Avatar: The Last Airbender / The Legend of Korra

[Professor Donger]

Finished the movie with my friends, after a second watch, here's my review

It has a ton of plot holes and I disliked it. Everyone was weak as hell, they nerfed the Avatar State to hell.

shitty movie.

 

[The Incredible Gassy]

I need every BLACK to be DEPORTED from this fanbase NOW

 

[Big Green]

Finished the movie with my friends, after a second watch, here's my review

It has a ton of plot holes and I disliked it. Everyone was weak as hell, they nerfed the Avatar State to hell.

shitty movie.

Probably my next biggest gripe with it is how it's akin to Korra where no one can do anything. The fights suck so much ass when you don't let the cast actually do anything cool. I don't get if it's some artistic reversal or what they're going for having the MCs fight like they're background characters. Korra was the same way though where they'd just constantly be getting rocked by whatever the new thing/bad guy was.

 

[Duine In Cudromach]

Probably my next biggest gripe with it is how it's akin to Korra where no one can do anything. The fights suck so much ass when you don't let the cast actually do anything cool. I don't get if it's some artistic reversal or what they're going for having the MCs fight like they're background characters. Korra was the same way though where they'd just constantly be getting rocked by whatever the new thing/bad guy was.

Because when you have characters at the height of their development, most villains simply don't provide any real threat, so you have to either make a villain that actually does (which requires a villain that can't be defeated through traditional tactics, whether because of their power or their intelligence, and that requires having to think) or nerf the leads to make the villain feel threatening and address the obvious question of why the heroes can't just stop him.

Pretty common consequence of feeling like you always need to outdo your prior work. If you're coming off of the original AtLA then you had the finale of Aang versus Phoenix Lord Ozai, a ruthless tyrant at the height of his power, practically a walking force of nature. How are you going to top that?

It's far easier to just make the leads incompetent thtan make the villains smarter.

 

[Jormungand]

So people finally caught the Avatar Movie Leaker.

The person in question is known as Devash Lonendran, aka IDISSEVERYTHING, and, to make a long story short, he's a troll who loves to hack people for fun but is constantly caught every single time.
In fact, before this whole movie leak fiasco, he was caught 11 times and pleaded guilty to violating the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act.
He was also caught hacking the NFL to make false reports about people dying, and one of the many reasons he kept getting caught was that he kept using the same username, sometimes just straight up using his own name, and would barely change it enough.
Hence, people were quick to notice a pattern.

Honestly, it's fitting that an incompetent hacker hacked an incompetently run series like Avatar.

 

[Slap47]

Because when you have characters at the height of their development, most villains simply don't provide any real threat, so you have to either make a villain that actually does (which requires a villain that can't be defeated through traditional tactics, whether because of their power or their intelligence, and that requires having to think) or nerf the leads to make the villain feel threatening and address the obvious question of why the heroes can't just stop him.

I dunno if this is true though.

Plenty of shows and games have characters at their peak giving us a show with incredible fights where they use what they have learned and demonstrate their supreme skills.

Anyways, I'm currently in a probably never watching that movie mindset.

 

[No Shot Bucko]

So people finally caught the Avatar Movie Leaker.

The person in question is known as Devash Lonendran, aka IDISSEVERYTHING, and, to make a long story short, he's a troll who loves to hack people for fun but is constantly caught every single time.
In fact, before this whole movie leak fiasco, he was caught 11 times and pleaded guilty to violating the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act.
He was also caught hacking the NFL to make false reports about people dying, and one of the many reasons he kept getting caught was that he kept using the same username, sometimes just straight up using his own name, and would barely change it enough.
Hence, people were quick to notice a pattern.

Honestly, it's fitting that an incompetent hacker hacked an incompetently run series like Avatar.

View attachment 8882577View attachment 8882582
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My salutes to this sonofa bitch

Only because this franchise needs to be finally put in a coffin instead of being milked dry. and if by any means if this leak hurt a lotta corporate's pockets then a fucking big win even.

 

[Mystery Spy]

I dunno if this is true though.

Plenty of shows and games have characters at their peak giving us a show with incredible fights where they use what they have learned and demonstrate their supreme skills.

Anyways, I'm currently in a probably never watching that movie mindset.

I actually agree on this one. Just make the villain as dangerous, or even more powerful than the hero. Amazon's Invincible makes a main character with roughly the same powers as Superman work because he has to deal with other characters that are basically Superman too, but stronger, running around.

