the screentime could have been better used for the much better purposes, focusing on Toph and Korra. Having them argue, fight, and eventually come to terms with each other. Korra finally learning to listen to wisdom, and coming to terms with her fears, and letting go of past battles. That part was the best part of the episode and could have been expounded upon. The kids' journey could almost be totally removed and nothing of real value would be lost. They're very minor characters. If you had to devote screentime to supporting characters, I'd rather see Varrick doing his spirit-science, or Prince Wu and Mako palling around. I don't think anyone was really asking what Tenzin's kids were really up to with everything else going on.
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Oct 25, 2014 23:22
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That conversation between Korra and Kuvira was hilarious. "Hey, I know you're like 99% to total victory, but can you stop the empire building thing?" "No" "But it's wrong" "No" "poo poo, I'm spent. Talking is hard." I don't need Machiavellian level of political manuevering, but c'mon. You hardly even tried, Korra. What are you gonna tell Su?? "Oh hey, I know I said I'd go tell Kuvira to leave, but she said no. Crazy, right? By the way, have you really considered that maybe total surrender just might be the right call?"
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Nov 6, 2014 03:15
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Gotta say that I really don't buy korra being a prodigy outside of her early development. Either that, or the definition of "mastering" the elements has slid quite a bit since the 100 Year War. Korra is supposed to be some amazing fighter but she never really does much besides splash around or toss chunks of dirt in between small tongues of flame. I know it's in character but watching this "prodigy" has been dull throughout the series. Azula was a prodigy too; you never knew what crazy move she was going to invent on the spot. Korra has all for elements going for her. Why does the writing insist on the same boring moves all the time? Kuvira acting smug? Blast some air from below her, shoot her into the air and body slam that rear end into the dirt. Throw a wall of flame at her and set your arena on fire. When she's dodging that change her landing point to sand. The writers make other people fight creatively, but they never give korra any interesting moves, especially when they go to lengths explaining how amazing she is at fighting.
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Nov 8, 2014 19:07
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Also earth bending is based on Hung Gar King Fu. Look at these scrubs.
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Nov 8, 2014 19:10
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Korra being functionally shite at fighting isn't in itself a bad thing but what gets me is its all Korra is supposed to be good at. It's how they designed her from the start. She ranges from "sucks" to mediocre at diplomacy, politics, relationships, philosophy, spirituality, no interest in the arts, cooking, driving, the list goes on. so if they're gonna pour all her points into fighting, it feels cheap to me that she routinely gets routed through out the series. Everyone can dodge or out-maneuver her attacks, pull out a special move to neutralize her, or escape by a writing conceit/contrivance. I feel they should have everyone avoid fighting her in the first place, taking hostages to get her to stand down, or actually getting steam rolled. If you want to have a character who's defined by martial prowess be convincing, ya gotta let that character shine on their home turf. That way, it's actually shocking when something comes outta left field. Ending every fight with your Combat Monster being defeated in combat is lazy, imo. If she really is so good, Korra on her worst day should give every other fighter a run for their money. Kuvira should have taken more hits, no doubt.
