![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
I watched the rest of Legend of Korra tonight
For completeness's sake, I guess. I think I'm done now.
Well, okay, I do have a few nice things to say. I really loved the visuals. I've always thought big, splashy fantasy/scifi graphics were terribly fun, and this series had some lovely graphics: the good/evil spirits' design, the aurora skies, the final battle with giant glowy Korra and little glowing Jinora. (Jinora! I loved her pretty much unreservedly; I think she's the only thing about the last couple of episodes that I loved without exception. Well, and Lin.) At the age of 10, I think I would have been ALL OVER this show. I am not saying that loving it makes a person immature; just that I can tell, watching this, that I would have glommed onto this show's splashy visual epicness hard at a particular age -- I'm just not still in the place where I can enjoy it.
There were other bits and pieces here and there that grownup!me liked. I still really like Korra in general concept: that she's unreservedly the hero, that she gets to be hotheaded and flawed and make terrible decisions and lose and win.
But in general, I don't care about the characters anymore, and I dislike enough of what the writers are doing with the world and themes right now that I'm really not interested in watching more of the show. I'll just keep my A:tLA happy place and leave the rest of Korra alone.
The exact nature of what bothers me so much about LoK can be summed up, I think, in the entire sequence in which baby!Korra (who was adorable!) gets in touch with her inner light and causes the spirits to return to normal. The thing is, that episode told her exactly what she had to do to win. The more aggression and violence you bring to the spirits, the more aggression and violence they'll return. The way to get through to them is by finding inner peace and light. Which is a very A:tLA message, and it's what happened at the end, eventually, when Jinora did the brave and self-sacrificing thing and went to bring the light to Korra.
Because Korra herself wouldn't do it. And that's what gets to me most about the show, and that's a big part of what's making me drop it. That whole episode was about Jinora having (mostly) good experiences in the spirit world -- until she gets the rug pulled out from under her, at least -- because she's approaching things in a mood of happy inquiry, being polite to everyone/everything she meets, while Korra is having a terrible time until she meets someone who teaches her that she has to calm herself in order to win, and that the way to victory is through finding her inner calm place, not attacking things.
Great! Except she leaves the spirit world and immediately forgets that lesson. So the next few episodes are pretty much EVERYONE ATTACKING EVERYTHING, with a side order of EVERYONE BEING STUPID, and me (metaphorically) shaking my laptop screen, going YOU IDIOTS, IROH TOLD YOU WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO WIN, AND IT ISN'T THIS! And in the end, oh look, it was exactly what Iroh said to do, except Jinora is the one who had to do it because Korra is still busy being the worst Avatar ever. (Or, okay, the worst Avatar since Roku. Maybe every other Avatar has to be a dick with poor decision-making skills?)
I kept waiting for the entire last two episodes for Korra to have the epiphany where she realizes she can't win by attacking, she has to win by loving instead, and SHE NEVER HAD THAT EPIPHANY. Jinora had to do it for her.
*flails*
And this is what really pisses me off, because one of the things I always loved most about A:tLA was that even though there was a lot of plot-necessary violence, it was very much not a show about solving problems by going around punching things. It was not a show about going into other people's places and attacking them or stealing their stuff. The people who did that (the Fire Nation) were portrayed as wrong, and the whole show was about trying to stop them with the minimum amount of collateral damage. The whole show was about a bunch of variously hotheaded or immature kids learning how to become calm, wise, rational, altruistic adults. (And yes, they often failed to live up to that goal, but that was clearly what they were all striving for, and working towards.)
Korra is not about that. Korra is a show about punching things and making bad decisions and not learning anything from them. The characters' victories don't require great sacrifices; they don't come with life lessons. They just happen, either through outside intervention or by punching enough things that there is nothing left to be punched.
One small sequence that really ticked me off (but again provides an excellent example of how Korra's thematic subtext drives me nuts) is the part where Tenzin et al are in the spirit world and Tenzin drives off the fog, enabling him to collect his daughter and siblings and then .... leaves everyone else in eternal torment. Okay, I get that it might not have been possible to save everyone, and that his family was his first priority at this point, but .... just ... walking off and leaving them there? Not even trying to take one or two with you? Not having the teeniest pang of conscience about it? Really?
The characters are just .... I don't like them anymore. :( They're rude and violent and argumentative and do stupid things without consequences and very often don't seem to care about anyone but themselves.
I think that's why I adored Jinora so much, in the spirit world episodes and in the last episode -- her gentle, open-minded, self-effacing approach to everything, and her quiet act of self-sacrifice: with no real defenses, going quietly and without fanfare into a situation that might kill her, simply to do what was right.
I think it's ironic that A:tLA, which was aimed at a much younger audience, had so much more character growth, so much more genuine altruism and sacrifice on the part of the characters, and was so much more mature a story than this.
