The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

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Winter
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Re: The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Post by Winter »

aceina wrote:people are way to harsh on korra for the early part of spirits put your self in her shoes a big issue for her first of all was learning her father and tenzin not aang where why she was locked up in the compound for her entire life she felt betrayed and they never explain why it was done

she has no social skills a key factor people forget she never got to travel the world and learn how to interact with people
The issue with Korra's behavor in the first half of Spirits is that she is acting completely out of character. Take how she acts in the first five episodes of Spirits and contrast it with how she acts in Air. Korra could be brash and had few to no social skills its true, but she still recognized when she was in the wrong and was willing to own up to her mistakes. From episodes 1 through 5 Korra takes a "Never My Fault" attitude and blames everyone who is not herself.

She's also a jerk to just about everyone including Mako to the point that she acts almost like Crazy Steve from @$$ Bar. I think that this was partly done as a attempt to make Mako look better as Korra, along with Asami, Lin and Bolin are made into either jerks or idiots which makes Mako look better by contrast and by this point in the series Mako was still clearly a creators pet who could do no wrong.

Another problem is that Korra retains none of her character development from Air until after Beginnings which sets her back to factory settings becoming more patient and willing to listen to others while still making mistakes, only now said mistakes aren't the result of the writers turning her into a idiot and making stupid mistakes for the sake of the plot.

However, one point that I think do judge Korra to harshly on is when she attempts to close the spirit portal in the next two episodes. A lot of fans say that Korra should have just done nothing as both portals were supposedly needed and that leaving one close would have insured that Vaatu wouldn't have been able to escape. However, Korra didn't learn this fact at any point, Jinora did and she only learned it when she went to the Library. And even then one Portal may have been enough for Vaatu to escape so why take the risk at all?

However, she could have saved a lot of time and just flown to the Northern Water Tribe as it may have been less guarded due to Unalaq bringing seemingly most of his army to the south. Though this may just be the benefit of hindsight and either way it's still a risk without back up.
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Re: The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

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The problem with Spirits is again the whole "Nature in 'Balance' is suppose to be peaceful" cept anyone who studies the natural world will tell you otherwise

The Spirits are basically presented as Self Righteous Squatters 'Vaatu opened the portal sure... Why the **** are the rest of you pouring through and beating the crap out of the locals?'


Stop making the Wood elves from Warhammer seem reasonable
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Re: The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

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#can'targuewithelves
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Madner Kami
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Re: The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

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Wargriffin wrote:The problem with Spirits is again the whole "Nature in 'Balance' is suppose to be peaceful" cept anyone who studies the natural world will tell you otherwise

The Spirits are basically presented as Self Righteous Squatters 'Vaatu opened the portal sure... Why the **** are the rest of you pouring through and beating the crap out of the locals?'

Stop making the Wood elves from Warhammer seem reasonable
Yeah. This is a plot-element and a real-world sentiment that just needs to die.
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Wargriffin
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Re: The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Post by Wargriffin »

Madner Kami wrote:
Wargriffin wrote:The problem with Spirits is again the whole "Nature in 'Balance' is suppose to be peaceful" cept anyone who studies the natural world will tell you otherwise

The Spirits are basically presented as Self Righteous Squatters 'Vaatu opened the portal sure... Why the **** are the rest of you pouring through and beating the crap out of the locals?'

Stop making the Wood elves from Warhammer seem reasonable
Yeah. This is a plot-element and a real-world sentiment that just needs to die.
or get people who actually understand the Buddhist/Shinto/Hindu approach they are going for and not the junk food new age rip off the 70/80s gave birth too

The lion king has better understanding of nature in balance through Mufasa's small spill about the circle of life!
"When you rule by fear, your greatest weakness is the one who's no longer afraid."
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Re: The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Post by Winter »

Again I don't think the situation with the spirits would be as bad as it is if we have a few more spirits that weren't such jerks or at the very least that their behavior was explained away as them being a reflection of humanity. For example when Tonraq had the "Great Idea" of destroying forest that was clearly had a connection to the spirit world just to get at some bad guys, the spirits reaction of attacking was actually understandable.

They weren't attacking because Tonraq didn't show respect for nature but because he pretty much broke into their house and broke their stuff. Sure they didn't have to attack the Northern Water Tribe but again, one of their leaders was a idiot. Now I am not defending the spirits for every instance of attacking humans, like when Hei Bai attacked the villain that had nothing to do with the destruction of the forest when it was the fire nation that clearly did the burning.