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Nov 8, 2014 20:59
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I think we're seeing some fundamental issues with the writing emerge here. I think the creators designed Korra as a character before they really asked how'd she fit into the story they wanted to tell. They created a fighter, brash and stubborn in temperament. She's a prodigiously talented bender and combatant. Moreover, she loves to fight. Her entire personality revolves around her ability to kick rear end. There's plenty of ways to make this character type interesting. First and foremost, you present challenges and obstacles that the character's natural talents do not solve, putting them outside their comfort zone. We then watch as the character sinks or swims, and what they learn (or don't learn) from the experience. This uncertainty is called dramatic tension. Take Toph, for instance. She's basically just like Korra. Strong, independent, brash and stubborn, and above all, incredibly powerful and eager to fight. Toph's challenges come from conflicting expectations with those around her, like her parents and Katara. She can't just bend those problems away, and so we find how she deals with them interesting. The issue we see with Korra is both eager and talented in violence, yet the problems she's given to solve by the writers could in fact be solved by fighting. Alternative solutions aren't really presented or explored. So there's the rub. When you design a character that's powerful/talented by Avatar standards being presented with problems that could be solved or averted through the use of the Avatar power set, you quickly run out of dramatic tension. So you have to shoehorn some in, or circumvent and undermine your own character's strengths over and over. Give every mook on the street his own pound of kryptonite. The Equalists had strangely powerful abilities to dodge, and Korra, despite being a master bender, just couldn't figure out how to adapt to their mobility. Tarrlok was rightfully going to get his poo poo pushed in by Korra, and pulled a magic ability that didn't even jive well with the show's established poo poo. Amon had both supernatural dodgey-powers and magic-super-bloodbending. Unulaq challenged Korra in a straight, one-on-one fight with a fully realized Korra at the height of her powers, with full access to the Avatar state, and still trounced her despite the fact he was 3 bending disciplines and a thousand lifetimes short of her (in addition to Korra being younger and having trained her entire life as a brawler). With Zaheer and Kuvira, the writers have to put further shackles on the one avenue of ability their own character has. The true dramatic tension of past Avatars, like Aang and Roku, is that they purposefully held back. Internal, organically written forces kept them from simply over-powering and dominating their enemies. If you want to flip the script there and show how the eager use of power has negative results, then own it. Have Korra dominate her enemies, but explore how it doesn't solve her problems, and in some cases makes things worse. Korra could steamroll Amon, but is seen as a bully by his supporters. Kuvira could harp on the overreach of the Avatar into domestic matters. That sorta stuff.
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Nov 9, 2014 00:53
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ROSS MY SALAD posted:How would Aang have dealt with Kuvira The same way every other person handled Korra. Step outta the way the push her into the mud.
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Nov 9, 2014 04:27
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Sato posted:Stuff Some good points, and that's certainly one way to look at it. I have some reservations, though. S1's pacing issues, abrupt resolutions and reveals leads me to believe the 12 episode limit snuck up on them somehow. Like they hardly planned out the initial season, much less a legitimate through-line for all four. Misstep or not, it does get tedious.
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Nov 9, 2014 05:35
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Doctor Reynolds posted:Kuvira could be a pretty good airbender with all her "gently caress up your footing" moves. One thing that was early on in ATLA that never really got brought up much again was how Zuko beat Zhao by "breaking his root", or footing. That's something I really miss about ATLA. A lot. Probably more than the rest. Exploring bending in depth, and how bending affects the world. The cultures that would take hold when you got Kung Fu Wizards deciding things. When they focused on the bending and how the world extrapolated from that ability, you get really creative, well-choreographed fights and interesting discussions of philosophy about the elements, divisions between people, and the rest.
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Nov 9, 2014 20:05
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It seems like the number 10,000 is to the Chinese the way English speakers sometimes use "a million" colloquially to mean some vague, but very large number. The point is you aren't supposed to know just how many avatars there's been. It's more mythic that way. I prefer it mysterious. The avatar is a force of nature that exists beyond human reckoning, and that includes something as mundane as counting. When Roku says a Thousand Lifetimes, he's being poetic. There could be 950, or 1500, or 10,000. It's an expression meant to convey gravity and let puny mortals know who they are dealing with. It's really too bad they stripped out one of the more interesting facets of the show.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:54
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DrSunshine posted:Man, blurry! had better post one of his awesome, gigantic wall-o-text critical essays soon, or we'll never get to see the definitive concluding words about this long, dramatic, messed-up show. Aw, shucks. I'm working on it. Now that Korra's done, ya gotta compare and contrast it wholly to its predecessor since they stand on level ground. Both span about the same amount of episodes. I finished up the series about a week ago, and then Christmas hit which brought all sorts of distractions. Personally, I think most of the criticism of Legend of Korra falls short because everyone is so willing to give the (now) final product a pass on its shortcomings because of executive meddling. I don't really think that's constructive or honest. Even with a lot of corporate meddling, there's still plenty of questionable decisions made by the creators, both in structure and execution To me, I find the end product to be passable entertainment, yet fundamentally flawed. Legend of Korra frustrates me because for every good thing I like about it, there's one or two things that are botched or in fact cheapens what they created in ATLA.
