dev_chieftain (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-06-24 06:02 pm
dev_chieftain) wrote2012-06-24 06:02 pm
Roller Derby, LoK finale, and Brave
Last night I went to the final match in this season of the roller derby! I'd never been to a match before. It was really exciting and fun to watch, and I had a great time! Anne dragged me out with a friend of hers and we all were glad to have gone. I might get into this, it was pretty cool!
And now on to the rest:
Legend of Korra's season finale:
As I was mentioning a while back, the show would better be titled "Legend of Amon" because it's really not about Korra. While I enjoyed the way that Tarlok and Amon's backstory and resolution played out, I think it was monumentally stupid of the writers to try to withhold the backstory until the last possible second. The motivation here was clear: as writers, they were worried the fans would guess the plot ahead of time and wanted to try to play it close to the chest. The problem here is that you should never be scared of your fans guessing your plots ahead of time-- you should be afraid that your plots will actually suck, and that you're doing a bad job writing them.
I'll break this down into each storyline.
Bolin's burgeoning romance with Naga: At first, I was really skeptical about this pairing. There had been some interaction between the two prior to these final episodes, but really, Bolin and Naga hadn't really done much together, and I felt like the ship was really impeding on the great writing between Bolin and Pabu. Still, this is one of the season finale's successes. Naga saves Bolin's life not once, but TWICE, which I really thought cemented how much they care about each other. Add to that the sweet scene where Naga licked Bolin while he tried to play tough like he didn't like it, and you have a really great, satisfying resolution to a long-standing romance.
Asami's relationship with her father: Wow, I could not have been more disappointed in the handling of Asami's father, or more impressed by the handling of Asami. In a show that is a direct follow-up to A:TLA, I kind of expected to see some amazing parent/child dynamics here. Since Asami was notably the only main character old enough to be her own character and young enough to be expected to be thinking about her parents more than her personal life (who still had a parent who was a character in the show that mattered), I saw her as the spiritual successor to Zuko. Asami was refreshing and bold, as someone who had respected her father, but also respected the rights of people to live a safe and happy life regardless of bender status or not. She was not twisted by Zuko's existential angst over the lack of approval from her father, nor by the death of her mother- she was with it and cool, and when she found out her father was actually not as nice as she'd thought, she had to struggle with that desire to redeem him.
By contrast, Asami's father went from the doting-father-who-will-have-a-last-minute-side-change-and-die-to-save-his-daughter to megalomaniacal-control-freak in the space of about ten seconds. We had seen how he wanted to get her to stand by him multiple times, and that he was offended that she would date a firebender (because a firebender killed her mom; you know what, I actually would worry about a kid who knowingly dated someone that fit the profile for the murderer of her parents, too, and I think there was a sick fantasy about that in one of Bernie's monologues in Heroes Die). Despite his legitimate concerns, Sato suddenly becomes a frothing lunatic when confronted with Asami's very reasonable point that the Equalist movement is not doing the right thing by seeking to hurt benders.
The final scene between them seems pretty clear to me-- I expect Sato will be rotting in prison for the rest of the show, but I'm proud of Asami for not being as mysteriously crazy as her father. This is a case where I would have been fine with the stereotypical plot occurring. The problem with this is basically that when you do good writing, you set up expectations, and then meet them. A twist is never good writing unless, on closer examination, the reader or viewer of your product can look back BEFORE the twist to the beginning of the story and see that, in fact, the twist was telegraphed the whole time. This is the point of foreshadowing! And I feel like the guys REALLY dropped the ball here with Asami and her father.
On the upside, Asami was written very well and handled herself like a champion. Despite her unfortunate involvement with Mako, she made the right choices and wasn't an idiot because of a guy. If only I could shower such praise on the handling of Korra herself! But I can't, because the writers let me down.
Korra's relationship with Mako: Wow. Just-- I was already thoroughly against this, but let's go over a few of the reasons why this was such a monumental let-down.
Mako finally demonstrates fear for the first time as he's fleeing from the overwhelming power of Amon's bloodbending.