You spend a whole 3 seasons teasing on how powerful, and amazing, a fully realised avatar is and then don't use it.

It's another situation where they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want a fully realized Avatar to be the most powerful being, but also want you to root for an Avatar as an underdog.

 

[Incecticyder]

Because when you have characters at the height of their development, most villains simply don't provide any real threat, so you have to either make a villain that actually does (which requires a villain that can't be defeated through traditional tactics, whether because of their power or their intelligence, and that requires having to think) or nerf the leads to make the villain feel threatening and address the obvious question of why the heroes can't just stop him.

Pretty common consequence of feeling like you always need to outdo your prior work. If you're coming off of the original AtLA then you had the finale of Aang versus Phoenix Lord Ozai, a ruthless tyrant at the height of his power, practically a walking force of nature. How are you going to top that?

It's far easier to just make the leads incompetent thtan make the villains smarter.

Question: Who wants to watch a story where the rather competent casts get a lobotomy in order to make the villain a threat?

If the villain cannot challenge the cast with his power/intellect/charisma, why bother? They had years to come up with the script, why do they fail?

Aang is at the height of his power and no mortal can challenge him? Have a powerful spirit with a following be his opponent. Spirits, powerful ones especially used to challenge the Avatar all the time!

 

[Neet Tokusatsu]

It's another situation where they want to have their cake and eat it too. They want a fully realized Avatar to be the most powerful being, but also want you to root for an Avatar as an underdog.

It's funny, you could say those words describe Avatar as whole, not Korra, not the comics or novels, but Avatar as an IP. In previous pages some people were saying "Korra was constantly given power-ups and easy ways out so she doesn't have to develop as a character", and they're right, thing is...


It all started right here.


By the end of book 3 Aang was seemingly fully embracing his role as the Avatar, to fulfill the role he has to the world, but as soon the first real inconvenience appeared, that Aang might be forced to kill Ozai to end the war, the entire universe bent itself (heh) to give Aang the one convenient power-up, so he never ever has to get his hands dirty or even fully grow as a person.

Whatever problems Korra and comics/novels had, started before ATLA ended, in the grand scheme of things, Avatar was little more than a decent (i'm no longer willing to call it good) kid's show that was biting more than it could chew.

 

[Dorkwan]

so he never ever has to get his hands dirty or even fully grow as a person.

I always assumed it was because some Nick exec told them they're not allowed to have one of their most marketable characters murk a guy in front of millions of children.

 

[Chilson]

You know I just got reminded about that retarded "reach city" name from that garbage halo show and realized another thing that pissed me off about LOK. Why the fuck is "Republic city" (always been a retarded name) a republic???

This is a world where there are five, four after the air nomad genocide (two different water nation tribes), and none of them are republics. There are two tribes ruled by chiefs, one authoritarian kingdom ruled definitively by a king and a heavily fragmented empire with multiple petty kings and one emperor. Even the air nomads seemed to be ruled by a council of elder air bending masters.

So how the fuck did any of them ever come up with or unanimously agree to an independent city state ruled by a system of representation through a democratic republic? Ignoring how implausible it would be for them to come up with such a system in one generation (it took multiple generations for the American colonists and they had prior examples in the republic of Venice among a few others, and even then it took lots of trial and error), wouldn't the ruling leaders of the other nations immediate thought be that instituting such a system would immediately cause their own people to demand such a system for themselves and strip the rulers of their own power (like what happened in our world)? leading them to veto such an idea before it ever got to be implemented?

The more I think about it the more nonsensical it gets.

 

[starborn427614]

It all started right here.

It's funny because the Lion Turtle is technically all over the show in terms of iconography (I think there's even an actual picture of it on a scroll when they visit the Library), but for some reason they never bothered to set up the finale. It felt like a last minute change and not at all in keeping with the rest of the show's writing quality.

 

[Duine In Cudromach]

I dunno if this is true though.

Plenty of shows and games have characters at their peak giving us a show with incredible fights where they use what they have learned and demonstrate their supreme skills.

Anyways, I'm currently in a probably never watching that movie mindset.

You're correct! My point was that the easy out is making the characters incompetent. That way you don't have to make a more intimidating villain, you just nerf the leads and by comarison the villain is 'tougher' and 'scarier' because the leads are getting their asses kicked and you know how strong they are, this guy must be WAY stronger.

