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I'm satisfied with the finale, though I was expecting a bit more. What disappoints me most about the finale, and what I think leaves a bitter taste in our mouths after watching it, is that it ties up all the interesting plot points brought up during the season by completely disregarding them and trashing all the progress the writers had made through the last 10 episodes. All the problems are resolved by the end of the season, but by poor writing and with far less effort that the buildup deserved.
1. Amon's mystique
Until episode 11, Amon was an awesome villain. He was mysterious, he had a cool design, and he kicked butt. Not only that, he had the best voice since the original Iroh. Then, all of a sudden, we find out, not only is he not tied to the spirit world and somehow an individual raised up to fulfill destiny, he's just the older brother of the previous villain who had daddy issues and ran away from home. His first reveal behind the mask is of some lame looking dude with a scar on his face, and he's basically just a rehash of Yakone and Tarrlok. In a single episode, Amon is transformed from an incredibly interesting, multidimensional character with subtle motivations, to a fanatic, one-dimensional cop-out.
2. Equalist movement
I think we all realize the Equalist movement has legitimate points. There will always be some disparity of benders and non-benders that cannot be overcome simply because some people are capable of shooting balls of fire from their hands. The parallels of the Equalist movement and militant black power groups created an interesting dynamic that we didn't see in TLA. Yet in the finale, the legitimacy of the Equalist concerns are completely ignored and strawman'ed into mere terrorism. No one ever acknowledges the concerns of non-benders, most of the protagonists essentially taking the position that non-benders should just "suck it up" and learn to deal. The finale continues to paint the Equalist movement as utterly radical, without any justification, refusing to admit that there are solid problems between benders and non-benders. Or rather, it does acknowledge problems, just that they all come from bigoted non-benders.
3. 'Genocide'
The images of Amon de-bending lines and lines of prisoners is meant to depict mass genocide. For a bender, the loss of their power is equivalent to their death since they are no longer useful. For all intents and purposes, Lin, and all the other benders, died during this season. Yet Korra gains spiritbending and can apparently give back bending to everyone without any repercussions. Imagine if all those benders had actually died, and in the finale, Korra gained the power to bring people back to life. That's basically what's going on here, all the drama and threat of Amon's power is completely negated in the last 5 minutes of the finale.
4. Romance
Not going to touch too much on this, but the double love triangles of 'Mako-Korra-Bolin' and 'Korra-Mako-Asami', were basically resolved in 10 seconds of dialogue.
5. Airbending
They may go more in-depth in this next season, but if you assume that the writers did not know if they would receive a budget for more episodes, Korra learning how to airbend is really stupid. It is one of her greatest obstacles and at least an entire episode is delegated to her struggles when you add it all up. Then she suddenly learns how to airbend because she loses her bending. It doesn't even make sense. I've seen theories of how Amon never had practice on airbenders so he didn't know how to do it, the air chakra is love, so it reacted to Mako being in danger, Amon simply reversed Korra's bending ability with the four elements, but none of them really make sense in a 'supported by the story' sort of way. Even more so than the Aang energybending, I consider this to be the biggest Deus Ex in the finale.
6. Aang cameo
And this leads to the avatar cameo scene where Aang finally shows up and gives Korra all her bending abilities. It's fanfic masturbation at its finest. Everything we wanted to see (Aang, the past avatars, Avatar state, Korra getting her powers back, spiritbending) all nicely wrapped up in a 1 minute clip.
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On June 25 2012 17:35 Emporio wrote:
I'm satisfied with the finale, though I was expecting a bit more. What disappoints me most about the finale, and what I think leaves a bitter taste in our mouths after watching it, is that it ties up all the interesting plot points brought up during the season by completely disregarding them and trashing all the progress the writers had made through the last 10 episodes. All the problems are resolved by the end of the season, but by poor writing and with far less effort that the buildup deserved.
1. Amon's mystique
Until episode 11, Amon was an awesome villain. He was mysterious, he had a cool design, and he kicked butt. Not only that, he had the best voice since the original Iroh. Then, all of a sudden, we find out, not only is he not tied to the spirit world and somehow an individual raised up to fulfill destiny, he's just the older brother of the previous villain who had daddy issues and ran away from home. His first reveal behind the mask is of some lame looking dude with a scar on his face, and he's basically just a rehash of Yakone and Tarrlok. In a single episode, Amon is transformed from an incredibly interesting, multidimensional character with subtle motivations, to a fanatic, one-dimensional cop-out.
