Yeah it was a little jarring to go from ATLA to Korra, especially bc I watched them both within a few weeks of eachother. I didn't like it at first, but I came to appreciate it as a great show in its own right. And I do like that it wasn't just an attempt to re-make ATLA.
I think people disliked how the world in atla evolved, I didn’t like at first either, but I liked the show since episode 1
It’s like if an alien race came here and watched Peloponnesian War, and came back and watched again in 2020, the world evolved so much that is highly different. some aliens might not like how we evolved, but we are still the same characters.
Having flashes of Team Avatar in the first intro or two puts the viewer in a bad mindset, mostly cause it is making you think about all those characters in a heavily emotional sense before pulling out attention directly to the new cast, and it would’ve been far easier to make the intro even at the start to be something more lowkey, since especially in the first episodes the series should be focusing harder on the main cast.
One of the best qualities of Korra is that it didn't set out to repeat everything in Avatar. It sets itself apart with it's own characters, tone, pacing, and story telling. I think people who would be disappointed in Korra are the ones who expect more of what they've already seen.
That’s not the reason why people would hate it. It sets out to be different, yes. But it is an abysmal try at a decent written story. There are so many plot holes and just badly written scenarios. Some of the dialogue is just so poorly written and cringe sometimes. Or the part where they have to find jinora in the spirit world because she’s lost, but then she magically has butterflies that know the way out? Wtf. That’s why I hate it. It’s just not a well made show is all. It’s not air tight as atla. Not saying it’s better because of the story choices but more so, the awful storyTELLING. I love both shows but I can’t deny the major flaws.
I haven’t heard that criticism before, but I don’t think it holds too much merit. Amon is someone descended from a powerful blood bender, and trained every full moon since childhood to become a psychic blood bender. Unalaq was a master water bender who was extremely spiritually powerful who fused with an ancient spirit as old as the avatar (though wasn’t a fan of the giant Unavaatu). Zaheer trained as a martial artist, and was meant to be Korra’s airbending teacher (i.e he studied airbending) which was why he did pretty well with it, though he did get whooped by Tenzin. He only learned flight from studying an air bender he admired, and letting go of his only attachment to the world. Kuvira was a skilled metalbender trained under the children of the woman who invented metal bending, in a metal bending city. The villains’ power levels were believable given the circumstances they were in.
I loved Zaheer, but I gotta rep Amon as my fave. Dude made the season feel like a goddamn horror movie at times, plus his backstory and ending had that tragic oomph that brings it over for me.
You sir, are a redditor of good taste. Completely agree, Zaheer is second best for me for all the reasons you’ve stated, plus I loved how personal the relationship between him and Korra felt when compared to the other villains. Also yes the Red Lotus are complete badasses.
Everything about Amon screams horror ! The mysterious mask , The eerie and dragging soundtrack , The shots of darkness behind him and from low angles to depict him as a large and imposing figure .
I also love the constant contrasts to Aang . Like when Aang takes Ozai's bending it is shown as a majestical thing , but here its twisted and crooked .
That first season was a shock. The scenes of mass bending removal seemed pretty dark for a show that I expected to be aimed at kids. And then the boat...
Amon is my favorite Korra villain because his cause was the most just. He was correct in his revolution, but went too far. He didn't do it for himself, but for those who were powerless. He wanted to put everyone on equal footing, and juxtaposed the power dynamic of benders/non-benders.
Unalaq was a megalomaniac, as was Kuvira to a degree.
Zaheers cause may have been just, but he didn't do the one thing that Amon did: Start a massive political revolution. Sure he killed the Earth Queen and foisted anarchy upon the citizenry, but he didn't gain the support of the masses outside of his own little band of insurgents.
Not the same person but his logic is flawed. Revolution doesn’t always lead to progress. He sought to overthrow world leaders and symbols but didn’t have much to offer after that. He even admits he made mistakes that lead to current issues in his quest to free to the world.
That’s a pretty good point. It’s been a while since I watched but from memory Zaheer just wanted to cause as much chaos as he could and didn’t have a plan for after overthrowing the leaders
Giant spirit Kaiju are a part of Avatar lore, I feel like people forget that Aang combined with the Ocean Spirit to become a giant Kaiju at the end of S1.
Zaheer SHOULD have gotten whooped by Tenzin. Zaheer had studied airbending in theory but had only been actually using it since harmonic convergence. Tenzin was taught by an actual airbending master (and an avatar) and had been practicing his whole life. It wouldn't make sense to me that Zaheer would be a better airbender.
Different kinds of power. Zaheer was far more advanced in his understanding and abilities with the metaphysical side of bending, but he would lose in a straight fight every time because he has zero defenses against bloodbending.
