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[joiedecombat]

So now that Avatar is over, I wandered over to the Television Without Pity Avatar forum to see what other people had to say about the finale.


What people mostly seem to be saying about the finale is that the cast (and, by extension, the writers) were terribly unfair to poor Azula not to give her a chance for redemption.

Which, you know... maybe I'm just getting mean and cynical as I get older, but frankly, I'd have been affronted if Azula had gotten a last-minute redemption. As I mentioned in my last post, I really was hoping for her to meet a karmic death, but given that what did happen to her was probably worse than that, I was satisfied with her fate. And I don't really think it particularly speaks any less of Zuko or Aang or Iroh or anyone else that nobody tried giving her a let's-be-friends speech.

I really thought that Azula's treatment was pretty much telegraphed from way back. She's been consistently characterized as a sociopath who controls people by manipulation. The flashbacks involving her in "Zuko Alone" - tormenting small animals, her brother, and her friends with equal ease, displaying no grief for her cousin, casually expressing her hope that her uncle would die, and taking outright glee in the prospect of Ozai killing Zuko - are especially telling, as is her immunity to Toph's lie-detector.

And then there's the exchange between Zuko and Iroh in... I can't remember if it's "The Chase" or "Bitter Work":
"I know what you're going to say. She's my sister, and I should be trying to get along with her."
"No. She's crazy, and she needs to go down."
Of anyone in the series, Iroh is the most consistently portrayed as the voice of wisdom, and his advice has, as far as I can remember, always been depicted as being correct. At the time, I remember being quite impressed that the series went that route, having even the resident voice of wisdom state that the villain needs to be put down like a mad dog, instead of pushing for an ultimate reconciliation and redemption and blood-is-thicker etc.

So I'm really kind of puzzled by all the "Aww, poor Azula," and the various defenses and justifications being presented (all mostly based around "well, we never see her demonstrating any particular care for anyone but herself or potential for redemption, but that doesn't actually mean she's not capable...") Does anybody who actually likes her as a character have any particular light to shed?

This is an impressively negative post. To follow that up: I finally went to see The Dark Knight yesterday, after failing to quite be motivated to do so earlier. I wasn't as impressed with it as most of my friends list, I'm afraid. It wasn't by any means a bad movie, but I thought it reveled a bit too much in how scary and crazy the Joker is - and yes, the Joker should be exactly this crazy and scary, but I think the point was belabored at the expense of both the plotline and Batman's role in the story. Batman himself was essentially tertiary character compared to the Joker and Harvey Dent.

Plus, with regards to Harvey, there was practically another half a movie shoehorned in that could and probably should have been reserved for a sequel.

So, yeah.

Comments

[joiedecombat.livejournal.com]

Hm. Put that way, I think that her ultimate fate in the finale may really be the best of both worlds - in that she certainly receives comeuppance for her actions throughout the series, and it's probably even more appropriate than her death would be - but the possibility remains open, somewhere down the road, for her to learn how to be a human being.

I am still kind of puzzled by all the sympathy, but, you know, it's fandom.