If this were any other show Zaheer would have beaten Tenzin by himself to up the stakes for the final fight with Korra. To show how powerful he is. But no, here that doesn't happen. Because Tenzin is a master Airbender. So of course, one on one, he absolutely kicks Zaheer's ass. And it's only with the whole gang working together that the Red Lotus manages to win.
Hell even against Ming Hua and Ghazan, Tenzin still would have probably emerged victorious, but definitely not unscathed. It's really only because of P'Li that the Red Lotus won.
Okay but I love this scene for an entirely different yet interrelated reason: the VERY end, when Tenzin is surrounded, broken, and beaten, unable to even properly fight back, he STILL doesn't give in. He takes the beating the Red Lotus throws at him but never surrenders, til the very end. Now that? That is one of the most badass moves in animation history, and the reason Tenzin is the underrated GOAT! Kinda plays into Callan's point of agency as well. Tenzin out here really saying he's going down fighting to the LITERAL last minute. Iconic. Truly legendary.
the difference is really tenzin is a master airbender as other people have said and Zaheer is using airbending to extend his martial art that he learned before he became an airbender. While he knew the principles of airbending he never fought as one.
When Tenzin said "It's not over, not while I'm still breathing." I was convinced he was a dead man. Which yeah, it would've sucked to lose him. But damn would that've been powerful.
The fact that the Earth Queen was impossible to sympathise with only enhanced how real she felt as a character to me. This is what extremely entitled rich people are like. She was not only irredeemably bad, but incredibly incompetent. The Earth Kingdom was on the brink of sheer ruin. The queen couldn't even collect taxes from a rebellious town without sending the Avatar of all people to run errands for her. The reason this doesn't make her feel like a prop is because we saw how she got there. We saw what her father was. He was a puppet with no power and absolutely no idea what the hell he was doing. This wounded his daughter's pride (she expresses her hatred of his weakness to Korra), so she tried to rule, or at least do what she thought was ruling. This resulted in a more forceful personality. But ultimately, she too had no idea what she was doing. But she could have been something different, if she'd been raised differently. The context ATLA provides allows me to accept the Earth Queen as a character. History is absolutely packed with obnoxious rich morons handed more power than they know what to do with who die like idiots. You are not supposed to sympathise with the Earth Queen. Her death was to demonstrate to the audience that Zaheer is what happens when a righteous cause goes way, way too far, given how he unleashed hell on the Earth Kingdom.
Isn't she his niece? It's been a while since I watched this show but I remember something about someone saying she ate her uncle's pet bear in reference to her fondness of exotic meat
I would like to add that she was not a barely functioning prop. She was built to be someone for everyone to hate, so when she becomes a tragic victim of a radicalised ideology, it leaves the audience in a moral dilemma of whether or not to be satisfied with her retribution, as well as making them rethink how messed up anarchy is.
It's a great point about how the Earth Queen's death prepped us for something even more terrible possibly happening to someone we care about. I don't mind that Tenzin survived, but if he died, I agree it would have been powerful. And I hadn't thought about how we never got an Air vs Air fight on the show before, so that's a great point too. And sidebar: the clip of Korra and that guy on the bridge reminded me that THAT is actually my favorite scene. Talking someone away from a ledge just get to me on a profound level, and as a fan of Korra, who watched the character kind of become unlikeable in Book 2, it was so so great to see her start to become a hero in a way beyond just fighting. That kind of empathy from her showed a lot of patience and maturity, and Janet Varney's personable and warm vocal performance in that scene is phenomenal.
Tenzin was one of the favorites in this show, and you made the point beautifully. I loved watching him demonstrate he was an Airbending master. Zaheer couldn't do anything with him. Never considered that normally the protagonist would just go quietly. You made really great point about the Earth Queen I hadn't considered. When Zaheer killed her, the implications hit but you were happy to get rid of her. That scene would have been stronger if she was so one dimensional and arrogant. Instead, you get the message that bad leadership is better than no leadership, which is true.
Great video! About the Earth Queen, though: I think the meaning of not only the scene, but the message of Zahir would've changed _drastically_ had she not been a one dimensional villian. We have no quarrel with her dying, really; she's a cruel and heartless monster. Ba Sing Se literally has walls keeping the classes separate: one filled with poverty, crime, and starvation, an "okay" one for the middle class of powerful merchants and to the lower court, and the center being almost exclusively the palace and the high court, filled with excess and riches wherever you look. The Dai Li are a secret police who tortures and disappears dissidents and keeps the people in check. Yeah, there's good people in the city, but it's a really messed up system that truly needs to change. It's a brutal execution, for sure, but if it were just like that, toppling a cruel monarchy and breaking the walls between the rings and classes is a _good_ thing. However, it truly shows the fault in the villain's thesis, as is a Korra tradition: Freedom, democracy, and power to the people are great and necessary rights, but anarchy leads to pure chaos, death, suffering, and ultimately leaves in its place a power vacuum filled by an even more oppressive leadership. It is a noble cause corrupted and taken too far, changing from true freedom to anarchy. It's a tragedy, really. If the Queen had been a sympathetic figure, it would have made the Red Lotus more evil, but that's exactly the problem: it doesn't challenge our ideals and beliefs to see a group of exclusively evil characters kill someone trying to help her people. Otherwise, I agree with your analysis. Keep up the good work!
Tenzin is an absolute BEAST!!!!!!!!!!! My favorite character from TLOK by far!!!!! And the one character with a satisfying arc in book 2. This is rare (at least imo)
I like everything with Tenzin in this scene, especially him holding the upper hand against Zaheer, when it was probably really tempting to have him lose, hell Tenzin would have still looked good if he just equally matched him. Tenzin was from the start my favorite side-character with him being a sympathetic and fairly independent counter-point to Korra, where as Mako and Bolin kinda felt limited to her sidekicks/love interests. I am just a bit bothered by the Bumi/Ghazan fight in-between where Bumi is clearly moving without much skill or grace and still manages to get close to Ghazan, grapple him and even bite him. It feels like an unsuccessful attempt at levity, especially since a former non-bending fighter like Bumi actually getting into a physical fight should be a decent threat. Whenever Antoine does match-ups with Ghazan against master benders like Old Bumi it just does not feel right that a flaundering, barely trained novice could get his hands on him.
Callan - Not sure what's up with this. A lot of people are saying the same but it's playing fine on my end and isn't set up any differently from our other videos.
@@Reti4 Seems like a mixing issue. I agree, Matt is very quiet compared to you and the overall mix is a bit low. You just need to throw some loudness control on this. I'll hit you up with the program I use for mastering audio.
Callan - I'm not sure why some people are hearing it really quiet. I've checked the volume on the upload and it seems to run fine. Apologies for it not being loud for you.
Thanos in mcu wasnt a villain he was an anti hero so I'll argue that part but yes the villain often gets away because of plot armor they are often needed for another moment it can be annoying but stories break of in these ways to not force third partying last thing a story needs is a random enemy because your main villain was taken out by normal courses of events
I’m not tryna be rude but your video seemed interesting which is why I’m here, but bro turn up your volume I can’t hear shit! Shit pissed me off in the first 10 secs 😂😂
FML man, i found your channel because of One Legendary Scene - and i wanted to listen to everyone's but come on man figure out your mic situation you are so insanely quiet and the other guy is normal so one person i am straining but the other become blaring .....figure out your mic
