I strongly suspect that I’m getting close to the end of Horizon Forbidden West, after which… I don’t know! Will I pick up a new game? Will I try an old game for the first time? Will I replay another game? We shall see.
I thought about continuing ‘themed’ Saturday Notes, but I couldn’t think of anything for Mother’s Day. I COULD think about this though, because I’ve been re-watching Legend of Korra on Netflix and this is bothering me. I realized while writing this though that my issues with religious fanatic villains? I touched a little on this in my last sporking chapter.
Also Justice League and Justice League Unlimited are back on Netflix now? Worth looking into, if you haven’t already. I still hold that the Cadmus Arc is better writing (though not flawless) than the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Unalaq Makes No Sense
In Book 2 of The Legend of Korra, we’re introduced to Korra’s uncle Unalaq, the chief of the Northern Water Tribe. He is immediately grumpy, and the second he shows up he starts complaining about how the Southern Water Tribe has lost its spiritual roots, but he seems to be able to dispel the dark spirits that are plaguing the South Pole and offers to teach Korra how to do the same.
Of course, it turns out that (shocker) Unalaq is evil, that he plans to forcefully unite the Southern and Northern Water Tribes, and also open the portals to the Spirit World so he can merge with Vaatu, the spirit of Darkness and Chaos and opposite of Raava, the spirit that’s merged with the Avatar. Unalaq plans to become the Dark Avatar, and then lead the merged human/spirit world as it’s ruler, creating a New World Order.
Once he does this, he beats the snot out of Korra, he seeming destroy the Avatar cycle, wipes out Raava, and then turns into a giant evil kaiju. He then zooms across the world to Republic City and starts shooting lasers and making evil vines bust through buildings and crap.
And I cannot help but ask, “What? Why?” Because this doesn’t make any sense.
Like, okay, Korra has an evil uncle out of nowhere, fine. And he’s a power hungry theocrat that looks down on secularized society, and wants to conquer the Southern Water Tribe because he thinks that they don’t exist as a separate nation. I know this came out ten years ago, but that’s not too different than Putin nowadays. This kind of thing has precedent and feels relevant to our world, in the way that the Fire Nation’s colonialism does.
But he wants to merge with Vaatu, the in-universe equivalent of the Devil (or perhaps Ahriman/Angra Mainyu) so he can cause a bunch of chaos. To be clear: Unalaq hasn’t been deceived in any way. When Korra spells out what it is that Vaatu wants, her uncle laughs in her face, and admits that it’s precisely what he wants. He’s just a cackling evil maniac who wants to destroy the world because… Reasons.
Even more baffling is when he just… appears at Republic City and starts wrecking the place. We have never seen him there, never seen him mention the place, but he starts trying to destroy it because presumably that’s a place that the audience is more familiar with than the polar ice caps.
“He’s a religious fanatic who hates the modern secularized world!” I’ve seen this as a defense. Which only kind works, because while yes, it’s shown that he wants the world to be more spiritual, there’s a long way from that to “Wants to absolutely destroy everything and plunge it into ten thousand years of darkness.” There’s a big difference between, “Dickish but realistic villainy,” to “Wants to destroy the world as the Antichrist kaiju what the fudge.” The fact that fans have to come up for a reason as to why he’s taking this particular plan rather than anything else proves that the writers didn’t think of a coherent motivation other than, “He’s a religious nutjob.”
“But Ozai wasn’t deep either! He was a megalomaniac! Why isn’t that a problem for you?” Because again, the Fire Nation being a violent colonialist superpower ruled by a historically abusive family that bought its own propaganda makes a lot more sense as a villain concept! It’s not deep, but it makes sense! Ozai didn’t want to burn down the Earth Kingdom because he wanted to destroy the world, it was to eliminate his enemies and open up space for his own people in the same fell swoop. It was a way to end the war.
Unalaq doesn’t have that. He doesn’t care about his people, he doesn’t care about his nation, he doesn’t care about his family, he doesn’t care about his legacy, and his entire conflict in the first half of the season turns out to be a cover for securing the spirit portal so what appears to be his characterization up until that point turns out to be nonsense.
Making this more frustration is that we’re somehow supposed to think he’s just out of balance. Season four has Toph point out how the show’s antagonists all had good goals (equality, freedom from oppressive governments, and stability), but were just out of balance. But Unalaq never had anything good about him–we find out that he framed his brother so he could grab power, and then tried to lead a violent spirit invasion. He’s just a near-omnicidal douchebag, and we’re meant to accept it for Reasons.
I’m not even getting into the Plot shenanigans about how he gets powers out of nowhere like making evil vines grow, or shooting lasers, or becoming an effing kaiju. There’s a lot of Plot nonsense in this storyline, but we’re not here about that.
I’ve seen the excuse that the Nickelodeon didn’t give the show a chance, and they didn’t know that they’d get another season so they were limited. And that explains some things about how the story choices. But that doesn’t make incoherent character development excusable. At best, it might be, “They didn’t have enough time to develop every character and Plot point they wanted.” But in that case, they shouldn’t have tried juggling as much as they did in the first place and made an antagonist who made some sense.
Amon wasn’t a perfectly-developed character, but at least he was coherent. Unalaq’s just.. “Hey, we wrote a character that’s an omnicidal religious fanatic! We don’t have to have him make sense, he’s a zealot–he’s crazy!” And I don’t like that.
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