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Hello everyone! Remember Avatar: The Last Airbender? One of the most beloved western animated show (or is it anime???) of the recent past, it's available on netflix in its entirety. The sequel series, Legend of Korra, will be dropping on netflix this fall as well! Furthermore, a live-action remake is now in the works, also by netflix. Unfortunately, there's been a kerfuffle in it's production. The series creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko had been signed on for the remake, raising hopes that it would do the show justice after the disappointing M Night Shyamalan film. However, as of today, they've left the series of disagreements with netflix. There were two points of contention. Firstly, they disagreed with netflix's desire to age up the main cast of young teenagers and tell a "darker" story featuring more adult themes and romance. Second, more distressingly, netflix refused the creators' request to only hire minority actors. The Avatar world is based on real-world Asia and in the creators' minds, there simply aren't white people in the setting. They reasoned this was a good opportunity to showcase non-white actors, but netflix disagrees. This is a really bad PR look so we'll see what happens. Anyway, use this thread to post about Avatar or whatever. I've just recently started a rewatch. It still holds up for me as an adult, although I'd forgotten how different the early episodes feel. It's a lot more episodic than it gets later on, and the humour sometimes falls flat. There's also some animation issues, particularly with characters' faces. Y'all should rewatch it too! Nickelodeon actually livestreamed a bunch of stuff from the series recently during quarantine and it was good fun to hang in the chat watching children's cartoons with other grown rear end adults rapidly headed towards middle age. If those randos were fun then goons must be more fun, right? Feel free to throw out any whitey white actors you think could be good in the show. I'm stanning Henry Cavill as Toph Bei-Fong myself. 
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Aug 14, 2020 19:18
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Earth bending was pretty cool.
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Aug 14, 2020 19:32
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Obviously the only white person who could play Toph would be Mick Foley. Also, last I had heard they were just saying "creative differences" but hadn't specified those differences, got a link for more info?
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Aug 14, 2020 21:23
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if netflix makes the avatar gang say gently caress and do sex I'm out
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Aug 14, 2020 22:06
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Cage Kicker posted:if netflix makes the avatar gang say gently caress and do sex I'm out Like, if they heavily imply that Sokka and Suki get nasty while training on ember island, fine. Whatever. But in my heart of hearts I know that they basically said "Hey, Game of Thrones had incest so have Zuko and Azula do it"
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Aug 14, 2020 22:09
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I'm glad we got down to the important stuff in avatar so quickly. The Fuckin'.
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Aug 14, 2020 22:14
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CainFortea posted:Obviously the only white person who could play Toph would be Mick Foley. I saw an article on twitter this morning. Now, of course, I can't find it because twitter is a garbage website. https://fandomwire.com/exclusive-why-avatar-the-last-airbenders-creators-really-left-netflix/ there's this.
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Aug 14, 2020 22:28
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The highlight of the entire series for me is Toph's expression when she realizes she is being played by a huge dude who screams.
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Aug 14, 2020 22:51
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Linux Pirate posted:The highlight of the entire series for me is Toph's expression when she realizes she is being played by a huge dude who screams. That is a great bit. However the part that makes me literally lol any time I see it is this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msy4Fp_gBJQ
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Aug 14, 2020 22:59
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reignofevil posted:I'm glad we got down to the important stuff in avatar so quickly. Iroh pretended to be paralyzed purely so he could feel up woman who was actually paralyzed 
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Aug 15, 2020 00:32
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Toph Bei Fong is one of the greatest fictional characters of all time and I'm glad this thread appreciates her. My favorite single detail is that they consciously called attention to Aang's vegetarianism being a deliberate choice to be nonviolent every day. I also loved Katara learning how to be super loving evil and then not always successfully choosing not to use that when it can get her the stuff she really wants. Edgar Allen Ho posted:There were two points of contention. Firstly, they disagreed with netflix's desire to age up the main cast of young teenagers and tell a "darker" story featuring more adult themes and romance. Second, more distressingly, netflix refused the creators' request to only hire minority actors. So they wanted to make Riverdale but with wizards?