Of course you can actually pull out a villain that actually gives them a run for their money at the height of their power, and that would've been appropriate for a movie called The Legend of Aang. But rather than actually make a villain who is strong or clever enough to actually threaten the Gaang at their finest, it's easier to just have the villain literaly kill everybody off-screen and minimize everybody who isn't Aang.

It all started right here.

Totally agree. Thing is, with Avatar existing as a standalone series, this decision was questionable but forgivable in the grand scheme because the whole experience was so satisfying. Now the experience is increasingly un-satisfying and it becomes more and more apparent that this hiccup was not just a hiccup.

I always assumed it was because some Nick exec told them they're not allowed to have one of their most marketable characters murk a guy in front of millions of children.

They would've known this was a problem from the get go, though. They wouldn't have written the whole of Season 3 and then Nickelodeon looks over their shoulder during the final storyboards and says "Oh, uh, you can't actually have your lead kill anybody'.

From the interveiws Bryke gave about this, it always felt to me like they had written themselves into a corner. I don't think that energybending and lion-turtles were necessarily things they hadn't already thought of before the finale, but by the time they got there they hadn't actually figured out how to incorporate them, which is why the opening scene to the finale feels so... weird? It acts like Aang hasn't actually considered that he may need to kill Ozai until that exact moment and suddenly his entire internal conflict revolves around his pacifism versus his duty to the world, when that hasn't even been touched upon until pretty much right now.

Like I said before, there are absolutely ways to make this actually make sense and feel satisfying rather than abrupt, and since lion-turtles were first revealed in The Library there's really noe xcuse that no episode of Season 3 could have touched on their spiritual importance. But for one reason or another, they never got around to it, and once we hit the finale it was oh, right, I guess we have to figure out to resolve this conflict.

 

[Incecticyder]

It's funny, you could say those words describe Avatar as whole, not Korra, not the comics or novels, but Avatar as an IP. In previous pages some people were saying "Korra was constantly given power-ups and easy ways out so she doesn't have to develop as a character", and they're right, thing is...

View attachment 8883932
It all started right here.


By the end of book 3 Aang was seemingly fully embracing his role as the Avatar, to fulfill the role he has to the world, but as soon the first real inconvenience appeared, that Aang might be forced to kill Ozai to end the war, the entire universe bent itself (heh) to give Aang the one convenient power-up, so he never ever has to get his hands dirty or even fully grow as a person.

Whatever problems Korra and comics/novels had, started before ATLA ended, in the grand scheme of things, Avatar was little more than a decent (i'm no longer willing to call it good) kid's show that was biting more than it could chew.

It's funny because the Lion Turtle is technically all over the show in terms of iconography (I think there's even an actual picture of it on a scroll when they visit the Library), but for some reason they never bothered to set up the finale. It felt like a last minute change and not at all in keeping with the rest of the show's writing quality.

They would've known this was a problem from the get go, though. They wouldn't have written the whole of Season 3 and then Nickelodeon looks over their shoulder during the final storyboards and says "Oh, uh, you can't actually have your lead kill anybody'.

From the interveiws Bryke gave about this, it always felt to me like they had written themselves into a corner. I don't think that energybending and lion-turtles were necessarily things they hadn't already thought of before the finale, but by the time they got there they hadn't actually figured out how to incorporate them, which is why the opening scene to the finale feels so... weird? It acts like Aang hasn't actually considered that he may need to kill Ozai until that exact moment and suddenly his entire internal conflict revolves around his pacifism versus his duty to the world, when that hasn't even been touched upon until pretty much right now.

Like I said before, there are absolutely ways to make this actually make sense and feel satisfying rather than abrupt, and since lion-turtles were first revealed in The Library there's really noe xcuse that no episode of Season 3 could have touched on their spiritual importance. But for one reason or another, they never got around to it, and once we hit the finale it was oh, right, I guess we have to figure out to resolve this conflict.

They had the chance to develop energybending as a concept. Imo, they should have had Aang energybend someone to so what it can do or something. I wonder how come they didn't think about it despite being their finale.

You know I just got reminded about that retarded "reach city" name from that garbage halo show and realized another thing that pissed me off about LOK. Why the fuck is "Republic city" (always been a retarded name) a republic???

This is a world where there are five, four after the air nomad genocide (two different water nation tribes), and none of them are republics. There are two tribes ruled by chiefs, one authoritarian kingdom ruled definitively by a king and a heavily fragmented empire with multiple petty kings and one emperor. Even the air nomads seemed to be ruled by a council of elder air bending masters.

