pant sigh pant total awe
Ok so I finished my crazy Avatar marathon and have re-watched the series. The journal title is exactly how I feel. The ending especially, that four part finale, is breathtaking. Not only is it beautifully animated (Zuko vs. Azula fire? Gorgeous) but it's a very perfect way to resolve the conflicts Aang had been dealing with and the other characters had been dealing with. Every detail was perfect, from the direction to the "camera" angles to the score.
The scenes where Zuko and Azula (they're siblings) are dueling are my favorite. It's emotionally strong because of how they've built up the relationship between the two of them over season 2 and 3 and it's impressive because of the power they're displaying. Azula's fire is blue (the only person with blue fire in the show) while Zuko's is red and the juxtaposition in those plumes of enormous flames creates a great contrast for the two very different characters. They're firebending masters displaying their skills in full force and it's all scored to a single lonely string instrument and simple percussion. There's no dialogue, just the sound fire makes when it's being pumped out of a flame thrower. And that music, that sad melancholy almost lethargically paced music that's so simple because the scene is so opulent in color and emotional gravitas.
Zuko has been struggling with himself all season but finally he's found his place. He needs, NEEDS, to defeat his sister and restore the Fire Nation's honor. They laid scourge to the world with their violence and tyranny and for a hundred years his forefathers ravaged the land. By taking up the mantle he's taken it upon himself to not only redeem his past misdeeds but redeem that of his people's. Azula was always the prodigy, the self assured one, the cold cool calculating leader. She's charismatic, sociopathic, and oddly awkward in normal social situations. She only knows how to control through fear because that's all she was taught and all she ever saw. There was always a screw loose inside her but being the daughter of Fire Lord Ozai only compounded those behaviors into the person she became. So when her best friends betrayed her she began to doubt herself for the first time in her life and it devastated her. Almost immediately she began to crack, letting her mind slip into paranoia and manic violence. Also, lots of creepy cackling. When they fight each other it's the apex of conflict within this Greek tragedy of a family.
I'm so impressed with this show and one reason is this family they created. When you really think about it it's a very mature story arc. You have Fire Lord Sozin who started the war. The destroyed an entire race of people to keep his power and hunted a species of animals (the dragons) to near extinction. Then you have Fire Lord Azulon who fathered Ozai and Iroh. When Iroh lost his son in war Ozai tried to usurp him for the throne and showed no pity for his brother's loss. In response Azulon stated he needed to lose a son in order to know how it felt to be Iroh. Ozai would have killed Zuko too had his mother not stepped forward and agreed to kill Azulon and go into exile so that Zuko could be spared. With her gone and Azulon dead Zuko and Azula's upbringing was completely left up to their violent, ambitious, abusive, and emotionally distant father. Only for speaking out of turn Zuko at the age of 13 was challenged to a duel by his own father, a master firebender and was terribly burned. Then he was banished from his home to wonder the earth on a fool's errand, to bring back the Avatar. Meanwhile, Azula was encouraged to explore her most violent and sadistic tendencies, praised for suggesting they burn an entire continent to the ground for the sake of glory. Then at the end, in order to save the world, Zuko encourages the Avatar to kill his father for that is all he can think of that will resolve the conflict. He himself duels his sister, seemingly to the death, and is almost killed by her.