Huh, this turned into a bit of a rant, didn't it.
Well, okay, I do have a few nice things to say. I really loved the visuals. I've always thought big, splashy fantasy/scifi graphics were terribly fun, and this series had some lovely graphics: the good/evil spirits' design, the aurora skies, the final battle with giant glowy Korra and little glowing Jinora. (Jinora! I loved her pretty much unreservedly; I think she's the only thing about the last couple of episodes that I loved without exception. Well, and Lin.) At the age of 10, I think I would have been ALL OVER this show. I am not saying that loving it makes a person immature; just that I can tell, watching this, that I would have glommed onto this show's splashy visual epicness hard at a particular age -- I'm just not still in the place where I can enjoy it.
There were other bits and pieces here and there that grownup!me liked. I still really like Korra in general concept: that she's unreservedly the hero, that she gets to be hotheaded and flawed and make terrible decisions and lose and win.
But in general, I don't care about the characters anymore, and I dislike enough of what the writers are doing with the world and themes right now that I'm really not interested in watching more of the show. I'll just keep my A:tLA happy place and leave the rest of Korra alone.
The exact nature of what bothers me so much about LoK can be summed up, I think, in the entire sequence in which baby!Korra (who was adorable!) gets in touch with her inner light and causes the spirits to return to normal. The thing is, that episode told her exactly what she had to do to win. The more aggression and violence you bring to the spirits, the more aggression and violence they'll return. The way to get through to them is by finding inner peace and light. Which is a very A:tLA message, and it's what happened at the end, eventually, when Jinora did the brave and self-sacrificing thing and went to bring the light to Korra.
Because Korra herself wouldn't do it. And that's what gets to me most about the show, and that's a big part of what's making me drop it. That whole episode was about Jinora having (mostly) good experiences in the spirit world -- until she gets the rug pulled out from under her, at least -- because she's approaching things in a mood of happy inquiry, being polite to everyone/everything she meets, while Korra is having a terrible time until she meets someone who teaches her that she has to calm herself in order to win, and that the way to victory is through finding her inner calm place, not attacking things.
Great! Except she leaves the spirit world and immediately forgets that lesson. So the next few episodes are pretty much EVERYONE ATTACKING EVERYTHING, with a side order of EVERYONE BEING STUPID, and me (metaphorically) shaking my laptop screen, going YOU IDIOTS, IROH TOLD YOU WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO WIN, AND IT ISN'T THIS! And in the end, oh look, it was exactly what Iroh said to do, except Jinora is the one who had to do it because Korra is still busy being the worst Avatar ever. (Or, okay, the worst Avatar since Roku. Maybe every other Avatar has to be a dick with poor decision-making skills?)
I kept waiting for the entire last two episodes for Korra to have the epiphany where she realizes she can't win by attacking, she has to win by loving instead, and SHE NEVER HAD THAT EPIPHANY. Jinora had to do it for her.
*flails*
And this is what really pisses me off, because one of the things I always loved most about A:tLA was that even though there was a lot of plot-necessary violence, it was very much not a show about solving problems by going around punching things. It was not a show about going into other people's places and attacking them or stealing their stuff. The people who did that (the Fire Nation) were portrayed as wrong, and the whole show was about trying to stop them with the minimum amount of collateral damage. The whole show was about a bunch of variously hotheaded or immature kids learning how to become calm, wise, rational, altruistic adults. (And yes, they often failed to live up to that goal, but that was clearly what they were all striving for, and working towards.)
Korra is not about that. Korra is a show about punching things and making bad decisions and not learning anything from them. The characters' victories don't require great sacrifices; they don't come with life lessons. They just happen, either through outside intervention or by punching enough things that there is nothing left to be punched.
One small sequence that really ticked me off (but again provides an excellent example of how Korra's thematic subtext drives me nuts) is the part where Tenzin et al are in the spirit world and Tenzin drives off the fog, enabling him to collect his daughter and siblings and then .... leaves everyone else in eternal torment. Okay, I get that it might not have been possible to save everyone, and that his family was his first priority at this point, but .... just ... walking off and leaving them there? Not even trying to take one or two with you? Not having the teeniest pang of conscience about it? Really?
The characters are just .... I don't like them anymore. :( They're rude and violent and argumentative and do stupid things without consequences and very often don't seem to care about anyone but themselves.
I think that's why I adored Jinora so much, in the spirit world episodes and in the last episode -- her gentle, open-minded, self-effacing approach to everything, and her quiet act of self-sacrifice: with no real defenses, going quietly and without fanfare into a situation that might kill her, simply to do what was right.
I think it's ironic that A:tLA, which was aimed at a much younger audience, had so much more character growth, so much more genuine altruism and sacrifice on the part of the characters, and was so much more mature a story than this.
Huh, this turned into a bit of a rant, didn't it.