The End of Avatar...

[benlehman]

was just kinda bad.

Compare it to "The Siege of The North" at the end of Season 1, which was shorter, had more character development, better characterization, wrapped up more loose ends, and managed to contain more drama and a chunk of exciting action.

edit: Talking with Alexis, I sum thusly: "In the whole two hours not one character was ever faced with a meaningful or significant choice or obstacle." Compare, again, to the ends of season one and two.

Comments

[benlehman.livejournal.com]

This has crap-all to do with the audience. Compare to season one of the same show.

Season one: Humanized and intelligent villains, no pornographic focus on confronting them in one-on-one duels, villains fighting vying for power, sometimes violently, among themselves, actual tragedy, actual choices and conflicts.

Season three: Dehumanized and stupid villains, pornographic focus on confronting them in one-on-one duels, villains inexplicably cooperative and obedient within hierarchies, moral choices of only the "I have my cake and eat it too" variety.

Basically, see: this (http://lumpley.com/creatingtheme.html)

And if you tell me, again, that I'm "expecting too much out of a kid's show" you seriously need to watch seasons one and two again.

yrs--
--Ben

[semioticity.livejournal.com]

The gap between second and third season was when the creators seemed to realize that their audience was mostly adults.

I was responding to this comment of yours, below.

I think the creators set the bar very high with seasons one and two and fell short of it in season three. The first two seasons established an unrealistic expectation that the show's ending failed to attain. They took the easy way out, several times.

Your link to Vincent's essay is well-taken; I'm filing that away for my current design, because it's damned useful. But I'm willing to live with the Avatar ending I've got, rather than choosing an arbitrary point in the show to stop watching. Yes, it dilutes the whole somewhat, but I'm willing to trade that for a "complete" story. I freely admit I'm a lot more forgiving than many people when it comes to animation.