Avatar: The Last Airbender

Adapting Chin would probably be difficult - hard to make a cool climax out of a dude just falling to his death like a colossal moron.

Though perhaps we could get an explanation as to why Kyoshi didn’t actually do anything to stop him before then?

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Jun 29th 2022 at 1:57:06 PM

I feel like Zhao's big endgame of killing the Moon was a move so ill-conceived that it kind of makes his previous exploits look weaker. Sure, he stopped Waterbending, but A: he should know better about fucking with spirits and B: as Iroh says, the Fire Nation needs the moon too.

Zhao's rant about being remembered as the "Moon Slayer" makes it very clear it was less about strategy and more a massive ego trip.

Fame Through Infamy. This way he'd never be forgotten.

I'd need to rewatch the episode, but the way the wiki words it, his original plan was to capture, not kill, the spirit.

Nope, he states even before he loses his mind that he plans on killing the Moon Spirit.

When is sit indicated that stopping Chin the Conqueror was Kyoshi's "greatest achievement". It stands out to fans because before the novels it was the only one of her adventures we knew about. There's no reason for the movie to be about that, rather than a completely new story.

I am curious how they'll make a Kyoshi movie that takes place after the novels not be completely inaccessible to new or even casual fans. Making your big return after ten years a sequel to a series of spin-off novels only dedicated fans read seems like a questionable move.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Jun 30th 2022 at 7:16:36 AM

It is more a ego trip objective with strategy atach to it.

And I think the issue with Zhao is probably the framing he always have a very sort of "starter villian" around so people dosent respect him much. On the way azula is.

I think this is a classic case of subsequent material overtaking the original show. It was her greatest achievement back in the show, but now that she has an entire novel series dedicated to her, it was inevitable that something else would outshine that first story.

To be fair, Kyoshi's novels are fairly small scale and personal compared to the continent spanning revolution that Chin lead. Stopping Chin, is still a very big event even if he was not a spectacular Final Boss compared to Jianzhu and Yun.

Edited by lycropath on Jul 1st 2022 at 12:06:50 PM

Nor would they be something she would have wanted to be well known.

Not too different from Kuruk staying quiet about hunting down Dark Spirits.

Edited by M84 on Jul 1st 2022 at 6:47:30 PM

I don't think anything indicates that defeating Chin is considered Kyoshi's greatest achievement in-universe. It sticks out to fans because it's the only adveture of hers we see in the original series. I don't get why people think the movie would be about that, it's a mostly comedic scene in a mostly comedic episode, so the amount retconning that would be required to make it the main dramatic arc of a movie would be so great that they may as well just make an original story.

There is weird thing about the way that episode characterizes Kyoshi as well. Kyoshi apparently doesn't care at all about the entire rest of the Earth Kingdom, only her home town, and even when that town is threatened, she would rather divide it from the continent than just confront him. We're not really supposed to think about that too hard, because it's a brief scene in a mostly comedic episode, but making a movie about it would require addressing the fact that Kyoshi would seemingly let the rest of world burn as long as her home town is safe. It's especially weird because in the novels she doesn't have that attitude at all and doesn't even seem particularly attached to her home town.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Jul 1st 2022 at 1:28:43 PM

I haven’t read the novels (yet). But that always did strike me as interesting. Kyoshi comes off as pretty isolationist in that episode. Pretty stark difference from “only justice will bring peace” from Sozin’s Comet. I wouldn’t mind exploring that in a serious context.

Do we know Kyoshi Island is her hometown? I thought it was a town she founded?

Edited by CheapMarzipan on Jul 1st 2022 at 11:55:59 AM

Kyoshi lived canonicly to be 230 years old, she very well could have changed a lot throughout her life in that time. Wich makes her probably the character with the most potential for countless storys in the entire franchise.

Kyoshi Island used to be a peninsula containing several small villages. One of those was the one Kyoshi grew up in. The island was named after, and I think the village was renamed, but it existed before. The townspeople treat Kyoshi pretty badly, basically making her an outcast for being an orphan. That's part of what makes it weird that, by the time she faces off with Chin, they're apparently the only people in the world that she cares about.

I wonder if the movie will use that fact and set the film long after the novels, when every character except Kyoshi has died. That would be a way to avoid being weighed down by continuity. Maybe Kyoshi has become detached from humanity after her friends deaths, and her arc will be rediscovering her role as Avatar. Though '100 year old person who's given up on humanity" might be hard for children to relate to as a main character.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Jul 1st 2022 at 1:27:10 PM

That's when you have a Kid-Appeal Character that warms Kyoshi's stoney heart and then we get How Kyoshi Got Her Groove Back.

Actually, rediscovering her humanity sounds interesting to me. And it'd make an interesting contrast to Aang, who similarly disappeared for 100 years, but for different reasons and in a different state of mind.

I never said it wouldn't be interesting. I'd probably like it a lot, I'd like to see the franchise move away from the "Avatar coming of age" that every part of the franchise has gone with so far. But this will presumably be a movie for children, and need to be marketable to them.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Jul 1st 2022 at 3:39:11 PM

Despicable Me shows that can be a very lucrative kids movie plotline.

Are you suggesting the creation of an Avatar universe equivalent to minions? Are you ready to bear the moral weight of such a concept?

Maybe the original Dai Li where much cuter then how they wound up.

I feel like the original Dai Li and the original Kyoshi Warriors are one and the same. What I'm saying is, I'd really like to see Kyoshi Warriors but with the Dai Li hats and stone gloves.

The Dai Li we’re founded by Kyoshi to protect Earth Kingdom artifacts in Ba Sing Se, the Kyoshi Warriors were founded on Kyoshi Island by Kyoshi's daughter after her death. They were never the same organization.

Edited by TheMountainKing on Jul 2nd 2022 at 10:34:19 AM

So, uh, how old was Kyoshi when she had her daughter? The 230 years old thing is kinda tripping me up here.

It is never mentioned.