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Aug 15, 2020 01:20
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gently caress it i'm meme dumping things in here too. You can't stop me!   
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Aug 15, 2020 05:10
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I put off watching Avatar for years but then I watched it a few months ago and it was fantastic. Like, everything about it is just really, really good.
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Aug 15, 2020 07:34
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Horizon Burning posted:I put off watching Avatar for years but then I watched it a few months ago and it was fantastic. Like, everything about it is just really, really good.  e: what's the thread's stance for Korra? Cause it had bitchin' music and animations, but I still need to suffer thru s2 to get to the good parts.  Musluk fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Aug 15, 2020 |
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Aug 15, 2020 16:10
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Season 3 finale of Kora was one of the most intense, exciting, absolute tour-de-force episodes of anything I have ever seen ever.
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Aug 15, 2020 16:54
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I only saw Korra S1 but I liked it even though it felt kind of rushed.
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Aug 15, 2020 19:13
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korra is good but it doesnt flow as smoothly as atla. every season had its own villain, who was usually just some rear end in a top hat of the week, rather than having a cohesive, concise overall story like atla did. it also didnt have consistent themes that were always reenforced. it felt more like they were making it up as they went along, rather than having a planned-out story with long-term payoffs. which is kind of a shame, because there is a lot they could have done with the setting if they werent so focused on immediate payoffs. its still a good show, though. having an older set of protagonists lets you do more with the characters, and the animation is really good (especially the cgi was massively improved over the first show). as others have said, season 3 was really good, the show just isnt that consistent season-to-season (or even within the season. s4 had a fucken mid-season recap episode, what was that all about)
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Aug 16, 2020 01:09
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Raluek posted:korra is good but it doesnt flow as smoothly as atla. every season had its own villain, who was usually just some rear end in a top hat of the week, rather than having a cohesive, concise overall story like atla did. it also didnt have consistent themes that were always reenforced. it felt more like they were making it up as they went along, rather than having a planned-out story with long-term payoffs. which is kind of a shame, because there is a lot they could have done with the setting if they werent so focused on immediate payoffs. So, Korra does have a core theme that it keeps coming back to, which is that relentless heroic violence can't solve political problems. It's a fairly direct inversion of ATLA - Aang is a man of peace who needs to end a war, Korra is a woman of violence whose problems are things like 'inequality' and 'what is a just government.' Sometimes they pull it off well (Zaheer rules), but there are fairly frequent failures of execution. Part of that is something that you intimated - they were making it up as they went along. ATLA had, from very early on, a set end point and number of episodes. LOK's production was a lot more tumultuous, with budget and episode demands from Nickelodeon being highly chaotic up to the end. That S4 recap episode? That was because they got a budget cut mid-production and that was the best thing they could figure out to do that didn't involve firing people. Anyway I never read the comics, every time I've seen a page or two pulled they were good, is that a consistent quality or no?
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Aug 16, 2020 01:33
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Korra does have the greatest recap episode made on a budget ever.
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Aug 16, 2020 02:32
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Tulip posted:Anyway I never read the comics, every time I've seen a page or two pulled they were good, is that a consistent quality or no? I haven't read them personally but I do know that there's youtube videos summarizing them with a lot of screencaps if you want to check them out. They tend to come on autoplay if I fall asleep watching youtube so I only half remember and can't speak to the quality. The plotlines have stuff like dealing with the Fire National colonies full of fire nation folks that have never seen the actual Fire Nation and are generations removed from it, and the southern Water Tribe dealing with being rebuilt by northerners and losing their own traditions. I'm sure it's not super deep but that reminds me of why I found the show compelling when it first aired. I was like 12-15, western animation was mostly just episodic, and anime had overarching plots but it was all fairly silly stuff. Avatar was able to hit a sweet spot of dealing with some heady topics in a way that I could understand at the time. I think it also did a good job of having me feel like I was growing up with the characters. Also, Zuko and Iroh were always my faves and the fake fire nation plot kinda hit home for me, growing up in Texas and seeing my cousin go to war for Bush and becoming disillusioned and all that during the Bush years. It's not the world's most profound poo poo but I really like Avatar.