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Dec 28, 2014 18:14
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MonsieurChoc posted:Going by simple arithmetics, if Korra is Roaring 20s then Avatar is late-to-middle 1800s, being set 80 years earlier. It's actually one of the things I really like about these shows: the tech progression maps fairly well to how it happened in the real world. Well, besides the mecha power armor, VTOLs and laser death rays.
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Dec 28, 2014 18:36
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I'd like to watch a mini-prequel about Aang's adventures with Tenzin across the world. Aang's getting nervous about the future of the air nomads, because he's only been able to have a single airbender child. Kind of a long shot for repopulating an entire culture. So he's like, constantly nudging Tenzin to get with some air nation groupies, but Tenzin is too dense to get it. The entire mini-series would be Aang being a superb wing-man to Tenzin but Tenzin blowing it every time. Eventually it ends with Tenzin going steady with Lin and Aang dies of frustration.
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Dec 30, 2014 04:12
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SpiderHyphenMan posted:Yes but in my defense at the time I assumed we were never going to hear Mike and Bryan confirm it and I was pissed about the fact that people could still go "They're JUST FRIENDS, guys!" But the people who'd say that are idiots. They are holding hands, gazing into each other's eyes as they depart on a vacation together. Only idiots think that's in anyway platonic and no one should care what they think.
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Dec 30, 2014 04:16
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atla had a strong 3 act structure that traditional heroic fiction thrives on. Korra suffers because they tell the same "Korra fights a revolutionary antagonist, who brutalizes her, robbing her of some of her capability, from which she recovers and overcomes her foe" several times in an episodic format, diluting the overall character arc. I can tell they finally figured out what story they wanted to tell by book 3, because Korra's traumas at the hands of Amon and Unulaq are given lip service during s3/s4 at best but Zaheer's is visited time and again. About 50% of Korra's runtime is faffing about, experimenting with telling the aforementioned premise. In the end, most of Season 1 could be rolled into Season 2. Introduce the characters, introduce a minor villain that wants to do spirit shenanigans. Foreshadow the Red Lotus moving against a more featured White Lotus, have Korra defeat the minor villain. Airbending comes back. Cue s3 plot, with more runtime to explore the characters.
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Dec 30, 2014 22:39
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Azula's psychosis is pretty blatant early on. She's a codependent teenage girl whose tough persona is a house of cards. She receives validation from everyone around her, being talented nobility, and when that validation gets ripped away from her, its the breeze that blows it all down. All of her paranoid suspicions can't be allayed any longer. You could describe Azula as a ceramic knife, whereas Zuko is made of steel. Ceramic knives can make precise cuts, are harder and stronger, and keep their edge, and good looks, for years without sharpening. But a ceramic knife will break where a steel knife will persevere. Sometimes all it takes is a single drop and ceramic material will shatter. That's how I view Azula. Zuko went through trauma and hardship, and while he'll never be as hard or strong as Azula at her peak, that single trauma that she experienced was enough to break her. It might seem abrupt but it really wasn't.
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Dec 31, 2014 03:18
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Our introduction to Azula includes: 1. Lying to family to get them imprisoned 2. Obsession with perfect 3. Threatening to kill a naval officer for heeding the tides Sane is... not the word for Azula.
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Dec 31, 2014 03:25
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Man, that mini comic about the lieutenant would have made a dynamite episode.
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Jan 1, 2015 02:45
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