This guy's most intriguing character potential lies in his similarity to Amon. A truly interesting plot arc might have let Amon take away Mako's bending, and shown us how well Mako reacts to being taken care of by Bolin, instead of being in charge.
Or, such a plot could have let us see how fear changes Mako, perhaps not for the better-- though I will say, I liked that Mako's response to that fear was to pick Korra up and run, not to leave her behind. Friendship or romance, that's the kind of thing that makes a major difference in credibility of relationship.
I also think that Mako's most interesting character development lay in the establishing moments like his decision to work in the power plant* after telling Bolin to leave everything to him with regards to money. Mako is your quintessential old-fashioned 'gentleman' in the sense that he expects people to rely on him and doesn't really ask if they're cool with that. This isn't a great quality but it's an excellent one for character interactions going sour and developing a character past such a problem. It might seem really nice at first that Mako's so accommodating and in-charge; but how about when he challenges Korra's authority constantly, or infantilizes and silences his own brother? Or when he dismisses Asami's perfectly valid concerns with bullshit promises that she shouldn't worry her pretty little head about it, because he DOES care for her. (Just not enough). These are elements of Mako's character that make him kind of unlikeable, and I like that about him: that he seems like a nice guy upfront, but actually isn't. However, I get the feeling that the creators/writers don't actually realize how unlikeable and kind of douchey Mako is. That's my big problem here: Mako needs to be called on his douchebaggery and forced to own up to it, but instead of ever confronting that, he just gets what he wants, no matter who's hurt to accomplish that goal.
I've read about the creators wanting to separate Mako from Zuko by not giving him the same kind of angst-- but they made a grave mistake in thinking that Mako's the spiritual successor to Zuko. He's much more like Katara. Both are mothering to the rest of the party, well meaning, but unreasonably headstrong. They're notably both also shoved face-first into a romance that the Avatar asked for, even though they initially said 'no'. And that's bullshit-- not fair to Mako OR to Korra. It kind of reminds me of Lifebonds in Valdemar, which I got pretty sick of-- in fact, I like the Storm Trilogy about Karal so much in part because it deals with Firesong's neurotic obsession with needing to find a Lifebond, and how it's actually leading him to be abusive and kind of sick towards the people who he claims to care about.
The world of Avatar is unfortunately a place of tidy endings and deus ex machina, so I'm now looking at two separate opportunities to deal with the reality that sometimes the hero doesn't get everything they want in the end, and choosing instead to tie things up with a handy romance. In both cases, the romance doesn't feel right or true. I sincerely hope that second season will address how Mako and Korra aren't actually "destined" for each other, and let both of them grow as people-- but my hopes are pretty low on that front.
* - I'd like to take a moment to talk about the technology level of the setting, shall we? Avatar: the Last Airbender, which apparently took place about 70 years ago, was occurring during a time that I think could be compared to the 1800's in terms of worldwide tech. Most people did not have high-level tech in that world, and the Fire Nation notably only had steam-powered tech, not electricity.
It's thoroughly established in A:tLA that firebending requires emotional behavior. Fire-Benders should probably be emotional people, right? But to do electricity from nothing (as opposed to re-directing electricity, which is still supposed to be a big deal) requires total emotional calm. Azula, because she is really crazy, can make blue fire and electricity. She's imbalanced, which is part of what makes this possible. Notably, we don't learn jack shit about what happened to Azula in the Legend of Korra, but we really should because she was the only firebender who could reliably do lightning, and yet here we have Mako and countless other firebenders working in a power plant, where they charge the city with electricity, for hours on end to earn wages. You can't institutionalize the use of such a power without making it possible for a lot of people to use it-- basically, in Republic City, electricity has become a standard: Electricity has been harnessed for technological use. But how? We don't know anything about Azula or whether she recovered. Since we have magic healing (my least favorite of all fantasy tropes), nobody has to explain how Azula's insanity was handled. Did she ever get counseling or treatment? That's kind of important because if she didn't, the only person in the setting who could have trained people in making lightning so easily was most likely thrown in prison for her war crimes. We have this convenient excuse that Toph taught people how to metal bend, but the lightning thing? Nothing.