2. Equalist movement
I think we all realize the Equalist movement has legitimate points. There will always be some disparity of benders and non-benders that cannot be overcome simply because some people are capable of shooting balls of fire from their hands. The parallels of the Equalist movement and militant black power groups created an interesting dynamic that we didn't see in TLA. Yet in the finale, the legitimacy of the Equalist concerns are completely ignored and strawman'ed into mere terrorism. No one ever acknowledges the concerns of non-benders, most of the protagonists essentially taking the position that non-benders should just "suck it up" and learn to deal. The finale continues to paint the Equalist movement as utterly radical, without any justification, refusing to admit that there are solid problems between benders and non-benders. Or rather, it does acknowledge problems, just that they all come from bigoted non-benders.
3. 'Genocide'
The images of Amon de-bending lines and lines of prisoners is meant to depict mass genocide. For a bender, the loss of their power is equivalent to their death since they are no longer useful. For all intents and purposes, Lin, and all the other benders, died during this season. Yet Korra gains spiritbending and can apparently give back bending to everyone without any repercussions. Imagine if all those benders had actually died, and in the finale, Korra gained the power to bring people back to life. That's basically what's going on here, all the drama and threat of Amon's power is completely negated in the last 5 minutes of the finale.
4. Romance
Not going to touch too much on this, but the double love triangles of 'Mako-Korra-Bolin' and 'Korra-Mako-Asami', were basically resolved in 10 seconds of dialogue.
5. Airbending
They may go more in-depth in this next season, but if you assume that the writers did not know if they would receive a budget for more episodes, Korra learning how to airbend is really stupid. It is one of her greatest obstacles and at least an entire episode is delegated to her struggles when you add it all up. Then she suddenly learns how to airbend because she loses her bending. It doesn't even make sense. I've seen theories of how Amon never had practice on airbenders so he didn't know how to do it, the air chakra is love, so it reacted to Mako being in danger, Amon simply reversed Korra's bending ability with the four elements, but none of them really make sense in a 'supported by the story' sort of way. Even more so than the Aang energybending, I consider this to be the biggest Deus Ex in the finale.
6. Aang cameo
And this leads to the avatar cameo scene where Aang finally shows up and gives Korra all her bending abilities. It's fanfic masturbation at its finest. Everything we wanted to see (Aang, the past avatars, Avatar state, Korra getting her powers back, spiritbending) all nicely wrapped up in a 1 minute clip.
yea pretty much this. I think most of this is just that there wern't enough episodes while TLA had 3 seasons over it, but everything was finished so half assed. Also I hate how the avatar state was used in the last minutes of the finale instead of vs Amon or something.
The thing with the spiritbending too was that it just seemed like a power gained without doing anything. I mean Aang went through the whole journey wondering what he was going to do with Ozi, and then learns how to take away bending after the fight (or was it when he was on that like turtle thing idk) while korra just kinda won a small brawl then Aang gives spiritbending. The whole thing just seemed really rushed towards the end.
I hate some of the things in this like the bombs/mech machines. They just seem very odd compared to TLA which had things that seemed to fit more because of bending elements associated with them.
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I think they actually should've gone with Tarlok as Amon (or however you spell it). They could've given it a twirl that Tarlok wanted to take out all bending competition so he could become the unquestioned ruler of the city or something. Just involving a brother that has not been mentioned even once is just kinda.... Cheap imo. Like they decided at the very last end who Amon should be..
Also, final fight was very dissapointing, why not have an epic battle between amon and Korra while the rest is fighting with the recently arrived navy to liberate the city?
I do however love how Tarlok blew up their boat to end their already sad story...
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On June 25 2012 18:08 B.I.G. wrote:
I think they actually should've gone with Tarlok as Amon (or however you spell it). They could've given it a twirl that Tarlok wanted to take out all bending competition so he could become the unquestioned ruler of the city or something. Just involving a brother that has not been mentioned even once is just kinda.... Cheap imo. Like they decided at the very last end who Amon should be..
Also, final fight was very dissapointing, why not have an epic battle between amon and Korra while the rest is fighting with the recently arrived navy to liberate the city?