That last scene with Azula when she's chained to the ground, sobbing, screaming, and writhing in madness is intense. But it's made all the more tragic because you remember how glorious and frightening she was at Ba Sing Se, her precision and calculated cold mind. The charisma that turned an entire secret police against their leader for her and the decisiveness that gave her no hesitation when it came time to slay the avatar. But you also saw her in the Ember Island episode. It was meant to be lighthearted for the most part but her intense social awkwardness in normal situations stuck with me. That's great characterization. Of course Azula would suck with real people. That same intensity, determination to dominate, and unflinching willfulness can't work in a volleyball game or at a regular teenage party. It doesn't work with a first kiss or on a first date. But she doesn't know how else to act. She can only function at maximum, when there's something to dominate and control and when she has all the control. When she doesn't, she cracks. The scene in the finale when she's staring into the mirror and imagining her mother talking to her condenses all of that into the body of a sad sad little girl. You humanize her. She's not a monster and she's not a cold unfeeling machine. She's malfunctioning and maybe broken but she's human, painfully human. All her life she's wanted admiration and love but she can't understand it. She doesn't know how to truly feel it or give it and those insecurities she has about her mother exemplify that. So at the end when she's finally fallen the show allowed you to feel a full breadth of emotions because the writers developed her perfectly and she became real. She was a villain yes, and she was bad but she was a person and she had these vulnerabilities and weaknesses so even though you rooted for her demise you still feel terrible for her.
I'm also tickled by the idea that Fire Lord Ozai was such a fucking badass that he needed the avatar to be imbued with all the powers of the past avatars to be defeated (the avatar state). Before that he was kicking Aang's ass. To be fair I think Aang could have defeated him if he also had twenty some years (more probably) to prepare in his bending. Instead he had around nine months to learn all the other elements and as a result didn't have time to master all of them the way the previous avatars did. So actually if he'd been a fully realized avatar Ozai would've been history. But that's what makes Aang the greatest avatar ever. He was able to learn the elements in only nine months and he saved the planet from an oppressive dictator and he did it without killing him.
Which comes to my other favorite part of the finale and the show. The show never compromised itself because it never compromised Aang. Aang is a pacifist and a good natured boy. He doesn't believe in killing, he respects the earth and animals, and he is understanding and full of grace. He's still human so yeah he has his moments but when it comes right down to it he stayed true to himself by defeating the fire lord peacefully. Instead of killing him, which of course would be what his past lives felt was right (he was going to burn down a continent for God sakes) Aang learned spirit bending and took away Ozai's bending. And that might have felt like a huge deux ex machina if it weren't for how they'd subtly introduced the lion turtle earlier in the show and had discussed thoroughly the implications if Aang failed but also if he succeeded in that path. It's a great message for kids in that there is always an answer beyond violence. As adults sometimes we forget that or we become so hardened that we don't think there can be another way. For someone who's seen war and seen so much death you can't quite wrap your head around the idea that you can let a terrible dictator live with his crimes but Aang is right. Can more killing justify the killing that's already happened? Even when it's that of a terrible terrible man with a legacy of terrible terrible men? And maybe there's good and evil in everyone (which the show also discusses).
That's mature stuff for a simple children's show.
My only quip with the show is that I didn't get to see more of the old masters like Boomie and Iroh and Master Pakku. I wanted to see Iroh and Jong Jong kick ass with the comet there and to see more of Boomie's intense earthbending. If they had more time they could've but I get that with the time they had they had very little to spare for the minor characters, whose powers were illustrated earlier in the series. It was more important to focus on what was happening to destroy the fire lord.
Oh well.
Also, no one dies. With the crazy dangerous things that happen with these kids and the dangerous situations they get into it's insane that no one dies. No one. Ok, Jet dies. But no major characters. I get it's a children's show but even Lee died in the Golden Compass. You need to establish that in this world the stakes are real. I would have sobbed rivers of tears to see any of the main cast go (I'm still smarting from Wash's death) but it would have made more narrative sense than everyone surviving with minor injuries. Oh well. I'd be complaining if they were dead and I'm complaining that they're not. You can't win.