Mako's not special, either (except, of course, when he is), because he was working with A BUNCH of other firebenders in that power plant. Electricity is apparently the standard in the setting, because they weren't using carrier pigeons or airbenders to send messages to Iroh II either: they sent him telegrams, which could be intercepted by the enemy. So who the fuck taught all the firebenders how to keep their emotions in check?
This aside, it's also pretty damn suspicious that the setting went from 'no electricity' to 'we have enough electricity to make biplanes and radios, etc. etc.'. How about the futuristic mecha bots and shock-gloves? I'd be willing to make exceptions because I love pulp sci-fi, but there's no damned explanation for how this was institutionalized, how it works, why it works. Sato has Satomobiles, but we didn't get an explanation of how they run. Do they pollute? If not, do they each contain a tortured firebender inside, kept in a painful stasis where they must power the electric car to receive the nutrients that keep them alive? ....was I the only one who thought that would be wonderfully creepy? Sigh.
Anyway-- the setting's tech level makes no sense, so it almost seems funny to leverage my other complaint, which is: What the hell was Amon planning to do once he took away everyone's bending? Make people give up electricity? In my experience, getting people to give up something they think of as convenient, no matter how noble you make your reasoning sound, is a doomed effort. Amon is not a very good planner. Also, even if he hadn't been Chi-Blocking (like many fans were speculating the WHOLE TIME), he couldn't have stopped the next generation from having bender children-- even Aang couldn't do that. Where's the solution, guys? Were you even thinking about it at all?
The Lieutenant!: FINALLY this guy gets some speaking lines after being utterly wasted for the entire show, and then he gets UTTERLY WASTED by Amon. Talk about bullshit. The events here seemed to exist to just discredit Amon's goal-- which I would have believed really was about equality if he made the lieutenant wait, took Korra and Mako's bending, and then let the lieutenant kill him-- and it was disappointing on a lot of levels. In going the Naruto Sasuke-and-Itachi route, the writers basically nixed the lieutenant's one shot at being an awesome character. Because wouldn't it have been so cool if Amon was like "okay, now you can execute me" and the lieutenant was like "I'm not like you. GET OUT OF HERE!"?! What a waste of time it was to have the lieutenant at all. He had no relationship with Amon except unexplained and unwavering devotion; and in the instant it was taken from him, he was erased from the story. He didn't get to be a character, and he deserved to be.
Now, I'm sure I'm going to get comments about how it's hard to get a whole story into 12 or 13 episodes, but other people have made this point and I think it bears repeating. They knew how many episodes they had to work with. They knew the whole time. They knew exactly how much time they would have and they had full creative control over the project. They made exactly what they wanted to make, and it wasn't as good as we thought it would be BECAUSE, like Joss Whedon, the creators of Avatar: the Last Airbender are unfairly credited as the authority on the A:tLA project. The best episodes of Buffy and the best episodes of A:tLA were written by people whose names DON'T go under the "created by" box. It's probably true of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, too, but Lauren Faust is cool enough to have moved on to other projects and would never take credit for good work that wasn't her own.
Legend of Korra was simply not as good as its predecessor. It had some major flaws, and writing was one of them. It was beautifully animated and had some visually wonderful scenes, but it's not as good as A:tLA, and that's OKAY. It's okay to be critical of something and still like it. I still liked Korra enough to watch the whole show and recommend it to my parents along the way. So there's nothing wrong with admitting that the show could have been better, and discussing ways that it could have accomplished that goal.
I particularly was distressed by the moments that put Tenzin in danger, but was delighted when Korra freed him despite Mako's callous suggestion that they run away and leave Tenzin's family to be hurt. Tenzin and Lin Bei Fong were the two most capable characters in the entire show, and alongside Korra, Bolin and Asami, the most likeable, as well. This doesn't mean I didn't see the value in Mako, Tarlok or Amon (I refuse to write Amon's real name, because it kind of sounds stupid to me-- I'm sorry. : /), but the transition from kid-Tarlok to adult? Lampshaded. The explanation for why Amon didn't try to personally contact Tarlok and get him to lay off? There wasn't one. And I've already mentioned my complaints about Mako.
