Amph ATLA and The Legend of Korra (ATLA live action remake coming Feb 2024)

That finale was awful. There are family shows and there are kids shows, and I'd say they've finally fallen from being a family show to being a kids show.

 

I dunno about being a kids show or whatever, but it was pretty "meh". That's pretty much the whole season to me in a nutshell, aside from Wan's story.

Wonder what the next "book" can possibly be called after "spirits"..

 

Having not seen the finale, my problem with this season to-date is that it seems over-stuffed, and disjointed as a consequence. They had the potential to do a very interesting political season, with a rebellion as the main plot and a war profiteer as a major subplot. Certainly, they tried to do a lot of set-up in this direction early on. It was also something completely new to the Avatar universe, as we'd never seen someone try to navigate the role as a supra-national arbiter of justice before. Likewise, all the exploration of the Spirit World and the Avatar's connections there was also new. The Wan backstory is undeniably the high point of this season, and a lot of exciting characters and moments came out of it. But why try to do both at the same time?

The politics was skimped over. The rebellion got no development but a pretty full conclusion, while the war profiteering angle got lots of development and a short-circuited conclusion. Neither is satisfying. The spiritual stuff, on the other hand, was largely delayed, and received no real attention outside of Wan's story and last week's episode. I think they really would have been better served just splitting this into separate seasons.

 

How? If anything, it became more adult, and showed some permanent

Spoiler: mild spoiler

losses and consequences.

How was that finale not exciting for you?

And I'm thinking maybe

Spoiler: spoilerish speculation

[Book3: Avatars

Well, once you see the finale,

Spoiler: Finale Spoilers

There is a reason for why the tried to do both. To show how dark the world was becoming, and helps justify why Korra believed the barrier between the worlds should finally go down at the end.

And we knew from the beginning of the rebellion that they were just trying to hold out until reinforcements came, and couldn't stand against openly trying to attack the occupation forces. And the rebellion's cause ends up being successful. And Varrick is still out there. Also, looking farther back, I can now see more hints to the season's spiritual conclusion and message throughout the entire season now.

 

^I didn't say the finale wasn't exciting, but yeah, it was underwhelming. Why? I guess it just didn't feel very well thought out or surprising.

 

Ok, but why did it seem not well thought out or unsurprising? Just trying to get the discussion going. I put the reasons for my opinion. I thought some parts of it were very surprising, and looking back I can now see the hints planned out for the conclusion throughout this season, and even building from previous seasons.

 

I'm too underwhelmed to type a bunch about why it was underwhelming. :b

 

I am so confused by what just happened.

Spoiler

AND THERE IS NOW NOT A SINGLE SHIP ON THE ENTIRE SHOW THAT IS TOGETHER. WTH.

 

Spoiler

They're not a ship. I mean, seriously, the only relationship that has survived this entire season is Tenzin & Pema. Sheesh.

Okay, so what I'm super confused about is the whole "one cannot live without the other" aspect of Rava and Vaatu.... so how did Korra destroy Vaatu? And what exactly did Jinora DO? I thought Jinora was going to end up sacrificing her life to take Rava's place, which would have been sad and tragic but ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL and instead she just shows up and... does... a giant glowy ball?

And I'm desperately sad that Lin just pretty much was rendered stupid for most of the season.

I'm also very annoyed with how Varrick as a sub-villain was just forgotten. PLUS they just completely ignored and glossed over Mako and Asami.

I also squealed so loud at Zhao. OMG.

Overall... meh. Just... meh.

 

Spoiler

Well, for me the conclusion was the same as Book 1: Felt rushed, pulls a deus ex machina out of nowhere, and (almost) everything is wrapped up in a nice little bow. Also, sad to admit this, but I had to pirate the last 2 eps because I didn't feel like bothering with stupid buffering from Nickelodeon. Hopefully the last 2 Books will up the quality to levels similar to "Beginnings" and take more time to wrap things up properly.

What about no spoilers was hard to get? There's a line between a spoiler-free review and one that's spoilery, and yours crossed that line.

 

Well then. I guess we'll just do this as a list.

Spoiler: Finale Spoilers

1. I felt the ending of this season depended too much on light-hearted fare for substantive resolutions. I don't mind some of it, since this is a children's show, but they went back to the well a few too many times for my liking. First, Bumi had a Jar Jar Binks sequence. Then, Desna and Eska essentially switch allegiances because of a "romance" that had mostly just been a joke throughout the season. To their credit, they tried to invest with more meaning in the last episode, but I still would've preferred something else.