It's sad that M. Knight Shyamalan fucked up so grotesquely with the live action version of this show. If you watch the series finale you see so much awesometastic potential for action movies. The acrobatics, the sheer visual force of watching a kid lift a boulder 200x his size or bend the rudder of a zeppelin, would dazzle any audience. It's a wonderful mixture of martial arts, action, and supernatural phenomena. Imagine seeing in real life this giant wall of fire coming toward you and some old dude is controlling it. That's cool. With today's technology it's 100% possible. So having it fucked up anyway, even with a $150 million budget, is just mind blowing. It's sick. I mean the things they accomplished in Thor with the same budget and they could transfer that to Avatar. They should've gotten Kenneth Branagh to direct Avatar instead of freaking M. Knight Shamalamadingdang. He would have been right at home with the fire nation family and that conflict between father and son, brother and sister, self and self, good and evil. These are classic Shakespearean drama themes and if anyone knows Shakespearean drama it's Kenneth Branagh.
Oh well. Too late now. Fucking Shyamalan ruined it all. It'll be at least another five to ten years before they try to revitalize a live action version of this show, if ever. Maybe Korra will get a chance. That's be huge. Let's give little girls a better role model than fucking Bella Swan.
Oh, and another thing. I am NOT sorry that I keep bringing this up but next time they do this maybe they could HIRE ASIANS FOR THE WHOLE CAST! I mean, fucking shit damn. They're Asian in the show. The bone structures structures, nose arches, slanted eyes, epicanthic folds, all of it. They were fucking native Americans, Inuits, Mayans, South East Asians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders but they weren't Caucasian! Suki a little and sometimes Azula but I'd be hard pressed to give you more examples against than for. I'm this insistent about it not because they couldn't recast the world with white people and make it work (though the whole eastern influenced costuming and architecture would make putting white people in it a strange juxtaposition for sure) but because I don't see why they SHOULD. That's what the writers intended. That's how they imagined the world and the people. You either remain true at least in that broad sense or you don't do it at all. It's insulting and borderline racist to continue white washing every single fucking thing you get your hands on just to make a product "marketable" and "accessible." It drives me nuts. You wouldn't remake Shaft and recast the title part with Bruce Willis. People didn't go watch fucking Bruce Lee movies IN SPITE of him being Asian and short and Chinese. They went BECAUSE he was HIM and he was bad ass and he was cool as fuck. People would go see an Avatar movie if it was genuinely well made and respected the source material. And it'd work BECAUSE it was delivered as is, not DESPITE it being full of yellow and brown people.
The scenes where Zuko and Azula (they're siblings) are dueling are my favorite. It's emotionally strong because of how they've built up the relationship between the two of them over season 2 and 3 and it's impressive because of the power they're displaying. Azula's fire is blue (the only person with blue fire in the show) while Zuko's is red and the juxtaposition in those plumes of enormous flames creates a great contrast for the two very different characters. They're firebending masters displaying their skills in full force and it's all scored to a single lonely string instrument and simple percussion. There's no dialogue, just the sound fire makes when it's being pumped out of a flame thrower. And that music, that sad melancholy almost lethargically paced music that's so simple because the scene is so opulent in color and emotional gravitas.
Zuko has been struggling with himself all season but finally he's found his place. He needs, NEEDS, to defeat his sister and restore the Fire Nation's honor. They laid scourge to the world with their violence and tyranny and for a hundred years his forefathers ravaged the land. By taking up the mantle he's taken it upon himself to not only redeem his past misdeeds but redeem that of his people's. Azula was always the prodigy, the self assured one, the cold cool calculating leader. She's charismatic, sociopathic, and oddly awkward in normal social situations. She only knows how to control through fear because that's all she was taught and all she ever saw. There was always a screw loose inside her but being the daughter of Fire Lord Ozai only compounded those behaviors into the person she became. So when her best friends betrayed her she began to doubt herself for the first time in her life and it devastated her. Almost immediately she began to crack, letting her mind slip into paranoia and manic violence. Also, lots of creepy cackling. When they fight each other it's the apex of conflict within this Greek tragedy of a family.