So how the fuck did any of them ever come up with or unanimously agree to an independent city state ruled by a system of representation through a democratic republic? Ignoring how implausible it would be for them to come up with such a system in one generation (it took multiple generations for the American colonists and they had prior examples in the republic of Venice among a few others, and even then it took lots of trial and error), wouldn't the ruling leaders of the other nations immediate thought be that instituting such a system would immediately cause their own people to demand such a system for themselves and strip the rulers of their own power (like what happened in our world)? leading them to veto such an idea before it ever got to be implemented?

The more I think about it the more nonsensical it gets.

In fairness, there are cities with such unimaginative names in real life. Even places with interesting names might just translate to "Mountain Village" in English.

 

[TheAmbiguousLurker]

Like, I mentioned in the movie, Tagah starts yelling at Aang about how he 'ran away', but we never actually saw a scene of them talking and Aang telling him he ran away and that's why the Air Nation was wiped out.

I don't want to defend the movie, but you've missed a scene here. We had two scenes about this. Tagah asks Aang how he survived the massacre, Aang explains that he ran away when he was told he was the avatar, and Tagah says that fate brought them together so that they can both redeem themselves by bringing back the Air Nomads. Then the other scene after Tagah teaches Aang the air tether technique and remarks on how simmilar Aang is to Avatar Whats-her-name where they again discuss Aang's guilt and the line about the Air Nomad's beliefs about death that Aang will later say back to Tagah at the end.

 

[Chilson]

Finally got through the film, its really fucking rough.

Pros: The animation is deadass gorgeous and the fight choreography is very impressive.

cons: everything else.

more detail:

-The denied are nothing more than plot devices with no actual character or background. They exist to get the story started and are only brought back to drive the plot forward. With the one exception being to have them do generic anime Shonen movie battle with the rest of team avatar during the final act. Fights that last for a few minutes at most and have no impact on the story...fucking great. Them also mastering air bending instantly is stupid, but incredibly in line with LOK's basterdization of the lore. I don't care about any of them and found it incredibly weird how they "redeemed" one who had maybe five lines of dialogue in total throughout the film and does not have their name mentioned A SINGLE FUCKING TIME!

-Tagah could have been very interesting, but they just turned him into a generic Marvel-esque spirit monster final bad guy who of course uses a giant beam of light in the sky to "destroy the world" or whatever. His heel turn is blatantly obvious from his very introduction and I was literally just waiting for when he was going to do it. Him having air bending moves developed for war that is implied without the need to explain it incessantly to the audience was something I liked about him though and him teaching Ang was one of the few good sections of the movie I simply enjoyed without complaint.

-I hate everything to do with the spirit world as it Deus ex machina's every inconvenience in the plots way and doesn't resemble the original spirit world from ATLA at all, but again that is just following LOK's basterdization of the spirit world. Oh and the Lion turtles all fucking died in the middle of a vast ocean thousands of years ago I guess, even though that contradicts so much of ATLA and even LOK's established rules and story.

-There is so much redundant and unnecessary expository dialogue it was driving me fucking insane. The audience for this film is in their 20's and 30's FFS, they do not need the obvious explained to them several times over like toddlers. The "referential dialogue" was also painfully forced and made me actively dread every time someone opened their fucking mouths. I also hated them opening their mouths because the voice actors are Fucking dreadful. I knew that from the few sneak peaks we got in this thread but I was not prepared for how bad they truly were throughout the film. They even have a short, completely unnecessary, section where they bring back Sokka and Ang as children in the spirit world and didn't even bring back the OG voice actors for the sake of continuity.

-Ang becoming the "super avatar" at the end made me laugh hysterically at the raw absurdity of it all. And yeah, they nerfed the fuck out of the avatar state probably just for this stupid "super avatar" nonsense.

-There are so many plot holes, but I have rambled long enough.

Its bad, but we expected that so its not really that surprising...unfortunately.

 

[Blue Gem Kosher Queen]

Ok but why did they muscled the girls up? What did they mean by this?

Most people in entertainment are unmasculine heteroflexibles that have a fetish for strong women they justify through girlbossing so they feel less gay for being into twinks. They literally even are written with the same libido and machismo.

 

[Oilspill Battery]

Finished the movie with a buddy. Thoughts aren't positive. They're bringing back the retarded equalist plotline and republic city. The entire thing feels like an attempt to retroactively justify korra's bullshit.

