My Reaction to Avatar the Last Airbender

[The Jack]

fire nation legitimately bought great progress to the world. They went from medieval tech to having tanks and air balloons to having their own Hong Kong in only a few generations.


As far as their crimes go
They're not any worse than most historical -greater good- types. The earth nations were corrupt, lead by idiots, and didn't like eachother. And yes, by comparison they were primitive and far more unequal than the fire nation's lot.

The fire nation were the long-term good.

[Cikomyr]

fire nation legitimately bought great progress to the world. They went from medieval tech to having tanks and air balloons to having their own Hong Kong in only a few generations.


As far as their crimes go
They're not any worse than most historical -greater good- types. The earth nations were corrupt, lead by idiots, and didn't like eachother. And yes, by comparison they were primitive and far more unequal than the fire nation's lot.

The fire nation were the long-term good.

No. They were not. Fire Nation did good for the Fire Nation. Whatever good they did to other places was ultimately meant to be good for the Fire Nation.

The Southern Water tribe certainly wasn't benefiting from the Fire Nation's advanced technology. In fact, they were the victim of a comprehensive eugenic purge meant to weed out bending abilities.

The Air Nomads did not benefit from the Fire Nation technology either.

The Earth Kingdom was on the verge of being outright purge from the world.

Any notion that the Fire Nation actions were meant to be "good on the long run" is bull****.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think we just hasn't to look at the difference between Legend of Aang and Legend of Korra to see the problems with the Fire Nation. The problem isn't the high level goal of sharing their progress with the rest of the world, it's:
-committing genocide because they know the Avatar will try to restore balance.
-ethic cleansing
-invasion of the Earth Kingdom
-suppression of Fire Nation culture*

Then individual members of the Fire Nation have their own moral event horizons, hello attempting to burn down the Earth Kingdom.

Comparatively in Legend of Korra the United Republic, Earth Kingdom, and Southern Water Tribe are all shown to be relatively equal to the Fire Nation in terms of technological development, because the Fire Nation pursued the same ends via trade and respect .

* Which is probably what hurts Aang the most.

[deuterio12]

And what’s worse, Aang doesn’t even save the world! Sokka, Katara and Zuko do. Sokka is the one who destroys all the airships, and Zuko is the one who prevents Azula from becoming Firelord. If either one of them had failed, either the war would have continued, or the Earth Kingdom would have been destroyed.
What would have happened if Aang had failed, but the other two had succeeded?

Ozai would have been left alone, deep in enemy territory, with the entire world against him. Aang’s failure would be wholly meaningless. The only thing that would change is that Iroh or Pakku or Zuko would have gotten the kill on Ozai. Hell, you could have probably killed Aang off at the end of Season 2, and I don’t think you’d even have to rewrite the story that much. Sure, Zuko would have a much harder time turning good, and someone else would have to get rid of Ozai. But you would have had more episodes to do it since we wouldn't be wasting time pretending as if Aang is the main character. We'd even be spared that nauseating final kiss at the end.

Basically, Aang sucks. He has no arc. His sheer overpowered nature robs the story of all tension. And his presence in the story is more of a Mcguffin than an actual character. He is important because the Fire Nation is looking for him. That’s it. Remove him from the plot and replace with a magic flying carpet that Katara uses to get to the north pole, and you would not have to do that much rewriting.
And the climax might have been worth something.

Aang does play a key role as a symbol, something for the people to believe in. He's the prophecized child around who people can rally around. He doesn't actually need to do anything important, just show he's alive and healthy despite the fire nation's claims that all airbenders were exterminated. So yes, "the fire nation is looking for him and can't get Aang while he flies around the world openly challenging them" is quite important on itself.

The Fire Nation may've been smarter in just calmly supressing all those silly rumors about the avatar still being around while brutally crushing all the other rebels still resisting that didn't have god mode.

[Bastian Weaver]

I'm not sure how serious you're being...

The film is at the end of the day an okay film let down by some poor actors and enough executive meddling that other actors didn't care by the shoots that were used in the film.

I did like the film. I remember watching it and going all "Oooh, waterbending scroll! Aaah, map! Uuuh, flying bison!"
They did details like these really well.
Think I'll rewatch it now.