I'm so impressed with this show and one reason is this family they created. When you really think about it it's a very mature story arc. You have Fire Lord Sozin who started the war. The destroyed an entire race of people to keep his power and hunted a species of animals (the dragons) to near extinction. Then you have Fire Lord Azulon who fathered Ozai and Iroh. When Iroh lost his son in war Ozai tried to usurp him for the throne and showed no pity for his brother's loss. In response Azulon stated he needed to lose a son in order to know how it felt to be Iroh. Ozai would have killed Zuko too had his mother not stepped forward and agreed to kill Azulon and go into exile so that Zuko could be spared. With her gone and Azulon dead Zuko and Azula's upbringing was completely left up to their violent, ambitious, abusive, and emotionally distant father. Only for speaking out of turn Zuko at the age of 13 was challenged to a duel by his own father, a master firebender and was terribly burned. Then he was banished from his home to wonder the earth on a fool's errand, to bring back the Avatar. Meanwhile, Azula was encouraged to explore her most violent and sadistic tendencies, praised for suggesting they burn an entire continent to the ground for the sake of glory. Then at the end, in order to save the world, Zuko encourages the Avatar to kill his father for that is all he can think of that will resolve the conflict. He himself duels his sister, seemingly to the death, and is almost killed by her.
That last scene with Azula when she's chained to the ground, sobbing, screaming, and writhing in madness is intense. But it's made all the more tragic because you remember how glorious and frightening she was at Ba Sing Se, her precision and calculated cold mind. The charisma that turned an entire secret police against their leader for her and the decisiveness that gave her no hesitation when it came time to slay the avatar. But you also saw her in the Ember Island episode. It was meant to be lighthearted for the most part but her intense social awkwardness in normal situations stuck with me. That's great characterization. Of course Azula would suck with real people. That same intensity, determination to dominate, and unflinching willfulness can't work in a volleyball game or at a regular teenage party. It doesn't work with a first kiss or on a first date. But she doesn't know how else to act. She can only function at maximum, when there's something to dominate and control and when she has all the control. When she doesn't, she cracks. The scene in the finale when she's staring into the mirror and imagining her mother talking to her condenses all of that into the body of a sad sad little girl. You humanize her. She's not a monster and she's not a cold unfeeling machine. She's malfunctioning and maybe broken but she's human, painfully human. All her life she's wanted admiration and love but she can't understand it. She doesn't know how to truly feel it or give it and those insecurities she has about her mother exemplify that. So at the end when she's finally fallen the show allowed you to feel a full breadth of emotions because the writers developed her perfectly and she became real. She was a villain yes, and she was bad but she was a person and she had these vulnerabilities and weaknesses so even though you rooted for her demise you still feel terrible for her.
I'm also tickled by the idea that Fire Lord Ozai was such a fucking badass that he needed the avatar to be imbued with all the powers of the past avatars to be defeated (the avatar state). Before that he was kicking Aang's ass. To be fair I think Aang could have defeated him if he also had twenty some years (more probably) to prepare in his bending. Instead he had around nine months to learn all the other elements and as a result didn't have time to master all of them the way the previous avatars did. So actually if he'd been a fully realized avatar Ozai would've been history. But that's what makes Aang the greatest avatar ever. He was able to learn the elements in only nine months and he saved the planet from an oppressive dictator and he did it without killing him.
Which comes to my other favorite part of the finale and the show. The show never compromised itself because it never compromised Aang. Aang is a pacifist and a good natured boy. He doesn't believe in killing, he respects the earth and animals, and he is understanding and full of grace. He's still human so yeah he has his moments but when it comes right down to it he stayed true to himself by defeating the fire lord peacefully. Instead of killing him, which of course would be what his past lives felt was right (he was going to burn down a continent for God sakes) Aang learned spirit bending and took away Ozai's bending. And that might have felt like a huge deux ex machina if it weren't for how they'd subtly introduced the lion turtle earlier in the show and had discussed thoroughly the implications if Aang failed but also if he succeeded in that path. It's a great message for kids in that there is always an answer beyond violence. As adults sometimes we forget that or we become so hardened that we don't think there can be another way. For someone who's seen war and seen so much death you can't quite wrap your head around the idea that you can let a terrible dictator live with his crimes but Aang is right. Can more killing justify the killing that's already happened? Even when it's that of a terrible terrible man with a legacy of terrible terrible men? And maybe there's good and evil in everyone (which the show also discusses).
