Nostalgia Critic- Avatar The Last Airbender

[Mr Bean]

the other half gushing over Combustion Man. Or rather, the sound engineering for Combustion Man and how perfect his "firing" sound is.

I prefer Sparky Sparky Boom Man myself. Surprised there is no comment about the fact that old Sparky is the first villain who is simply trying to kill the Avatar. Not capture or bend to his will. Just kill the avatar because that's what he's paid to do.

[Ahriman238]

The Avatar and the Firelord

Which makes tomorrow the Runaway, and just after the Puppetmaster. Presumably he's going to do the Day of Black Sun in one sitting, as he previously has with two-parter episodes. Which makes me wonder if he's going to do the finale, when it comes, in one go or an episode at a time.

[Ahriman238]

The Runaway

[Ahriman238]

The Puppetmaster

[Crazedwraith]

Anyone who's been following it thus far doesn't need a link so I'm not listing all the episodes between PuppetMaster but he's up to the Boiling Rock two parter now. Mostly he focused on the big moment of the episode. Mai and Ty-Lee turning on Azula and the fact she's going to go completely crazy-pants because of it. But he touched on some other stuff; even some stuff unrelated to the episodes: fessing up to his mistake about the invasion (he forgot the Earth King had told Azula-as-omashu-warrior about it) and that he felt the Earth King got off far too easy in the book opener.

Again I think he makes some fair points. And he's not got many episodes to go. Well six. But four of those are the finale.

[Crazedwraith]

And He's done - Avatar Aang and thoughts on the whole series.

I was actually expecting Doug to have more of a problem with the out-of-nowhere spirit bending. But maybe that was because Rob was adamantly defending it. Speaking of Rob, he is totally pressed about the names and spoilers thing, lol. I wouldn't think, 'Aang has kids who will also be airbenders' is really the kind of thing people would yell 'spoiler' about but there you go.

So the NC movie review is not going to be the next big review but the big review after that. And he's going to do watch Legend Of Korra as well. Which of course the comments are divided about. For myself Legend Of Korra is great until the last couple of episodes where it gets incredible rushed. I know they were jerked around a lot of the length of the series but still feel that could have been better.

[Ahriman238]

Well, that worked out, he saw the show, loved the show, and now we get to see his response to the movie.

[Mr Bean]

Well, that worked out, he saw the show, loved the show, and now we get to see his response to the movie.

I hope he covers all the terrible Shyamalan changes that provide zero benefit and made everything worse. Why are fire benders dangerous, because unlike all other types of benders they make their own element. Shyamalan lets make firebenders need a source of fire. Show, bending is fast and fluid and beware master benders who are walking one man armies. Shyamalan all bending must be lame and slow as fuck.

If Shyamalan had made Green Latern, his weakness would have been water.

[Ahriman238]

As I understand it, he didn't want the firebenders to seem overpowered compared to the others. Nevermind there are good reasons to make your villains overpowered, or that it sort of feeds into the sense of cultural/racial superiority that the Fire Nation has.

[Lord Revan]

not mention that being kind of overpowered compared to other benders caused fire benders to be arrogant and make stupid mistakes (Zhao was the worst but not the only one), with the notable exception of Iroh, so in practice they weren't as overpowered as it seemed at first glance.

[Ahriman238]

And now he's started on Korra.

Welcome to Republic City

[Ahriman238]

A Leaf in the Wind

I'll agree that one point Korra's been sort of lacking is the same humor and charm as the old show. That said, I get that it had to be it's own thing and not just another season of the Last Airbender.

[Formless]

Heh. I finally started watching his vlogs (because how can you screw up a vlog?), and is it just me or is there some irony in this one to the fact that he constantly tries to relate things back to his experiences and what he perceives as the experience of his generation when his point in this one is that he thinks his generation is less introspective?

As for Korra, he's on the right track, but I always took the same far simpler interpretation Chuck talked about; Korra just learned everything else so easily that she doesn't understand failure yet. And besides which, she has never seen the world, unlike all the previous Avatars, so she has every right to be distracted. Any teenager who has been cooped up for all their life in a small town would be. In fact...
Spoiler

Apparently the first episode lied. Aang never told them to keep Korra locked up in the southern complex. That was a decision made by her family and Tenzin. And really, why would Aang do that? He knows how the previous Avatars were trained. He knows the importance of seeing the world. He was a fricken Air Nomad. He spent his whole childhood traveling the world. Its completely out of character for him, and an obvious lapse in judgement.

Edit: oops, upon re-watching the scene where I thought they said Aang told them that they state Aang's instructions were to "keep [her] safe", and Korra immediately points out the problem with their interpretation. My bad.

Oh well, these vlogs are the best thing Doug has done in a long time, even if the amusement factor is in seeing how radically his opinions and understanding changes over time.

[Ahriman238]

The Revelation
The Voice in the Night

[Crazedwraith]

Got to say I hadn't really noted that Korra was particular repetitive in its episode structure, but there you go. And if he's upset with the pacing at this stage, well methinks he's not going to be impressed as time goes on.

Kinda of feels like he's trying hard to like Korra and not managing it. Sort of the inverse of what happened with ATLA

[Formless]

Its because he's been sensitized to repetition and formula by Hollywood movies and his reviewing job. Notice how at the beginning he relates it back to Sandra Bullock and Julia Roberts movies? And he doesn't notice repetition when he likes what is going on, like the last few episodes of AT;LA where there is a string of episodes where Zuko helps one of the team deal with their personal problems. I found those episodes far more noticeably repetitive than Korra because those were all about tying up loose ends and finishing character arcs, and all of them used the same character doing the same thing each time. Sure, one of them was a two part story, but that doesn't change that ultimately it was Sokka's story beign wrapped up via the Zuko plot device.