This is not to say I didn't think the final scene between Amon and Tarlok wasn't beautiful, because it was. The final scene between Lin, Korra and Tenzin was also great-- but the whole finale was characterized by wrapping up big, messy problems with a tidy little bow and expecting that to be good enough. I don't even want to go into the social strife that Team Korra has waiting for them when they get back to Republic City...unless, of course, that's just magically fine after all, and Amon was manufacturing the perceived inequality between benders and non-benders. Somehow, I doubt it. The show never addressed the uncomfortable commonality of the phrase "A firebender killed my...", which is sort of endemic of the whole problem. Did all these firebenders actually commit brutalities against people, or are firebenders society's scapegoats after the events of A:tLA? I would buy the latter if firebenders weren't still living in pride and privilege. Since they are, that suggests that all the talk of unmitigated bender-on-non crime is 100% true, and that nobody ever did anything about it except Amon. Sounds to me like Republic City won't be settling down for a long time, but nobody in the show gave two shits about it.
Speaking of which, let's get back to deus ex machina.
And by the way, the deus ex machina: Let's count how many happen IN THE FINALE ALONE. For the purposes of this discussion, a deus ex machina is when an event that has NO foreshadowing whatsoever guarantees a victory (however temporary) to a party, be they hero or villain.
1. Iroh II is on the way after being called to help? Well, I've got biplanes.
2. Iroh II is going to die? Korra happens to save him (and not one other soldier)
3. Tenzin and his family escaped? Actually, we captured them off-screen.
4. I have a massive facial scar? Oh, actually, it washes away in water**.
5. Amon's bloodbending me and for some reason trying to make me kill myself with firebending instead of just taking away my bending like EVERYONE ELSE? I shot him with lightning.
6. My bending was taken away? Somehow, I can air-bend now.
7. My bending is permanently gone and Amon has wrecked a bunch of people? Don't worry, without working for it at all or learning anything, I have now magically earned the assistance of the avatars that came before me. They fixed me, and I'll fix you. Problem solved!
** - Amon's Scar: Danny pointed this out before I watched it because I actually am driven to watch things MORE by spoilers than less, but Amon's scar WASHES AWAY IN WATER?! It's PAINT?! Look, guys. I know your animation style isn't so great at conveying what burn scars look like, but they're not something you could realistically simulate with paint. It would make sense if it was prosthetics, but that would have needed to be represented by like, the make-up peeling away. And it would have made just as much sense for Amon to purposefully have someone mutilate his face with fire so that he could fake the injury: hell, Tarlok didn't shy away from doing that to himself in an earlier episode with the electrocuting hand. This was just lazy and stupid, since it's not like the people didn't realize that Amon was a water bender anyway when he bent a column of water to get up out of the ocean.
Deus ex machina are not always bad, but they're not a good device to rely so heavily upon. It doesn't make for exciting moments, it makes for kind of eyebrow-raising moments where your audience will go "Really? That just happened? That's just lame." I feel like the finale reeeally overused them in this case.
You know what one of my favorite moments was? When Iroh II asked if Bolin could get them out of the prison cell, and Bolin replied "nope, not a metalbender, sir." That was like, the coolest thing ever, because Bolin got to represent the realistic problem that sometimes, magic superpowers can't get you out of jail. (Not to mention it would have been a huge continuity error, sinrce he was stuck in jail when Tarlok unfairly imprisoned them and didn't get out by metalbending then, either). Of course, that was resolved with a deus ex machina in the form of Naga and Pabu saving them...but at least it was set up obviously beforehand with the Dee Bradley Baker characters obviously wanting in on the action and being told to stay out of it by over-protective boyfriend Bolin.
I really did like the romance between him and Naga, AND how he let Pabu down easy. But based on his thunderstruck reaction to Lin's bending at the end, I think we ALL know that he's going to drop both of them for a chance at HER. I guess being romantically fickle just runs in the family!
As for Brave, I think it should have been titled Brave: Pixar's revolutionary take on The Killing Joke. Or, as Danny's been putting it, 'inappropriate slapstick: the movie'.