That's mature stuff for a simple children's show.
My only quip with the show is that I didn't get to see more of the old masters like Boomie and Iroh and Master Pakku. I wanted to see Iroh and Jong Jong kick ass with the comet there and to see more of Boomie's intense earthbending. If they had more time they could've but I get that with the time they had they had very little to spare for the minor characters, whose powers were illustrated earlier in the series. It was more important to focus on what was happening to destroy the fire lord.
Oh well.
Also, no one dies. With the crazy dangerous things that happen with these kids and the dangerous situations they get into it's insane that no one dies. No one. Ok, Jet dies. But no major characters. I get it's a children's show but even Lee died in the Golden Compass. You need to establish that in this world the stakes are real. I would have sobbed rivers of tears to see any of the main cast go (I'm still smarting from Wash's death) but it would have made more narrative sense than everyone surviving with minor injuries. Oh well. I'd be complaining if they were dead and I'm complaining that they're not. You can't win.
It's sad that M. Knight Shyamalan fucked up so grotesquely with the live action version of this show. If you watch the series finale you see so much awesometastic potential for action movies. The acrobatics, the sheer visual force of watching a kid lift a boulder 200x his size or bend the rudder of a zeppelin, would dazzle any audience. It's a wonderful mixture of martial arts, action, and supernatural phenomena. Imagine seeing in real life this giant wall of fire coming toward you and some old dude is controlling it. That's cool. With today's technology it's 100% possible. So having it fucked up anyway, even with a $150 million budget, is just mind blowing. It's sick. I mean the things they accomplished in Thor with the same budget and they could transfer that to Avatar. They should've gotten Kenneth Branagh to direct Avatar instead of freaking M. Knight Shamalamadingdang. He would have been right at home with the fire nation family and that conflict between father and son, brother and sister, self and self, good and evil. These are classic Shakespearean drama themes and if anyone knows Shakespearean drama it's Kenneth Branagh.
Oh well. Too late now. Fucking Shyamalan ruined it all. It'll be at least another five to ten years before they try to revitalize a live action version of this show, if ever. Maybe Korra will get a chance. That's be huge. Let's give little girls a better role model than fucking Bella Swan.
Oh, and another thing. I am NOT sorry that I keep bringing this up but next time they do this maybe they could HIRE ASIANS FOR THE WHOLE CAST! I mean, fucking shit damn. They're Asian in the show. The bone structures structures, nose arches, slanted eyes, epicanthic folds, all of it. They were fucking native Americans, Inuits, Mayans, South East Asians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders but they weren't Caucasian! Suki a little and sometimes Azula but I'd be hard pressed to give you more examples against than for. I'm this insistent about it not because they couldn't recast the world with white people and make it work (though the whole eastern influenced costuming and architecture would make putting white people in it a strange juxtaposition for sure) but because I don't see why they SHOULD. That's what the writers intended. That's how they imagined the world and the people. You either remain true at least in that broad sense or you don't do it at all. It's insulting and borderline racist to continue white washing every single fucking thing you get your hands on just to make a product "marketable" and "accessible." It drives me nuts. You wouldn't remake Shaft and recast the title part with Bruce Willis. People didn't go watch fucking Bruce Lee movies IN SPITE of him being Asian and short and Chinese. They went BECAUSE he was HIM and he was bad ass and he was cool as fuck. People would go see an Avatar movie if it was genuinely well made and respected the source material. And it'd work BECAUSE it was delivered as is, not DESPITE it being full of yellow and brown people.