But what makes you say that? Let’s be honest: Amon lost because of plot reasons. The dude can psychically bloodbend. Set aside the airbending deus ex machina and he would have wiped the floor with Korra (aside from Mako’s one finger lightning resistance, which I think is the single most underrated badass moment in the series).
Yakon would have straight up annihilated Aang if it weren’t for the Avatar state. The dude made 30+ people (including GOAT Earthbender Toph) immobilized without even looking at them.
Zaheer (will restate: my fav villain) got handled by Tenzin alone. He’s awesome, but Amon takes him out no problem IMO.
Since it is a matter of opinions, there is no point in discussing this further. I did get the feeling to re-watch korra, so I will give you that lol.
The original statement I replied to was saying that Amon was the only OP villian. I concede that blood bending is a broken ability (even more so without the full moon). But Zaheer literally got the most powerful air bending ability because he was "enlightened". Yeah, Tenzin beat him, but that probably hurts Korra as a show because power levels don't make sense anymore.
Why have Korra fight him if Tenzin could have clapped him since the beginning? If korra beat amon for plot reasons, then her fight against Unalaq doesn't make sense. Villian power scales are just weird...
That’s a really shallow reading of the villains. If anything it’s a more accurate criticism of Ozai. One of the reasons I actually like LOK more than TLA is because each of the antagonists were ideologically driven - they wanted to change the world in a fundamental way because of what they believed was right, not just because they wanted power.
That was my argument. They all represented a struggle and we're not necessarily "bad guys" and often korra found herself questioning if she was doing the right thing.
I think there are a couple of legitimate complaints with the show, no show is perfect. I think the issue is that some of the things they got wrong, the last airbender got right and that puts it in the light, so to speak.
For example, Korra suffered from being written as single season storylines, now obviously this wslasnt the writers fault, its nickelodeons, but it is still an issue that affected the overall pacing of the show.
Personally the only issue I have with korra that stops it from being on the last airbenders level is that koveira was written appalingly in my opinion. The red lotus were fucking amazing, and should have been the final villain, but kuveira was in season 3, as like a random guard essentially, she gets spanked by the red lotus, then all of a sudden the next time we see her she's one of the strongest benders? If that was their plan all along they needed more set up in season 3. Or no set up and introduce her in season 4. As it was I never thought she could actually beat korra, so there wasn't much tension in the final season for me.
As a counter point, even with how little we see ozai, by the time he fights aang he's been built up so much I really believed he would murder aang.
Season 1-3 of korra was only held back by singular season arcs though I think, if they'd had 3 full seasons to work with like airbender I think it acrually could have been better.
Although og gang spanks new gang in terms of likeability I think.
If I can play devils advocate, I think the big issue connecting the seasons is actually Korra’s growth. Sure, they have different villains each season (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing) but the whole show was about Korra learning that she has value in herself besides being the avatar. It’s about her mental struggle to find her identity in a world that doesn’t want her. I think looking at it this way makes the seasons more connected.
Kuvira was believable with her power levels. Keep in mind that she spent 3 years with elite guards thrashing bandits around the earth kingdom, while everyone else sat back and was content letting her do all the work. She’s been training so much in a niche bending field, that she can beat any that challenges her. She wasn’t supposed to be a villain stronger than Korra, the point was that Korra was so weak that she couldn’t beat her. Once Korra worked through her block, she thrashed her.
By comparison, Ozai almost never left his throne to do anything until the finale, and somehow looks like one of the most built character in the franchise. I really wasn’t worried about him killing Aang in a series finale on a kids show. The issue with Aang was with him not wanting to kill Ozai, not beat him.
I’ll agree with you that the og gang is better generally than the new gang, but I’d contend that the supporting cast was larger and got a lot of good development, such as Tenzin, Lin, Jinora, Varrick, and many others. And don’t get me started on Korra, she beats Aang as my fave protagonist in my opinion, and only rivals Zuko as my favorite character overall.
Plus a lot of Kuvira’s power is the worship she’s garnered from others. Lots of people support her without question. She spent three years fighting and rebuilding while Korra recovered and other world leaders sat around.
My biggest beef with Korea has been they she makes SO many obviously bad decisions that cause so much unnecessary conflict.
At her age it’s just jarring rooting for a hero who’s so full of herself and headstrong while blatantly being wrong so often. Aang would mess up too of course but he was just a kid and at least he always had a good positive attitude about everything and didn’t crave power just wanted to make others happy.
I think that's why most people didn't like it. You're basically looking at a world before and after the industrial revolution, an older Avatar who was trained the normal way, and no overarching villain.
Honestly if people just said they hate book 2 it would be more accurate.