However, when Aang was able to reach Hei Bai and made him understand what he was doing was wrong he stopped and left the humans in peace. That's what we need more of, spirits showing that they are willing to learn and admit they were wrong or at the very least Korra standing up to them to protect humans from the spirits when they get out of hand. And in regards to the latter that does seem to be where the story in Turf Wars seems to be going as Korra did try to save Tokug from the eel/snake spirit after he decided to punish one of the humans for daring to attack his world when said humans were only fighting around the portal to the spirit world.

Korra even looks on in horror when Tokug is being "infected" by the eel/snake spirit and again tried to save him and the only reason she didn't was to save Asami who was about to be killed. I guess will see where this all goes as the rest of the Trilogy is released.
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Re: The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Post by Draco Dracul »

The biggest problem of Korra season two is that it has a flat villain with no real motivation and I'm not talking about the kite shaped spirit of darkness and chaos. I mean the big reveal of Unaloq's character is basically that he's always been an asshole.
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Re: The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

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Draco Dracul wrote:The biggest problem of Korra season two is that it has a flat villain with no real motivation and I'm not talking about the kite shaped spirit of darkness and chaos. I mean the big reveal of Unaloq's character is basically that he's always been an asshole.
That's one of the problems but IMO its not the biggest problem. A story can work with a flat uninteresting villain so long as you have a well rounded hero, just look at Wonder Woman. The villains in that film are, again IMO, flat with weak motivations, but Diana is such a compelling hero that she more then makes up for having uninteresting adversaries. But Korra is anything but that in the first five episodes and I do think a big chunk in why she was written like that was to make Mako look better by comparison and to make Unalaq seem like a more credible threat as Korra from Books 1, 3 and 4 would have seen right through Unalaq and stopped being his pawn the moment his army showed up.
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Re: The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Post by SuccubusYuri »

It admittedly IS the best part of the clip show in S4 when the villains are on Varrick's conference call and the other three just pretend to have hung up so Unalaq will go away.

Unalaq's story was always superfluous, as well. Like, what did we learn about the backstory with the forest and the spirits? That Unalaq was always a prick? Great...why does that help us?

S2 on the whole is filled with meandering, second-guessing stuff like that. "Oh this is a story where Korra is kind of like Roku, seeing the next Sozin emerging but not recognizing-nope she sees he's a bad person there must be themes of how things tend to slip between avatars' lives and-NOPE! She's at war with him now, AH this is about the civil war and how Korra must balance the political and spiritual tasks at-NOPE! It's about spirits, and the war of eternal-NOPE! Korra's on a spiritual journey to discover herself-JUST KIDDING! It was about the spirit war the whole time!

Even the sub-plots do this, "Mako and Korra are enjoying their relationship-KIDDING! They're bickering all the time-HEY look at that they broke up! Now they-Oh hey they're together again only it's kind of dubious consent since she technically has amn-HAHA just kidding they broke up for realsies.

There's just nothing to connect to because there is no clear goal or theme.
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Re: The Legend of Korra Series Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Post by RobbyB1982 »

aceina wrote:people are way to harsh on korra for the early part of spirits put your self in her shoes a big issue for her first of all was learning her father and tenzin not aang where why she was locked up in the compound for her entire life she felt betrayed and they never explain why it was done

she has no social skills a key factor people forget she never got to travel the world and learn how to interact with people
Korra can be Korra, and that's fine.

People are harsh on the fact that the *writers* didn't know what they were doing, had no real master plan, and to make season 2 work had to basically pretend all the character growth of season 1 didn't happen... and then sort of fillered around and KEPT resetting any character growth that happened. (Like Korra's entire amnesia forgetting about her break up with Mako... just to delay it for a whopping three episodes.) And so on.

Also, due to the nature of the Nick ordering more episodes at the times that they did, the fact that Korra really shouldn't have gotten her powers back at the end of season 1, and gone through basically the arc she did in season 4 at this point in the story. (Or vice versa.) The entire season would have pulled together better if she'd been down 3 elements at the start of this season and desperate to get that back. Also potentially, given the scale of season 2's villain, it maybe should have been saved for last and built up longer.

The series is flawed in general for several reasons in ways it's predecessor wasn't... but it's just so, SO easy to see where just a handful of structure changes (from knowing they had a full run) would have fixed things spectacularly and brought the series as a whole together.
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