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Aug 16, 2020 02:56
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I think Zuko looking for his mother is in one of the comics as well. Fake edit: Yup. https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/The_Search_Part_One
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Aug 16, 2020 03:19
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I would say Korra is more character driven compared to ATLA being plot driven
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Aug 16, 2020 04:03
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The comic about Zuko's mom was pretty bad and did Ursa dirty. The worst part is after sacrificing everything to keep Zuko and Azula safe from Ozai, the comic has her be so consumed by the pain of what she went through as Ozai's wife that she made a deal with a spirit to have a new face and identity in exchange for her old one and all her memories; choosing to forget her own kids was an extremely WTF move. IIRC, the show creators also wanted to explore Azula's redemption arc in the comics, but NOPE, she's back to being evil now.
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Aug 16, 2020 04:54
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CainFortea posted:I think Zuko looking for his mother is in one of the comics as well. I seem to recall the producers saying they were given the choice of having a TV movie epilogue that was all about finding Ursa or they could have Legend of Korra, and they chose Korra and punted finding Ursa off to the comics. And to be fair, the comics make for a fairly decent de facto Book Four of the show. They're a tiny bit hamhanded in places, especially the ones that deal with the politics of each nation in the post-war, pre-Republic City awkward years of the Avatar world, but over all they're fine.
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Aug 16, 2020 04:56
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Tulip posted:So, Korra does have a core theme that it keeps coming back to, which is that relentless heroic violence can't solve political problems. It's a fairly direct inversion of ATLA - Aang is a man of peace who needs to end a war, Korra is a woman of violence whose problems are things like 'inequality' and 'what is a just government.' Sometimes they pull it off well (Zaheer rules), but there are fairly frequent failures of execution. you're right that this theme keeps coming up, but it never seems to affect the characters' actions or motivations, and it doesn't really drive any development. i would love it if the show was about the modernizing world and how transitioning from the wild west to a fairly modern civilization means that you can't punch your problems away, but the show didn't really make a statement about that, despite having many of the pieces in place. it didn't feel like a cohesive story with a message to tell, it just felt like stuff happened. it sounds like you're saying that that's what they were going for, but they just failed to fully get there, for a variety of reasons. that's frustrating, because you can see what could have been if the execution was there. like the prequels
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Aug 16, 2020 06:04
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Raluek posted:like the prequels
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Aug 16, 2020 06:34
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Raluek posted:you're right that this theme keeps coming up, but it never seems to affect the characters' actions or motivations, and it doesn't really drive any development. i would love it if the show was about the modernizing world and how transitioning from the wild west to a fairly modern civilization means that you can't punch your problems away, but the show didn't really make a statement about that, despite having many of the pieces in place. it didn't feel like a cohesive story with a message to tell, it just felt like stuff happened. I'm not sure it's so much a sociological story of the transition from early modern to middle modern as it is a psychological story of how Korra needs to listen more and punch less. The sociological elements tend to come down to "every possible solution will piss off some people, and it's not going to fall into just vs unjust." Korra at least does learn these lessons and I rather liked that sometimes she even overcompensates/fucks up by going too far (see: Season 2).
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Aug 16, 2020 07:15
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I think the problem is though, Korra learn that lesson repeatedly and then conveniently forgets it just in time to learn it again. Another strike against legend of Korra is it almost every threat that happens to korra specifically attacks the avatar spirit, and not her. When azula throws lightning aang she's not doing it to remove the Avatar spirit oh, she's trying to kill aang. I still like the show though, it's just not as great as it could have been. I just have to settle for it being good
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Aug 16, 2020 07:29
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Horizon Burning posted:I put off watching Avatar for years but then I watched it a few months ago and it was fantastic. Like, everything about it is just really, really good.  Put it off forever (even considered it somewhat stupid), watched it, and fell in love with it.
