Tag: Avatar the Legend of Korra

The Legend of Korra disappoints, again

The Physicist and I finally got around to finishing Book 2 of The Legend of Korra, and I was underwhelmed, to say the least. Warning: spoilers ahead.

First of all, what the hell is up with Jinora? Her last-minute-save-the-world intervention seemed like a total ass-pull, and it was hard to tell exactly what was going on. If you’re going to have a tertiary character save your protagonist’s ass, you need to do a much better job of foreshadowing it–a propensity for cuddling cute spirit animals isn’t enough.

Korra’s duel with UberUnalaq was also unsatisfying. It didn’t really have any emotion–it was just two giant beings slugging it out like they’re in a Godzilla movie. I would have liked to have seen more of an emotional conflict between the two of them. Unalaq is Korra’s uncle and he had her father thrown in jail on trumped up charges, but Korra basically reacts to him like he’s a random Monster of the Week.

The other problem with Unalaq is that his character development was incredibly uneven. At first he starts out as a well-intentioned extremist, but he abruptly becomes a garden-variety villain in the last few episodes. I would have liked to have had a better idea of why he thinks that unleashing Vaatu is going to make the world a better place. Even if he thinks that the spirits have gotten a raw deal, releasing the spirit of chaos and darkness isn’t exactly the next logical step. Now it seems that he just did it for the Evulz, and that’s unsatisfying.

Compare that with Zuko and Azula from the first series: we had a much better idea of what made them tick and why they acted the way they did. Because the audience actually got to bond with them, they were much more satisfying as villains.

The lack of character development isn’t confined to Unalaq. Korra suffers from it, too. The problem is that she doesn’t seem to learn from her mistakes. At the end of Book 1, she supposedly learned that it’s okay to rely on others, yet when Book 2 began, she was back to being a lone wolf. It also doesn’t help that she remains a flat and uninteresting protagonist. She needs to have more depth beyond a kick-ass-and-take-names attitude. And I wish the writers would lay off the Korra/Mako relationship drama. It’s tepid at the best of times since the two characters don’t really have any chemistry.

I was also kind of annoyed by the whole Varrick subplot. It felt like little more than a series of plot contrivances, and in the end, it didn’t really go anywhere. Varrick certainly isn’t punished for his crimes: the last we see of him, he’s escaping with his loyal assistant on his back (trust me, it makes sense in context).

I think a lot of Korra’s problems ultimately stem from the decision to have these truncated seasons. Filler episodes are not bad. Done right, they can help the characters grow and advance the meta plot. I think the best example of this is probably “The Beach” from Book 3 of The Last Airbender. That episode really had nothing to do with the main plot, but it did a great job of giving us background info about Zuko and Azula. There’s nothing like that in Korra, which is why everyone seems so damn flat.

On a more positive note, I liked that the writers actually did something risky by having Korra’s connection to her past lives severed permanently (?), though the impact of this change was somewhat reduced by the fact that Korra never really had much of a relationship with the past Avatars.  That could set the stage for some truly interesting plot developments in Book 3, provided they don’t go and hit the reset button within the first few episodes.

I enjoyed watching the interactions between Tenzin, Bumi, and Kya. We don’t really know what Aang was like as an adult, so it’s interesting to hear what his kids thought of him. It seems that he wasn’t exactly a model father, and he played favorites with Tenzin since Tenzin was the only airbender among his progeny. One thing I’ve always liked about Aang is that he’s generally not a Gary Stu. He’s always had flaws, and that made him a lot more interesting.

Finally, I really liked the art of Book 2, particularly the glimpses of the Spirit World and the flashbacks that made up “Beginnings” parts 1 and 2. Avatar has always been exceptionally well animated, and Book 2 has some of the most stunning episodes of the entire series.

Despite my disillusionment with Korra, I’ll still watch Books 3 and 4. I just hope it gets better….

 

 

Reflections on Avatar: The Legend of Korra Book One

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Book One of Avatar: The Legend of Korra came to an end last month. I started watching the show with high expectations, but they swiftly took a nosedive as it progressed. Sadly, the season finale did nothing to shake me from my apathy.

I approached the show as a huge Avatar fan. I loved it so much that I purchased the boxed sets of all three seasons, which is something I rarely do since I’m such a cheapskate. I re-watch them regularly, and I can honestly say that I enjoy almost every episode (with the exception of “The Great Divide,” of course).

When I heard that they were going to make Korra, I was thrilled. I was a bit disappointed that we wouldn’t be seeing more of the original characters, but the steakmpunkesque setting looked intriguing. But after the first few episodes, my enthusiasm for the show all but vanished, and I continued watching out of a sense of duty rather than enjoyment.

Korra was originally intended as 12-episode miniseries, but that was eventually increased to 52 episodes divided into four ‘books,’ with each book having a different plot arc. The original series, on the other hand, had 61 episodes spread over three books. Because Korra has shorter books, the plot is forced to move along at a much faster pace, without any filler episodes. That could have been an asset, but instead it turned out to be a problem.

The show’s pacing struck me as woefully uneven. The first part of the book is dominated by the pro-bending storyline, which gets jettisoned midway through so the Amon storyline can take center stage. After a fairly sedate beginning, viewers are subjected to plot whiplash as the remaining episodes zoom from battle to battle.

I wish the pro-bending storyline had been pruned a bit because it really wasn’t all that interesting. The institutionalized nature of the combat managed to make bending boring. At their core, all the pro-bending scenes were the same. Two teams would meet in an arena and lob elements at each other. They were a poor substitute for the varied combat shown in the original series.

The Amon storyline is less repetitious, but things move so quickly that everything seems curiously devoid of impact. The finale contains some genuine drama when Amon manages to strip Korra of most of her bending skills. For a few moments, I thought that the second part of the season would focus on her struggle to regain her mastery of the other elements, and I was genuinely excited.

Alas, Avatar Aang comes along in the last few minutes of the episode and restores her bending while dispensing some pap about how her recent suffering has made her a true Avatar. Apparently, Korra can now tap into her spiritual side, but it’s kind of hard to see this as a momentous achievement when her lack of spirituality hasn’t been mentioned since the first episode.

Of course plot problems can be overlooked if the characters are sufficiently engaging. Sadly, Korra’s weren’t. I think the lack of filler episodes really hurt the characterization. The original series handled filler episodes very well because they often ended up being more character-driven. “Zuko Alone,” “The Tales of Ba Sing Se,” and “The Beach,” are all great examples of how the original series managed to flesh out the characters.

But there wasn’t room for anything like that in Korra, and so everyone remained pretty one-dimensional. Compared to Aang, Korra’s personality seemed pretty flat. She felt like a generic Strong Female Character, and I think it’s because we weren’t allowed to get to know her gradually. She also didn’t seem to face many interior struggles. True, she had problems with the spiritual side of being the Avatar, but that it’s not really a ‘struggle’ when it’s mentioned once at the beginning and then forgotten about until the finale.

Her relationship with Mako felt similarly flat. There was never really any chemistry or tension between them. True, Mako had the hots for Asami for a while, but she might as well have worn a nametag reading “Hi, my name’s Asami, and I’m a plot complication.” There was no reason to think of her as a credible rival to Korra.

And then there’s Amon, the main villain of the book. Although he gets points for having a plot that’s more sophisticated than the usual KILL, KILL, KILL!!!, he’s still rather bland until the finale fleshes out his backstory a bit more. He can’t really hold a candle to either Zuko or Azula from the first series.

I haven’t totally given up on Korra, and I’m willing to watch a bit of Book Two to see if things get better. But I certainly won’t be rushing out to buy Book One anytime soon.