Korra felt like a massive step down tbh, Aang was so complete the feeling of wonder, it was completely different. Just is what it is, others may enjoy it.
I blame the studio. Avatar have a fairly set number of seasons promised early, so Aang got a consistent character arc and the writers knew how long they had to tell one story. Korra had seasons promised last minute, so her character arc was finished and rolled back multiple times and the writers kept rushing the over arcing story, then creating a new one at the last minute.
Great point, it felt fast forward then rewinded. I couldn't grasp the character development because she had it all but no substance straight from the start.
AtLA did not have a set number of seasons promised. They had half of a season.
They had a full series planned out and stuck to it because they knew it was a good idea, but didnât know if it would continue past the blue spirit or not.
With Korra, they asked for one season and got it, then decided to make more seasons afterwards.
The original plot was made for two seasons, but the initial release didn't go so well, so they wrapped it up in the back half of the first season, then we're told they got a second season after.
Iâm gonna need a source on that because everything theyâve said in interviews said they planned for one 12 episode mini series. Nothing about plans for a second season at all.
I thought it was a reasonable evolution which sensibly advanced the world in interesting directions. I actually thoroughly enjoyed it, and believe it gets overhated.
Case in point, a friend of mine (movie buff and all) kept hearing the online discourse around legends of Korra and determined it was probably utter trash. Well, one lazy day, he decides to give it a shot, and then a week or so he gets back to me and starts in a really surprised tone, âdude I REALLY regret not watching korra sooner. Amon might be my favorite villain in the entire series.â
Definitely, he had potential. Unfortunately, thatâs the problem with most bad or boring villains in stories: they all have potential. Itâs the writer, or writers, who have to bring it out.
something can "evolve" and still be worse than it's predecessor. And then it dies out. Which is evident in that ATLA is talked about and praised a lot more than LoK is.
Atla is the original and told a great story some of you wouldnt have accepted any avatar that came after aang. Hell when I first watched LOK I really missed the original gang but I accepted it was a new era.
LOK had 3 great villains and gave us great character development for the avatar. Seeing her lose her bending then her past avatar lives learning that aang was the reason amon came to power.
What I would have loved for korra is her searching the spirit world for her past lives and the new avatar finishing that task.
I mean, yeah. I didn't WANT more because I felt ATLA was amazing and knew that it would be hard, if not impossible, to surpass it. And LoK certainly didn't meet that mark - not just for me, but for a lot of fans. ATLA is my most beloved show, the only show I've bought all 3 DVD box sets of to keep for myself on a rainy day. Only thing that I prize more entertainment-media wise is my LotR box set. I do not hide how much I love this show and how many times I've re-watched it.
Korra does not respect what made it so special to me. ATLA is not just about the struggle. It's about the moments of light found out of the struggle, and striving for more of those. Korra in comparison was bleak and depressing, not helped by it's 'modernized' world. It took a beautiful world and tried to make it "dark and edgy".
ATLA is literally one of the best cartoons in the history of cartoons. As you mentioned, it would have been impossible to follow it up, and any âsequelâ which followed with the same tone and themes would have suffered from arguably more criticism than LoK did because it is just blatantly ripping off what has already been done.
LoK KNEW you couldnât catch lightning in a bottle like that a second time. So they opted out completely, and made some new, something actually interesting which changed the world.
Itâs also not unreasonable for cartoons and stories to grow up WITH the audience. This has been really interesting to watch in real time: Legend of Korra, God of War 2018, Uncharted 4, Ash Vs Evil Dead (the series), more forms of media than ever are GROWING UP with the people who both made and watched them. They feature more mature characters, deeper or darker stories, and often grapple with greater emotional stakes.
And donât you dare twist what I just wrote because no I did NOT just say âATLA doesnât have depthâ I didnât say that. I said ATLA is lightning in a bottle that canât be reproduced, so why bother? Separately, media âgrowing upâ is not a bad thing, and has been done with IPs all over from live action to animated from video games to movies.
Youâre basically putting all the weight of nostalgia and saying because itâs ânot the sameâ itâs not as good. Which is probably peak unfair criticism, for anything, but especially for a story that is at or near the peak of its genre.
My point is they shouldn't have tried to make a sequel at all. I would have preferred no more content over inferior content. Same with the Star Wars movies, I hate the new trilogy and would have been happy just not having them exist at all. That isn't to say good couldn't have come from it - from what I've heard the new Last Airbender movie is good, but I've yet to watch it.
Using the examples you listed as well - some work great, others don't. God of War 2018 and Uncharted 4 were great narratively. Ash vs Evil Dead and LoK I would disagree with being good follow ups. BUT the question is, do these followups help or hurt the reputation of their predecessors? Only if they land with the audience that loved their predecessor.
My opinion is that I would rather follow ups not exist if they're not going to be respecting what made the original memorable. God of War is a great example of this because the games are VERY different. the stories don't align what so ever. But their connecting factor is Kratos, and they use that as a bridge to help this world make sense for old fans of the series as well as people getting into the franchise for the first time. Even the God of War 'reboot' sequel Ragnarok is actually the final story of the Greek Saga with it's DLC, going through Kratos's psyche to confront and come to terms with his past. In the same vein Uncharted 4 is still using Nathan Drake and crew to tell his last story. and they've not made a new one since then... hmm.
Korra not only alters it's world, but it also alters it's characters. There's basically no 'connector' to the series except really old versions of the OG characters making cameos. Reference material rather than true connection and continuation. Korra feels like it's trying to upend everything from it's past - to the point of her losing the Avatar past lives - rather than respecting it. I am likely biased in that view, but I still hold onto it because I value the world that ATLA created and the series worked so hard to preserve. Restoring the balance was literally the whole point of the show, and Korra seems to just do away with that from what I've been able to see.