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Aug 16, 2020 19:46
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Watching this on Netflix it's wild that it takes most of the first season to actually get good. Like if you were a kid or teen in the 00s and the novelty of fantasy orientalism was enough to sell you on the show it must have been great but now there's plenty of great fantasy shows that don't require sitting through hours of Pokemon levels of learning lessons and watching Zuko blast off again like Team Rocket before it actually tries anything interesting. Also knowing what we do now about Nickelodeon I'm betting there's a pretty good chance that at least one of the dudes who made this show was just constantly jerking off to Toph's feet because of how often they make a point of bringing up and pointing out that she's constantly barefoot. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 16, 2020 20:08
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Sleeveless posted:Also knowing what we do now about Nickelodeon I'm betting there's a pretty good chance that at least one of the dudes who made this show was just constantly jerking off to Toph's feet because of how often they make a point of bringing up and pointing out that she's constantly barefoot. haha yeah haha thats gross haha like that would be so weird if someone did it in real life haha
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Aug 16, 2020 20:52
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Raluek posted:korra is good but it doesnt flow as smoothly as atla. every season had its own villain, who was usually just some rear end in a top hat of the week, rather than having a cohesive, concise overall story like atla did. it also didnt have consistent themes that were always reenforced. it felt more like they were making it up as they went along, rather than having a planned-out story with long-term payoffs. which is kind of a shame, because there is a lot they could have done with the setting if they werent so focused on immediate payoffs. It's awkward because she fights a godlike villain in the second season and then she's back to fighting humans who don't seem like they should be any better than her, but it feels like she spends the third and fourth seasons getting the crap beaten out of her. The time jump before the fourth season also felt pretty pointless. Edgar Allen Ho posted:and kylo Zuko is basically Kylo Ren done right.
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Aug 16, 2020 22:01
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Sleeveless posted:Also knowing what we do now about Nickelodeon I'm betting there's a pretty good chance that at least one of the dudes who made this show was just constantly jerking off to Toph's feet because of how often they make a point of bringing up and pointing out that she's constantly barefoot.
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Aug 17, 2020 00:49
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reignofevil posted:I'm glad we got down to the important stuff in avatar so quickly. Gonna be a 5th nation based around dick bending
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Aug 17, 2020 00:55
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Korra got the absolute poo poo beaten out of her in the first season when the writers thought it'd be just a miniseries and thought since the show was so much more serious than the last show, they should be willing to go further and make Korra's defeat partway through the series genuinely brutal and traumatic. And then since they got renewed 4 times, they repeated that character beat every season, along with other occasions of losing fights horribly, and that's no good. Korra never even has time to really recover from her horrible, horrible trauma and affirm what's so great about the world. The original show implied brutality, but never really got that explicit about it. I think the most visual it got was Zuko having a few extra scars after his ship blowing up. Of course, he spends the whole dang series coping with what happened to him and slowly learning to find new joy and purpose in his life.
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Aug 17, 2020 01:15
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Aang's lightning scar in his back and his foot are a counter point to that argument. BUT, they definitely went all in like every season with Korra.
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Aug 17, 2020 01:35
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Aug 17, 2020 05:30
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Endorph posted:she points it out because its important to her powers and its a serialized show for 8 year olds. stop being a creep.  (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Aug 17, 2020 05:40
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A lot of the relationships read way more interestingly once you have the teenage shipping goggles off. I think people misread Zuko and Katara mostly because a lot of viewers read Katara as their audience-insert.
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Aug 17, 2020 08:30
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The resolution of Korra season 1 is so loving stupid "oh we solved structural inequality by installing a member of the disadvantaged group as president and taking literally no other action, hooray!" Everything the Equalists were mad about is still true! Nothing has changed! Oh but that charismatic revolutionary? Lol false flag operation, you've been duped! Later, Republic City would attempt to install a puppet leader in Ba Sing Se.
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Aug 17, 2020 10:52
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