Pre-finale Korra thoughts

[dolorosa_12]

So, I sat down to write about Korra on my Wordpress blog, and a couple of thousand words tumbled out. Not particularly complimentary words, either. I should say that while I'm frustrated with the writing, I don't hate the series, and have been enjoying watching it. My overwhelming emotion is frustration. Because, having seen ATLA, I know it could've been so much better.

I really didn’t want to be that fan. You know, the one taking creators of a spin-off to task because the spin-off is nothing like its parent text. But the problem is not so much that Korra isn’t ATLA but rather that Korra lacks the ingredients that made ATLA so successful. As I see it, ATLA’s quality rested on the interplay of four elements (see what I did there?). These were:
1. A cast of rounded, complex, human characters whose actions made sense in relation to their characterisation, who changed over the course of the series and who drew us into their world;
2. A completely three-dimensional, endlessly fascinating setting that reflected the diversity of backgrounds and experiences of the people who lived in it;
3. An engaging narrative which kept you watching and kept surprising you; and
4. Themes and real-world analogies that resonated but could be interpreted in multiple ways and on multiple levels.

Korra lacks all of these things.

I would really love to hear the opinions of people here who are Korra or ATLA fans. You can post either here or on the blog itself. Just a warning - I'm going out to yoga class in about an hour and won't be back online after that until tomorrow morning, so don't expect any replies until at least then.

Comments

[elizabethtastic.livejournal.com]

No, you are not the only one who thinks these things about Korra. I've been that fan for the past three weeks now, because it boggles my mind how unlike Avatar this show is. And like you, issue isn't that the show isn't good (or has the potential to be good, I should say), but that it just doesn't have the components of what Avatar did.

I've made many entries about how kind of disappointed I am in this new series because of how rich and detailed Avatar was in comparison to this. There's too much romance (which, quite frankly, I'm beyond tired of), too much pro-bending matches, too little character development (I especially feel like Bolin is under-used a lot), too little world-building, and too little of Korra learning how to airbend, for goodness sake. After all, isn't that the whole reason Korra came to Republic City in the first place, to learn to airbend and continue wioth her Avatar training? We saw so much of it in Avatar and I, for one, thought it was cool and I especially loved that Aang interacted with other Avatars before him. Oh, and while Republic City was fascinating at first, I've become really bored with the place. That's probably why I loved Avatar so much: every season, we were off to a new area of the world and were experiencing the different cultures of the world, and it never got old. There was always something new to surprise us or awe us; Korra is very lacking there.

And as to themes and real-world analogies, I'm hard pressed to find any at all. In one of the entries I made, I compared the Equalist movement to the Communist fervor that took hold during the 1930's in America's big cities and such; this controversial movement that left people very divided and no room to be neutral. But that's about it really, and I don't find anything truly thought-provoking about the show, and it's frustrating, because that's what I really loved about Avatar.

LOL, sorry for the essay, but I've become passionately critical of this show that I had such high hopes for, and if there's one I thing I hate, it's getting my hopes up for something that, in the end, disappoints me.

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I noticed you've been posting about Korra a lot, and I'm sorry I never replied, but you always posted before I'd seen whatever new episode had come out and I didn't want to be spoiled.

I think part of the problem is just that it's a miniseries and doesn't have the time to develop things in the way that ATLA did. But this isn't a problem in and of itself: you can say things in only a few episodes. I'm a huge fan of (the first season of) British Being Human, which said so much in just six episodes. And it's not the single location that's the problem, just that the writers do nothing with it. If you're setting things in one place, the character development has to be amazing (Veronica Mars, Buffy and Gilmore Girls strike me as shows which are set in single locations but really work well.) But if you have a single location, you have to work harder on transforming your characters over the course of the series, because you cannot rely on changing settings to do that work for you.

I think you're right about the real-world parallel being with communism, but I think you've got the setting wrong. Republic City is an analogue for a very cosmopolitan, international Chinese city in the '20s - probably Shanghai. The Equalists are meant to be read as the Chinese communist movement. (Remember, the parallels in ATLA-world are usually with Asian history.) That's what bugs me so much. Once it was in power, the Chinese Communist Party committed horrific atrocities, but the movement arose out of a genuine sense of outrage at the inequalities that pervaded society. The idea that communists (or other left-wing movements) are people filled with jealousy and rage that other people have things they don't is such a right-wing interpretation of that kind of politics (like the way people who are opposed to government-funded health care think that it's a 'socialist plot' to take money away from them, rather than a way to ensure that everyone has equal access to medical treatment). (It's one reason why I detest the film Anastasia: 'Oh, those horrible communists, they tried to kill a princess!' as opposed to 'Tsarist Russia was an extremely unequal society and those who rebelled against it did so for legitimate reasons'.)

Anyway, I'm glad to see that other people feel the same way.

[elizabethtastic.livejournal.com]

See, I was wondering if I had the parallels right! I had almost forgotten about the Chinese Communist movement (which is a shame on my part, since it was a big part of my Political Ideologies class). Thanks for reminding me! And yeah, I've always been uneasy about the way the Communist movement is portrayed in popular culture, too. Both Russia and China for a long time never really had a middle class, I don't think---you were either on the rich spectrum of society or you were on the poor end of society. And since the wealthy oftentimes kept the privileges of of being rich to themselves, the poor were often exploited, so their outrage wasn't uncalled for, they did so for legitimate reasons.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, yes, the Communist movement was definitely more complicated than just very poor people wanting to grab everything the rich had for themselves (and Anastasia has often bothered me for that reason, too :)).

[cykotyks.livejournal.com]

I was interested in Korra when I first heard about it. A friend of mine on Twitter was subscribed to something that allowed him to retweet a bunch of sketches and whatever. It looked good. But since Tree had no interest at all in any of it, I didn't watch it when it started coming out. Half of my Twitter feed was watching, though, so I gleaned some info from their squeeing. And...the more I heard about it, the less I wanted to watch it. Seeing a critical review like this seals my complete lack of desire to watch any of it at all.

From what I can gather, it seems to me that the writing team just took the sizable ATLA fanbase for granted and let Korra ride on its coattails. I was hoping for an interesting and engaging show in the spirit of ATLA, but it sounds more like somebody's guilty pleasure fanfic.

[dolorosa-12.livejournal.com]

Oh, it looks pretty, that's for sure. I get the impression that writers got carried away with all the awesome things they imagined to expand the series ('wouldn't it be cool if there was a police force of metalbenders? in airships?' 'what if there were pro-bending tournaments?' 'how much early 20th-century technology do we want to put in?') which is fine when you're writing fanfic - and in fact would've made awesome fic - but not so good when it's original writing. It's frustrating, because there are so many things that, if they'd been explored further or better, could've made the series wonderful, but as it is, it is a disappointment and a wasted opportunity.