Also, I think he is trying too hard to find explicit lessons in each episode despite his recognition that this is no longer a kids show like the first Avatar. Yes, The Voice in the Night certainly tries that, but the way I viewed LoK the individual episodes were far more about pushing the overall plot forward while the overall plot was more about the overall themes of the show. They weren't just "Korra learns this today" because so many of them reinforce similar points in different ways. Instead you had to combine the events of multiple episodes to understand more fully what the show was trying to say.

That's why I didn't have much of a problem with how rushed Amon's ending was-- the story was not actually about either villain so much as their combined story and their interactions with the protagonist showing the philosophy of Airbending more fully. That Yakone's hate and vengeful attitudes not only hurt him, but it ironically turned his sons against eachother. It creates a nice contrast and context for the Airbending philosophy of non-violence.

[Vendetta]

He is right about the abject and annoying predictability of the "love triangle as drama" plot.

Especially when one of the cardinal points in the drama is a tree.

[Ahriman238]

Got to say I hadn't really noted that Korra was particular repetitive in its episode structure, but there you go. And if he's upset with the pacing at this stage, well methinks he's not going to be impressed as time goes on.

Kinda of feels like he's trying hard to like Korra and not managing it. Sort of the inverse of what happened with ATLA

That's cause things get shaken up after the stadium attack, Tarlok's police state, and Korra's confronting him.

[Crazedwraith]

That's why I didn't have much of a problem with how rushed Amon's ending was-- the story was not actually about either villain so much as their combined story and their interactions with the protagonist showing the philosophy of Airbending more fully. That Yakone's hate and vengeful attitudes not only hurt him, but it ironically turned his sons against eachother. It creates a nice contrast and context for the Airbending philosophy of non-violence.

I never had a problem with the rushing of Amon's backstory. The real kicker for me is Korra losing her powers and then having Aang restore them a couple of minutes later.

Either don't include that or have just one more episode to flesh it all out and the series would have gone up incalculably in my estimation.

He is right about the abject and annoying predictability of the "love triangle as drama" plot.

Especially when one of the cardinal points in the drama is a tree.

Indeed. Especially if you don't include that plot line the shippers will just make it up anyway.

That's cause things get shaken up after the stadium attack, Tarlok's police state, and Korra's confronting him.

Fair point. The Amon and pro-bending plots collides and the pro-bending one ends the very next episode.

[Formless]

I never had a problem with the rushing of Amon's backstory. The real kicker for me is Korra losing her powers and then having Aang restore them a couple of minutes later.

You mean like how Aang died at the end of Earth and was brought back to life a few minutes... oh.

Just thought I would remind people that not everyone perceives the first show as having perfect timing all the time.

And don't tell me that spirit water's power was foreshadowed and the energy bending wasn't. Energbending was central to Korra from the second episode on, and the fact that only the Avatar is known to still have that ability was also planted at the same time. Hell, even Doug noticed how little energybending itself was foreshadowed near the end of AT;LA. Yeah, there are images of the Lion-Turtle throughout the story, but I'm actually with him in thinking that qualifies as a set of easter eggs at best.

And I can offer some defense for it too. Showing that energybending can heal as well as take away shows there is a true difference between genuine energybending and Amon's technique. And before you say it, it wasn't the first time a previous avatar bent an element through the current one's body. Roku did that in season one to help them escape from the Fire Temple. So as far as I am concerned, its not a deal breaker. They got 12 episodes, they used them as best they could. One more episode would still probably feel rushed since there would have been no villain to hold it.

The love triangle was a time waster though, but I don't care for love triangles anyway. So coming from me that doesn't say much of anything.

[Crazedwraith]

Hey, great job countering arguments I never made there

But as far as I recall I've never made any statements about the End of Earth one way or t'other. It did set up stuff for the first half of Fire pretty well though, with everyone thinking Aang was dead because of it being a big interest.

And to copy your trick, yes the point can be made that Korra linking up with the spirit incarnations of her past lives might have an equally big impact on the next book. What with it being called Spirit and all. We'll just have to wait and see.

In my opinion it was rushed and the emotional impact of Korra losing her powers is diminished when it lasts for a minute. If your opinion is different. That's fine too as Doug says.

[Formless]

My real trick is memorizing all the cliche's fans keep spewing out so I can preempt them. Comes in handy sometimes with other fandoms.

[Vendetta]

Indeed. Especially if you don't include that plot line the shippers will just make it up anyway.

Yeah, but nerds making things up on webforums doesn't fill screen time with possibly the most predictable plot ever.

Just thought I would remind people that not everyone perceives the first show as having perfect timing all the time.

The first show was way better paced because, frankly, it had as long as it needed to tell its story. The ending was rushed, which is because it went through about five months of rewrites to get something that Nick would actually broadcast, I think it went through several drafts that they simply wouldn't show.

Korra suffered because Nick are allergic to success, so a hugely popular show which made them shitloads of money got a "maybe you can have one series we'll see how you do" for its followup.

[Lord Revan]

Korra suffered because Nick are allergic to success, so a hugely popular show which made them shitloads of money got a "maybe you can have one series we'll see how you do" for its followup.

I think it was less to with being allergic to success and more to do on thinking that ATLA was the exception and not the rule when it came to this franchice (and the flop that was the live action film certainly didn't help).

[Formless]

HAHAHAHAHA oh man, the more I watch this guy's vlogs the more I feel like I'm learning from him, but not what he is saying. The more I'm becoming convinced that Amon was a red herring; and its amazing how well that works, because of how impatient he gets with how little LoK showed of the guy. And the more he gets impatient, the more I can start to see a little bit of Korra herself in him: and its starting to remind me of other people doing this throughout the show's original run.

Note to self: steal the "villain as red herring" technique. Good writing methods like that are hard to come by.