The repeated insistence that "Benders oppress non benders" pisses me off because that was literally never a plotline in the original series, not even once, and it doesn't even make sense with the worldbuilding. Benders can give birth to nonbenders and nonbenders can give birth to benders. They are not seperate classes nor are they seperate races.

Aang, now a fully fledged avatar, getting mogged by 3 peasants at the start is also retarded. "Bro no you don't get it he was holding back bro if he wasn't holding bac-" shut the fuck up, he's a literal god holding back or not some random peasants should not be able to mog him this hard.

The magic mcguffin is also stupid, a staff that can channel the spirit world, oh you mean what the fucking avatar can already do by default. This is the same mistake korra kept making. The stakes should be political, not magical. Also, just like in korra, the writers do not seem to understand what the "geno" part of genocide means. Bringing back airbending is not bringing back the air nomads. Their genetics are gone, their knowledge is gone, their cultural and genetic heritage are all gone, their traditions are gone. None of these are coming back.

Yet both Korra and this movie insists "All you have to do is magic airbendering into some earthbenders, it'll be fine." Also bonus that all the rando shitheads airbending for the first time in their lives can go toe totoe with multiple bending masters.

Also, I called the twist with the guy being evil from minute one. They ripped everything else from korra, may as well rip this one too, non bender guy becomes airbender and turns out evil oh wow what a twist, or it would have been if you hadn't already fucking done it in the worst season of korra. The fact that he was so obviously a twist villain ruins the film because it keeps edging you while you wait for him to finally turn on them and reveal he was evil all along that you saw coming all along.

The movie also suffers a lot from korra in general. We know there's no air nomad empire, we know aang (or anyone really) doesn't die, we know there's no more airbenders, we know toga doesn't exist, we know republic city unfortunately still does.

The one positive, the movie has absurdly gorgeous animation. Unbelievably beautiful set pieces, scenes, areas, you can pause the film at pretty much any minute and get at least 10-20 wallpapers. The action pieces are incredible, the designs are amazing, the new techniques are fantastic, the angles, the photography, the choreography, the fights, the cinematography, the presentation, all of it is gorgeous.

The tag-team airbender tug of war rubberband technique was also genuinely cool and Toga using compressed air to crush hulls and push and pull things is on par with bloodbending and metalbending when it comes to "next level" bending techniques. Toga teaching Aang how to use airbendering to siphoon and dispel tornados was also incredible. Even simpler stuff like knocking the air out of people using compressed air blasts at the chest was cool.

All in all, its a badly writen movie that's paced decently well with gorgeous animation. People said its like an anime movie, world ending villain shows up, threatens to destroy the world and is stopped in the span of one and a half hours, with no lasting impact on the world or any of the characters. Its closer to korra than it is to the original avatar. Its easy to write 50 paragraphs talking about all the plotholes and bad writing but it doesn't matter because the movie itself obviously gives zero fucks about any of it. The writing just exists to push characters into fights and set pieces.

Also, the whole thing abou the voice actors gets even more ridiculous when for a specific segment they turn the characters back into children like they were in the show but still use the new voice actors just to rub it in.

 

[LordofCringe7206 Vol. 2]

It's funny because the Lion Turtle is technically all over the show in terms of iconography (I think there's even an actual picture of it on a scroll when they visit the Library), but for some reason they never bothered to set up the finale. It felt like a last minute change and not at all in keeping with the rest of the show's writing quality.

The funny thing is that they kind of did the same thing with the White Lotus. They dropped a couple of hints to them throughout the series and only had them appear in the finale.

But the thing with that is, that felt like genuine foreshadowing and having a payoff at the end. We didn't exactly know what this "white lotus" thing was supposed to be, but we understood it was something and that it would eventually play a role in the series. Having a picture in the library of a lion turtle or having artwork depicting them throughout the series doesn't exactly hint that these will be something important in the end because you aren't really drawing attention to them. Even in a subtle way.

The whole lion turtle thing in the finale is heavily an example of deus ex machina, but it probably would have worked if they just had dropped some kind of hint earlier in the series to foreshadow it. Have maybe some kind of throwaway line where Aang is told "When you are at your most conflicted, somebody will be there to help you" and have it maybe focus on a nearby statue of a Lion Turtle. Or have a scene where Aang is told there is a fifth bending style that has been lost to time and somewhere down the line he'll find out about it.

A simple thing like would have at least made the lion turtle feel like it completely came out of left field in the finale.