The graphics were great and I actually thought the story was pretty well-handled and good, but the slapstick was just horrifically timed. Hearing the audience laugh during such awful moments made me want to shrink away from everyone around me in terror that they would be amused by someone else's pain.
And now on to the rest:
Legend of Korra's season finale:
As I was mentioning a while back, the show would better be titled "Legend of Amon" because it's really not about Korra. While I enjoyed the way that Tarlok and Amon's backstory and resolution played out, I think it was monumentally stupid of the writers to try to withhold the backstory until the last possible second. The motivation here was clear: as writers, they were worried the fans would guess the plot ahead of time and wanted to try to play it close to the chest. The problem here is that you should never be scared of your fans guessing your plots ahead of time-- you should be afraid that your plots will actually suck, and that you're doing a bad job writing them.
I'll break this down into each storyline.
Bolin's burgeoning romance with Naga: At first, I was really skeptical about this pairing. There had been some interaction between the two prior to these final episodes, but really, Bolin and Naga hadn't really done much together, and I felt like the ship was really impeding on the great writing between Bolin and Pabu. Still, this is one of the season finale's successes. Naga saves Bolin's life not once, but TWICE, which I really thought cemented how much they care about each other. Add to that the sweet scene where Naga licked Bolin while he tried to play tough like he didn't like it, and you have a really great, satisfying resolution to a long-standing romance.
Asami's relationship with her father: Wow, I could not have been more disappointed in the handling of Asami's father, or more impressed by the handling of Asami. In a show that is a direct follow-up to A:TLA, I kind of expected to see some amazing parent/child dynamics here. Since Asami was notably the only main character old enough to be her own character and young enough to be expected to be thinking about her parents more than her personal life (who still had a parent who was a character in the show that mattered), I saw her as the spiritual successor to Zuko. Asami was refreshing and bold, as someone who had respected her father, but also respected the rights of people to live a safe and happy life regardless of bender status or not. She was not twisted by Zuko's existential angst over the lack of approval from her father, nor by the death of her mother- she was with it and cool, and when she found out her father was actually not as nice as she'd thought, she had to struggle with that desire to redeem him.
By contrast, Asami's father went from the doting-father-who-will-have-a-last-minute-side-change-and-die-to-save-his-daughter to megalomaniacal-control-freak in the space of about ten seconds. We had seen how he wanted to get her to stand by him multiple times, and that he was offended that she would date a firebender (because a firebender killed her mom; you know what, I actually would worry about a kid who knowingly dated someone that fit the profile for the murderer of her parents, too, and I think there was a sick fantasy about that in one of Bernie's monologues in Heroes Die). Despite his legitimate concerns, Sato suddenly becomes a frothing lunatic when confronted with Asami's very reasonable point that the Equalist movement is not doing the right thing by seeking to hurt benders.
The final scene between them seems pretty clear to me-- I expect Sato will be rotting in prison for the rest of the show, but I'm proud of Asami for not being as mysteriously crazy as her father. This is a case where I would have been fine with the stereotypical plot occurring. The problem with this is basically that when you do good writing, you set up expectations, and then meet them. A twist is never good writing unless, on closer examination, the reader or viewer of your product can look back BEFORE the twist to the beginning of the story and see that, in fact, the twist was telegraphed the whole time. This is the point of foreshadowing! And I feel like the guys REALLY dropped the ball here with Asami and her father.
On the upside, Asami was written very well and handled herself like a champion. Despite her unfortunate involvement with Mako, she made the right choices and wasn't an idiot because of a guy. If only I could shower such praise on the handling of Korra herself! But I can't, because the writers let me down.
Korra's relationship with Mako: Wow. Just-- I was already thoroughly against this, but let's go over a few of the reasons why this was such a monumental let-down.
Mako finally demonstrates fear for the first time as he's fleeing from the overwhelming power of Amon's bloodbending.
This guy's most intriguing character potential lies in his similarity to Amon. A truly interesting plot arc might have let Amon take away Mako's bending, and shown us how well Mako reacts to being taken care of by Bolin, instead of being in charge.