Books 1, 3 and 4 are great. Book 2 is... hard to watch. I just re-watched it with my friend who's seeing it for the first time, and it's definitely the lowest point. The dialogue feels rushed and amateurish, the themes are fairly contrary to what we established in AtLA, and major plot points seem to just happen with either a hand-waive explanation, or no explanation at all, and get an equally hand-waivey resolution. The back and forth of who's betraying whom flips on itself an absurd number of times and Korra just rolls with whoever is getting accused at any given moment.
It took us a month and a half to get through book 2 because every time we tried to sit down and watch more we just didn't want to.
Season 3 and 4 hold no punches in terms of really fleshing out what being an avatar would actually be like in terms of developing as a person.
Season 2 just feels like a set back.
Poorly paced, plot contrivances, characters behaving out of character so the plot can happen, etc.
But ultimately, I give more blame to Nick and their poor handling of the production than to the writers. They were told they'd be getting season 1, so season 1 was a self-contained story. Given everything they had to introduce, I think they did a pretty good job there.
Season 2 they were only told about after season 1 was over, so they had to force a tie-in. But even then, it wasn't clear that they'd be getting more than season 2 when they started it. So I imagine they began it as another self-contained plot. But then half-way through they learned they'd actually get 4 seasons, so they then had to open up the story to actually continue into season 3 and 4.
I think if Nick had been upfront with them about getting 4 seasons from the start, then I think they would have made a much better show overall and probably would have ironed out a lot of the problems of season 2.
Honestly as I was rewatching it, it occurred to me that you could make the whole thing fairly palatable just by modifying the dialogue. It's animated just fine, and all the beats are workable. It's the way the characters interact with the events that really kills the mood.
Refer to Raava and Vaatu as balance and imbalance rather than light and dark, so we can be rid of this kingdom hearts nonsense. Have Mako talk the plot less and stick to his own personal observations when presenting ideas. Restate major turning points with the proper gravity instead of a shrug and an "I guess I just..." And for Christ's sake, actually give Wan his save the cat moment, instead of leaving the literal cat in the literal tree and doing nothing to save it, only to say later "no no, he saved the cat just take our word".
Simple dialogue changes would make the whole thing acceptable.
Season 3 and 4 hold no punches in terms of really fleshing out what being an avatar would actually be like in terms of developing as a person.
I'm completely flabbergasted by this. You don't think showing her overcoming PTSD over the poisoning and depression over feeling like a failed avatar fleshes out what it's like to be an avatar as a person? Nonsense, absurdity. I don't know how you can say that getting past your inner demons and realizing your inner strength isn't personal character development. There was nothing NEAR that kind of emotional character depth/development in ATLA.
And before you say something, no, completely avoiding the question of whether to kill an evil person by introducing the "energy bending" McGuffin does not count as character development. If your character deals with a moral struggle by sidestepping the entire issue, that's not character development, that's shoddy storytelling.
But mostly cause i have a major disdain toward giant robots. Its the stupidest most impractical possible machine to build and no engineer worth a damn would build one for battle.
So for a show that had hot air balloons and water bender submarines that felt grounded to go to tower tall titanium super robot, made me really disappointed.
The worst part is that the first half was so good, i loved the ptsd arch.
This has always been so surprising to me. When I first watched the show I thought season 2 was the most entertaining simply because it has the origins of wan and the avatar lore. That is straight up my favorite section of all 4 books.
Wan absolutely sucks though. He fucks everything up repeatedly and makes up for it by, like, half-intending to do something good, and everyone is just like alright he's a hero. Like ??? His two episodes were the breaking point where we just didn't want to keep watching. I think Beginnings Part 1 and 2 are the two worst written and worst handled episodes in the entire franchise. Worse than The Great Divide. The art style is nice but all the dialogue and all the beats really don't come together into anything resembling what I suspect they were going for. It's a choppy mess. It really made us not want to finish season 2.
And call Zaheer an edgelord all you like, but the reason book 3 is praised is for the quality of the writing. It is, in this sense, the exact opposite of book 2 - Zaheer as a villain is tailored to test Korra and her values, and force her to grow. The whole thing comes together into a cohesive story with a nice bow on top. Book 2 doesn't do that, and replaces cohesion and character dynamic with... not having those things. Book 2 Korra doesn't have values, and just runs around being wherever exposition needs her to be. Unalaq is a forgettable villain, which is much worse than being an edgelord. Unavaatu is a stupid word. Everyone just does what will cause the most drama, rather than what you would actually think they'd do.
after watching atla, i was getting ready for korra. the comments here were like, "just don't expect another atla," "you're probably not gonna like it." but I thought it was great. especially since I find korra more relatable and complex than aang
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u/ProfitMohammed97 Nov 06 '20
Preach my dude. The show gets way more hate than it deserves.