2. I don't really understand how they were supposed to have separated Raava and Korra, or how Jinora helped reunite them later. That was all quite under-explained. But regardless, I commend them for what they did in-between, with the permanent loss of the past lives, and really creating a sense of desperation with Korra's failure at the halfway point.

3. I wasn't happy about Voltron. It just seemed sort of stupid, and only worked on the big=cool logic. I would've much preferred a more understated ending, like in LoK season 1, where there really weren't some big galactic stakes. While there were some vague intimations of expansion beyond Republic City, victory against the Four Nations would be by no means assured. So you just had a contained story, whose excitement was generated by the quality of the story-telling and your emotional investment in the characters, not trying to endlessly make everything more grand in scale. That besides, this really changed the nature of the Spirits. Looking at something like Siege of the North, you see this awesome, overwhelming power that is rightfully reverenced. Watching this, you kept waiting for someone to Form Their Blazing Sword and finish the episode.

4. The siblings squabbles and things did somewhat justify themselves with Tenzin's personal growth at the end, I suppose.

4b. It was both nice and disappointing to see Zhao. Nice cameo, but his fate was better when the horrors were unimaginable, or even that quasi-canonical comic book thingy was good too.

5. Glad they finally started paying attention to the bending again. After a season full of really lame stuff, they let Unalaq and Korra really start to use water in ways that were clever, and which could actually remind people it was water. I did enjoy this a lot.

I think that's it for now?

 

This thread is going to be a pain in the ass for the next six days.

 

Spoiler

Jinora ex machina was one of the worst things in the finale. Way more dumb than the lion turtle or Aang showing up. Why the heck is she suddenly a writer's pet?

 

Spoiler

Yeah, I'll agree it was the weakest part of all the Avatar endings. Mostly because it's still not even clear what she did.

 

I'm specifically not seeing the finale yet, but if it comes to that I wouldn't be offended if the ban was lifted--logistically, I can understand why you might.

Personally, IMO, the online thing feels demeaning. Two episodes a week already basically amounts to them trying to burn it off as fast as humanly possible; now this strikes me as if we asked Nick to lend us a dollar and they crumpled up a five and threw it at our feet. "Oh, you want your Korra episodes? There you go--go get 'em."

 

Spoiler: Finale Spoilers

This entire block of episodes was ludicrous. The promises I felt were implicit from Beginnings weren't delivered on AT ALL. Okay, so we're supposed to be afraid of a giant monster man attacking the world? Isn't evil spirits overrunning everything enough? How the hell did Korra become the giant Korra? What the hell did Jinora even do, and how did she do it? DOES ANYTHING HERE ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE? Did the writers just give up, and said "Well, we don't know how to end this responsibly in a way that pays respect to anything established before this, so here's a bunch of flashing lights and colors and the avatars are all gone now. Kthnxbye."

Am I the only one who thought that beyond the visuals, there's nothing basically of value here? The ending may be interesting, but the way they accomplished it isn't right. Even the Iroh, Zhao and Aang cameos just felt like pandering, and I felt that way about the previous Iroh appearance.

Infuriating, to say the least. Also, there's this. Which is pretty sad.

 

darthcaedus1138: Standing ovation.

 

Spoiler: Finale grumbling, season grumbling

The more I think about it the less this entire season makes any kind of actual sense. The entire structure of it was messed up, there were way too many characters that served no purpose, Lin got stuck with the idiot ball, Bolin got stuck with the idiot ball, Asami got sidelined, the bending was almost universally off, the relationships were almost universally pointless....I could go on. And depending on what the wider reception for this episode is, I might.

But let me close with this.I realize the show has used deus ex machinas before.I acknowledge that this isn't anything new to the series as a whole. But that doesn't mean we should expect it. It's lazy storytelling, plain and simple. And they had probably 2 in there. They can and did get away with these kinds of flourishes in the past, but enough is enough. If I know how every season is basically going to end before it's gotten to the halfway point because of their use of these methods it's not good. And I'm not talking about the fact that I called the Unalaq thing. It's beyond that. It's saying that the entire thing will be resolved because some "other" entity with a previously unknown power gave a mystical one time fix and now everything's better. The addition of consequence this time around was nice, but it basically doesn't change anything.

And the worst part is that I think they gave themselves the tools throughout the season to craft a meaningful resolution. The entire inclusion of the spirit world, the Ravi/Vaatu struggle, perhaps Korra's abuse of the Avatar state. And you had the possibility of interesting characters like Unulaq, Varrick, Deska and Esna, Tonraq. And they all played out to be either formulaic and boring or completely inconsequential.

For those who don't want to read spoilers/what I wrote, this season had a lot of time and a lot of potential. And it was mostly pissed away.

At least I have Beginnings though.