Or, such a plot could have let us see how fear changes Mako, perhaps not for the better-- though I will say, I liked that Mako's response to that fear was to pick Korra up and run, not to leave her behind. Friendship or romance, that's the kind of thing that makes a major difference in credibility of relationship.
I also think that Mako's most interesting character development lay in the establishing moments like his decision to work in the power plant* after telling Bolin to leave everything to him with regards to money. Mako is your quintessential old-fashioned 'gentleman' in the sense that he expects people to rely on him and doesn't really ask if they're cool with that. This isn't a great quality but it's an excellent one for character interactions going sour and developing a character past such a problem. It might seem really nice at first that Mako's so accommodating and in-charge; but how about when he challenges Korra's authority constantly, or infantilizes and silences his own brother? Or when he dismisses Asami's perfectly valid concerns with bullshit promises that she shouldn't worry her pretty little head about it, because he DOES care for her. (Just not enough). These are elements of Mako's character that make him kind of unlikeable, and I like that about him: that he seems like a nice guy upfront, but actually isn't. However, I get the feeling that the creators/writers don't actually realize how unlikeable and kind of douchey Mako is. That's my big problem here: Mako needs to be called on his douchebaggery and forced to own up to it, but instead of ever confronting that, he just gets what he wants, no matter who's hurt to accomplish that goal.
I've read about the creators wanting to separate Mako from Zuko by not giving him the same kind of angst-- but they made a grave mistake in thinking that Mako's the spiritual successor to Zuko. He's much more like Katara. Both are mothering to the rest of the party, well meaning, but unreasonably headstrong. They're notably both also shoved face-first into a romance that the Avatar asked for, even though they initially said 'no'. And that's bullshit-- not fair to Mako OR to Korra. It kind of reminds me of Lifebonds in Valdemar, which I got pretty sick of-- in fact, I like the Storm Trilogy about Karal so much in part because it deals with Firesong's neurotic obsession with needing to find a Lifebond, and how it's actually leading him to be abusive and kind of sick towards the people who he claims to care about.
The world of Avatar is unfortunately a place of tidy endings and deus ex machina, so I'm now looking at two separate opportunities to deal with the reality that sometimes the hero doesn't get everything they want in the end, and choosing instead to tie things up with a handy romance. In both cases, the romance doesn't feel right or true. I sincerely hope that second season will address how Mako and Korra aren't actually "destined" for each other, and let both of them grow as people-- but my hopes are pretty low on that front.
* - I'd like to take a moment to talk about the technology level of the setting, shall we? Avatar: the Last Airbender, which apparently took place about 70 years ago, was occurring during a time that I think could be compared to the 1800's in terms of worldwide tech. Most people did not have high-level tech in that world, and the Fire Nation notably only had steam-powered tech, not electricity.
It's thoroughly established in A:tLA that firebending requires emotional behavior. Fire-Benders should probably be emotional people, right? But to do electricity from nothing (as opposed to re-directing electricity, which is still supposed to be a big deal) requires total emotional calm. Azula, because she is really crazy, can make blue fire and electricity. She's imbalanced, which is part of what makes this possible. Notably, we don't learn jack shit about what happened to Azula in the Legend of Korra, but we really should because she was the only firebender who could reliably do lightning, and yet here we have Mako and countless other firebenders working in a power plant, where they charge the city with electricity, for hours on end to earn wages. You can't institutionalize the use of such a power without making it possible for a lot of people to use it-- basically, in Republic City, electricity has become a standard: Electricity has been harnessed for technological use. But how? We don't know anything about Azula or whether she recovered. Since we have magic healing (my least favorite of all fantasy tropes), nobody has to explain how Azula's insanity was handled. Did she ever get counseling or treatment? That's kind of important because if she didn't, the only person in the setting who could have trained people in making lightning so easily was most likely thrown in prison for her war crimes. We have this convenient excuse that Toph taught people how to metal bend, but the lightning thing? Nothing.
Mako's not special, either (except, of course, when he is), because he was working with A BUNCH of other firebenders in that power plant. Electricity is apparently the standard in the setting, because they weren't using carrier pigeons or airbenders to send messages to Iroh II either: they sent him telegrams, which could be intercepted by the enemy. So who the fuck taught all the firebenders how to keep their emotions in check?