I do however love how Tarlok blew up their boat to end their already sad story...
I think blood benders aren't conducive to cool battles. The battle always ends up as one person being immobilized and powerless.
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I hate that Emperio is so right.
Pre finale, it was so good. What the hell happened in the last episode?
I enjoyed it, and don't think it was as bad as many of the other people do... but its like they wrote it all in 20 minutes and were like 'yeah good enough.'
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I guess it was alright, it's a shame they felt like they needed to wrap everything up in 1 season, I liked the 4 season story for the last airbender, it gave a lot more depth then it did in this first part.
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I really didn't care for the cliche romances, but I enjoyed the rest of the season though.
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When will the finale be available on the internet?
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Lalalaland34503 Posts
On June 26 2012 04:43 thegiantnome wrote:
When will the finale be available on the internet?
Well, strictly legally, I'm not sure. But...it's out there.
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On June 26 2012 04:43 thegiantnome wrote:
When will the finale be available on the internet?
It seems to be up one the Nick site already.
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On June 26 2012 05:00 MajuGarzett wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2012 04:43 thegiantnome wrote:
When will the finale be available on the internet?
It seems to be up one the Nick site already.
Really checked like an hour ago. Ill check again though.
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Yay its up!!! Hopefully I will not be disappoint!
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Season was pretty good but it felt a bit rushed.
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WTF I saw the episode on Nick and then I read Emporios post and apparently I missed out on Korra learning to Airbend and Spiritbend. Can anyone explain to me what happened or where I can see the rest of the episode assuming their is more? The episode on the website ended with Korra losing her bending to Amon.
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On June 26 2012 05:49 thegiantnome wrote:
WTF I saw the episode on Nick and then I read Emporios post and apparently I missed out on Korra learning to Airbend and Spiritbend. Can anyone explain to me what happened or where I can see the rest of the episode assuming their is more? The episode on the website ended with Korra losing her bending to Amon.
They aired two episodes on the same day, 11 and 12, you just saw 11. Go and find 12!
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did they ever mention how amon learned how to soul bend?
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On June 26 2012 06:28 blagoonga123 wrote:
did they ever mention how amon learned how to soul bend?
Nope.
Its probably assumed that its some ridiculous nonsensical combination of bloodbending and chiblocking.
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On June 26 2012 06:30 Zambrah wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2012 06:28 blagoonga123 wrote:
did they ever mention how amon learned how to soul bend? Nope. Its probably assumed that its some ridiculous nonsensical combination of bloodbending and chiblocking.
Amon dosn't soulbend (that is called energybending, the bending one ones self) He is a bloodbender. Bloodbending can be used to completely cut a bender off from his or her bending abilities. The effects of this technique are long-standing, and unlike chi-blocking, it cannot be easily undone. According to Katara, the technique "severs" an individual from his or her bending, implying a nearly irreversible block of metaphysical chi pathways even through typical healing methods. Despite limited information regarding the specifics of the technique, it is known that its effects can be reversed through the use of energybending. It seems that the method of this technique is the opposite of healing, instead of redirecting chi pathways as done in healing, it seems to permanently contract the chi pathway in the forehead.
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On June 26 2012 06:36 Belgo wrote:Show nested quote +On June 26 2012 06:30 Zambrah wrote:On June 26 2012 06:28 blagoonga123 wrote:
did they ever mention how amon learned how to soul bend? Nope. Its probably assumed that its some ridiculous nonsensical combination of bloodbending and chiblocking. Amon dosn't soulbend (that is called energybending, the bending one ones self) He is a bloodbender. Bloodbending can be used to completely cut a bender off from his or her bending abilities. The effects of this technique are long-standing, and unlike chi-blocking, it cannot be easily undone. According to Katara, the technique "severs" an individual from his or her bending, implying a nearly irreversible block of metaphysical chi pathways even through typical healing methods. Despite limited information regarding the specifics of the technique, it is known that its effects can be reversed through the use of energybending. It seems that the method of this technique is the opposite of healing, instead of redirecting chi pathways as done in healing, it seems to permanently contract the chi pathway in the forehead.
Oh, alright, well I feel a lot better about the bending removal now. :-D
Thanks for the info, but do you have a source?
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EPT
