Thoughts: Legend of Korra Book 3 "Long Live the Queen" - Well With a Title Like That
By MrMazz 1 Comments
The climax to Legend of Korra Book 1 Chapter 10, “Turning the Tides”, features Lin Beifong being stripped of her bending by Amon. The way the sequence is structured tells the viewers young and old what is really going on. This isn’t simply taking someone’s bending away it’s spiritually killing them, robbing them of their identity in the process. That sub text isn’t new; Amon’s previous display of power on the triads had the flair of a public execution, except we didn’t really care about those mobsters. We love Lin. The finale to the first book would drop this subtlety and to a degree beauty for cold and sudden death. A murder suicide between Tarrlock and Amon, a surprisingly dark moment for a series up to that point hadn’t explicitly shown death much less murder suicide. It was sudden and had no need for the sub text of Lin’s scene it certainly wasn’t beautiful.
“Long Live the Queen” finds a freighting best of both worlds scenario for its second act cliff hanger: Zaheer sucking the air right out of Queen Hou-Ting’s lungs and using that to make a bubble and slowly suffocate the Earth Kingdom monarch. It has the artistry of the Amon sequence and the bluntness of the other scene. As the Queen falls to her knees, the camera zooms in on her exasperated face, her eyes are becoming red and blood shot, veins beginning to burst. The camera hangs on that face just long enough for her and audience to realize she’s about to die. Programming this in the Nickelodeon schedule is looking harder and harder. This isn’t yet another abduction attempt by Zaheer as part of some greater super villain styled plan to get everyone together just the intimate, calculated, and efficient murder of a head of state. Zaheer makes good on his promise.
The murder of Queen Hou-Ting is by far the darkest act of violence this series has done. She may die off screen but that’s tame compared to director Melchior Zwyer showing us the moment of grace on Hou-Ting’s face right before. It was a human moment for a character who was a cartoonish villain. It has been a while since I watched her previous episodes but her face was very stretched and caricatured compared to her previous appearance.
The first season of Legend of Korra finished the same time as The Dark Knight Rises and the comparisons that could be made between the two on an aesthetic level was obvious. So much so that someone made this excellent faux TV spot mash up for the series. Zaheer’s proclamation that Ba Sing Se has been freed from the tyranny of the Earth Queen, and Ghazan’s subsequent display of power - knocking down Ba Sing Se’s mighty walls – resembles Bane’s “Take Control of Your City” montage. Of course we don’t get to see any sort of French Revolution styled rioting from the masses upon the aristocracy, just radio reports that Ba Sing Se is in chaos.
With the revelation surrounding the Red Lotus’ anarchist/anti-state ideology there has been much discussion over how you can empathies, if not root for Red Lotus. This is just an example of how antagonist should be written and with the blatant murder of the Earth Queen (no matter how righteous Zaheer and Co. believe it) firmly now puts them in the role of villain (but I don’t think they mind that title). Ultimately who is “good” and “bad” comes down to a matter of perspective. With the Legend of Korra being told from if not hers some abstracted version of Korra’s perspective Zaheer and the Red Lotus are the “bad” guys because they act as the antagonistic force against her protagonist force. Even if this was a story told from their perspective they wouldn’t be heroes either, more like anti-heroes though perhaps a bit more romanticized. With their roles cast, it is to this series credit for consistently finding the humanity within these characters and engendering some sympathy for the devil. This empathy isn’t created by them going on some monologue about how they’re life was rough and they chose a darker path. It is these little human moments, like Ghazan’s “really” reaction to Zaheer and P’Li’s reunion as they drive away. Or in this episode it’s when Bolin guess 2 out of 3 things correct about him and Ming-Hua. The brief awkward moment between the lava and water bender as Bolin guess at some connection between the two, sharing an awkward moment together before being ripped back into their roles by Zaheer. These are the “bad guys” as Mako likes to remind us. They’re just as quirky as our good guys, but with a bit more grit.
The series slow burn on Bolin’s eventual moment of metal bending is an obvious but fun arc for the character. Besides giving it to him now wouldn’t have worked with the episodes plot and most importantly taken away from some more PJ Byrne comedy, of turning Bolin into the most popular than disappointing prisoner on the cell block. With the limited time for these episodes and the precise nature of animation, I’m consetnely amazed at how much character and one off moments of humor they find and highlight over more traditional plot driven fair. You didn’t need the fellow prisoner who hasn’t seen his family in four years for the episodes plot to function and it’s time that could’ve been used to make Korra and Asami’s thread resemble Jaws 2 even more. Finding humanity and little moments is what makes this show great (on top of many other things). These are the things we remember it certainly isn’t the plot. It’s the crying face of Bolin after Korra kisses Mako for the first time. Or Naga scaring Lin before licking her much to the chief of polices displeasure.
Here we are at the end and it’s only now that I think of Korra and Asami – who pictured out of context appear to be ready for some Sunstone-esque fun. Sadly we don’t get to see Asami find her inner John McClane and crawl through air vents but she does get to save everyone by building the sand sled that takes them and airship crew to the safety of Misty Palms Oasis. Of all the threads this episode, this was the one that is the most obviously meant to begin the end game. With Korra and Asami meeting up with Tonraq, Lin, and Zuko who are just hanging out at a bar waiting for them to show up. In another show, their thread would have been fodder some Jaws antics.
I am Michael Mazzacane and you can find on Twitter @MaZZM and at weekntv.comorcomicweek.com