This aside, it's also pretty damn suspicious that the setting went from 'no electricity' to 'we have enough electricity to make biplanes and radios, etc. etc.'. How about the futuristic mecha bots and shock-gloves? I'd be willing to make exceptions because I love pulp sci-fi, but there's no damned explanation for how this was institutionalized, how it works, why it works. Sato has Satomobiles, but we didn't get an explanation of how they run. Do they pollute? If not, do they each contain a tortured firebender inside, kept in a painful stasis where they must power the electric car to receive the nutrients that keep them alive? ....was I the only one who thought that would be wonderfully creepy? Sigh.
Anyway-- the setting's tech level makes no sense, so it almost seems funny to leverage my other complaint, which is: What the hell was Amon planning to do once he took away everyone's bending? Make people give up electricity? In my experience, getting people to give up something they think of as convenient, no matter how noble you make your reasoning sound, is a doomed effort. Amon is not a very good planner. Also, even if he hadn't been Chi-Blocking (like many fans were speculating the WHOLE TIME), he couldn't have stopped the next generation from having bender children-- even Aang couldn't do that. Where's the solution, guys? Were you even thinking about it at all?
The Lieutenant!: FINALLY this guy gets some speaking lines after being utterly wasted for the entire show, and then he gets UTTERLY WASTED by Amon. Talk about bullshit. The events here seemed to exist to just discredit Amon's goal-- which I would have believed really was about equality if he made the lieutenant wait, took Korra and Mako's bending, and then let the lieutenant kill him-- and it was disappointing on a lot of levels. In going the Naruto Sasuke-and-Itachi route, the writers basically nixed the lieutenant's one shot at being an awesome character. Because wouldn't it have been so cool if Amon was like "okay, now you can execute me" and the lieutenant was like "I'm not like you. GET OUT OF HERE!"?! What a waste of time it was to have the lieutenant at all. He had no relationship with Amon except unexplained and unwavering devotion; and in the instant it was taken from him, he was erased from the story. He didn't get to be a character, and he deserved to be.
Now, I'm sure I'm going to get comments about how it's hard to get a whole story into 12 or 13 episodes, but other people have made this point and I think it bears repeating. They knew how many episodes they had to work with. They knew the whole time. They knew exactly how much time they would have and they had full creative control over the project. They made exactly what they wanted to make, and it wasn't as good as we thought it would be BECAUSE, like Joss Whedon, the creators of Avatar: the Last Airbender are unfairly credited as the authority on the A:tLA project. The best episodes of Buffy and the best episodes of A:tLA were written by people whose names DON'T go under the "created by" box. It's probably true of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, too, but Lauren Faust is cool enough to have moved on to other projects and would never take credit for good work that wasn't her own.
Legend of Korra was simply not as good as its predecessor. It had some major flaws, and writing was one of them. It was beautifully animated and had some visually wonderful scenes, but it's not as good as A:tLA, and that's OKAY. It's okay to be critical of something and still like it. I still liked Korra enough to watch the whole show and recommend it to my parents along the way. So there's nothing wrong with admitting that the show could have been better, and discussing ways that it could have accomplished that goal.
I particularly was distressed by the moments that put Tenzin in danger, but was delighted when Korra freed him despite Mako's callous suggestion that they run away and leave Tenzin's family to be hurt. Tenzin and Lin Bei Fong were the two most capable characters in the entire show, and alongside Korra, Bolin and Asami, the most likeable, as well. This doesn't mean I didn't see the value in Mako, Tarlok or Amon (I refuse to write Amon's real name, because it kind of sounds stupid to me-- I'm sorry. : /), but the transition from kid-Tarlok to adult? Lampshaded. The explanation for why Amon didn't try to personally contact Tarlok and get him to lay off? There wasn't one. And I've already mentioned my complaints about Mako.