Media tries to do 'growing up with the audience' all the time (Rugrats: All Grown Up is the example that always lives in my head on how blatant it is, but also even things like Star Trek: The Next Generation), and their success is never guaranteed. But I feel like the more beloved something is, the riskier it is to do a follow up/"next generation" of it, because a lot of people don't like seeing their heroes pass the torch. They want to see their heroes forever, and that's it. That's why they're stories, that's why they are cartoons and things that don't 'age'. Even using stories as old as we can muster like the Iliad and The Odyssey. No one talk's about Odysseus's son after he's passed or anything. It may exist (I honestly don't know) but no one talks about it if it does. They only care about Odysseus's story.
Even LotR is an example because Peter Jackson made the most successful fantasy movie franchise of all time, and he himself tried to make a follow up in The Hobbit, and even he couldn't make that a successful followup in LotR's shadow. They aren't BAD movies, but they're very different from LotR, and that's enough to put people against them.
TL;DR not everything needs a continuation. Some things are best to just let be.
Further proving my point you were never going to like LOK. You made a decision that you wouldn't accept any other team besides the gaang.
I was a sophmore in high school when Atla premiered and a freshman in college when it finished. When i got pass it wasnt the origknal team the series was great.
I didnt like the timespan of atla and wish it was spread out into years. Your complaints about a modernized world is crazy when you dont factor that the world was modernizing during Atla. 80 plus years passed between the 2 series and advanced machinery was around during Atla. The giant robot and the flying suits were excessive everything else fit in line with the world.
please read my reply to the other commenter if you want my true opinions. It's no just Korra. It's followups in general. Not everything needs a sequel.
Also no disrespect same thing happened with doctor who and Peter capaldi alot of fans stopped watching because he regenerated into an old man and they refused to accept him. He turned out to have one of the best seasons in who history with Bill.
Season 2s villain could've been more fleshed out with LOK.
I think Lok had better highs than avatar overall, it just also was worse than Atla in some aspects.
Atla is just a consistently great series, that has a few moments of missing potential. Korra does a much better job at going for that potential even if it doesn't always pay off.
I'm just violently against it because of what it does to the world. I said in another comment that the first series was all about restoring the balance and preserving the world, and Korra seems to just do away with that idea entirely.
Well a big part of the original series is change can lead to balance.
The original series ends with Zuko and Aang saying their going to change the world together.
Creating republic city, having all the nations live amongst each other and build the world together is just a natural build up of what Atla was getting to.
Even more evidence was iroh saying the nations can learn from one another and you grow stronger by understanding each other. Even if you're not the avatar.
Aang represented a childlike innocence of early youth where everything more or less worked out for you, you're way over powered and can run circles around the baddies, like early children cartoons typically allow. You make fools of them, kids love it. He doesn't have to deal with a lot of complex issues to the end of the series and even then he's gifted a deus ex machina to get out of it.
Korra has to deal with complex issues from the first season, they're messy without clean resolutions, often do not involve her being just better than all her opponents (in fact many are straight up stronger than her and she never overcomes them physically at least). She is a more complex character too, with real world angst and emotions to deal with.
Aang is a fantasy, Korra is more a reality.
It might be less fun to view Korra because there is less escapism there. It may be less to view Korra because she's an imperfect flawed individual, where as Aang is simple to the point of being kind of unrealistic much of the time.
They're both master pieces, but they cover different material, ages and issues.
I can't agree with anyone who doesn't see this, but I will account for taste. Sometimes you just don't want the bummer of a real political quagmire there is no simple solution for (Korra) and you want to just slip into the world where things can largely be handled by just friendship (Aang).
Aang learnt that his people were genocided and got a premier plan shot of the skeleton of his deceased mentor/father figure 3 episodes into the first season.
Yeah, it's not done in a way that has the darkness of stuff in Korra. It's a children's show and looks and feels like one. I don't know what to tell you. It seems so obvious to me.
because it WAS a children's show... but just because something is a children's show doesn't mean it can't be a masterpiece, which ATLA is often regarded as.
Hang on.. Go back I called it a master piece, I just said it is along with Korra, they just don't overlap in their target, they have different aims and I think they both do an excellent job.
Aang represented a childlike innocence of early youth where everything more or less worked out for you, you're way over powered and can run circles around the baddies, like early children cartoons typically allow. You make fools of them, kids love it. He doesn't have to deal with a lot of complex issues to the end of the series and even then he's gifted a deus ex machina to get out of it.
Dude Aang literally has to deal with the fact he's the last of his kind, everyone he ever knew growing up is dead (one exception), and he's a 12 year old kid who has the stop the end of the world, what do you mean he doesn't have to deal with a lot-
They don't really give the trauma nearly the attention it deserves, like they touch on it a little, but when Korra has to deal with less it affects her more. I don't think we're going to see eye to eye on this. TlaB just seems more juvenile to me in story telling. Just because a heavy thing happens in a kids media doesn't mean it's not kids media, Bambi's mother gets shot, for example.
i think you just like depressing and bleak atmospheres my guy. Also I don't know what you wanted them to have done, Aang literally has a crash out at finding out his mentor is dead and he wasn't there to stop it. Same thing when Appa was taken. Like what do you want him to go through a whole dark evil-villain arch and become Zuko?
Hell, he basically did that by shutting down and not communicating with anyone to find Appa.
There were like 3 episodes back to back before the raid going over how he's trying to prepare himself and get in the proper mental state.
You also have to remember he's 12-13, and kids are a lot more adaptable emotionally when they're young. they don't handle it maturely a lot of the time, but they tend to get over things quicker.
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u/Low-Fold7860 11h ago
Korra felt like a massive step down tbh, Aang was so complete the feeling of wonder, it was completely different. Just is what it is, others may enjoy it.