This is not to say I didn't think the final scene between Amon and Tarlok wasn't beautiful, because it was. The final scene between Lin, Korra and Tenzin was also great-- but the whole finale was characterized by wrapping up big, messy problems with a tidy little bow and expecting that to be good enough. I don't even want to go into the social strife that Team Korra has waiting for them when they get back to Republic City...unless, of course, that's just magically fine after all, and Amon was manufacturing the perceived inequality between benders and non-benders. Somehow, I doubt it. The show never addressed the uncomfortable commonality of the phrase "A firebender killed my...", which is sort of endemic of the whole problem. Did all these firebenders actually commit brutalities against people, or are firebenders society's scapegoats after the events of A:tLA? I would buy the latter if firebenders weren't still living in pride and privilege. Since they are, that suggests that all the talk of unmitigated bender-on-non crime is 100% true, and that nobody ever did anything about it except Amon. Sounds to me like Republic City won't be settling down for a long time, but nobody in the show gave two shits about it.
Speaking of which, let's get back to deus ex machina.
And by the way, the deus ex machina: Let's count how many happen IN THE FINALE ALONE. For the purposes of this discussion, a deus ex machina is when an event that has NO foreshadowing whatsoever guarantees a victory (however temporary) to a party, be they hero or villain.
1. Iroh II is on the way after being called to help? Well, I've got biplanes.
2. Iroh II is going to die? Korra happens to save him (and not one other soldier)
3. Tenzin and his family escaped? Actually, we captured them off-screen.
4. I have a massive facial scar? Oh, actually, it washes away in water**.
5. Amon's bloodbending me and for some reason trying to make me kill myself with firebending instead of just taking away my bending like EVERYONE ELSE? I shot him with lightning.
6. My bending was taken away? Somehow, I can air-bend now.
7. My bending is permanently gone and Amon has wrecked a bunch of people? Don't worry, without working for it at all or learning anything, I have now magically earned the assistance of the avatars that came before me. They fixed me, and I'll fix you. Problem solved!
** - Amon's Scar: Danny pointed this out before I watched it because I actually am driven to watch things MORE by spoilers than less, but Amon's scar WASHES AWAY IN WATER?! It's PAINT?! Look, guys. I know your animation style isn't so great at conveying what burn scars look like, but they're not something you could realistically simulate with paint. It would make sense if it was prosthetics, but that would have needed to be represented by like, the make-up peeling away. And it would have made just as much sense for Amon to purposefully have someone mutilate his face with fire so that he could fake the injury: hell, Tarlok didn't shy away from doing that to himself in an earlier episode with the electrocuting hand. This was just lazy and stupid, since it's not like the people didn't realize that Amon was a water bender anyway when he bent a column of water to get up out of the ocean.
Deus ex machina are not always bad, but they're not a good device to rely so heavily upon. It doesn't make for exciting moments, it makes for kind of eyebrow-raising moments where your audience will go "Really? That just happened? That's just lame." I feel like the finale reeeally overused them in this case.
You know what one of my favorite moments was? When Iroh II asked if Bolin could get them out of the prison cell, and Bolin replied "nope, not a metalbender, sir." That was like, the coolest thing ever, because Bolin got to represent the realistic problem that sometimes, magic superpowers can't get you out of jail. (Not to mention it would have been a huge continuity error, sinrce he was stuck in jail when Tarlok unfairly imprisoned them and didn't get out by metalbending then, either). Of course, that was resolved with a deus ex machina in the form of Naga and Pabu saving them...but at least it was set up obviously beforehand with the Dee Bradley Baker characters obviously wanting in on the action and being told to stay out of it by over-protective boyfriend Bolin.
I really did like the romance between him and Naga, AND how he let Pabu down easy. But based on his thunderstruck reaction to Lin's bending at the end, I think we ALL know that he's going to drop both of them for a chance at HER. I guess being romantically fickle just runs in the family!
As for Brave, I think it should have been titled Brave: Pixar's revolutionary take on The Killing Joke. Or, as Danny's been putting it, 'inappropriate slapstick: the movie'.
The graphics were great and I actually thought the story was pretty well-handled and good, but the slapstick was just horrifically timed. Hearing the audience laugh during such awful moments made me want to shrink away from everyone around me in terror that they would be amused by someone else's pain.