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The Legend of Korra: Book 4

I've been introducing a friend to Korra for the first time. Our next episode is "Beginnings" :D She hasn't seen Avatar either, so we'll have to do that after Korra once I get that new DVD set!
 
A sequel doesn't have to follow the next avatar after Korra. They could possibly timeskip to any type they wanted. Ditto for a prequel.
 
I'd kinda love to see a series dealing with a modern or slightly futuristic world. It'd be interesting to see how bending and the Avatar would both fit into that.
 
I definitely don't want to see the avatar after Korra. The ridiculous technology boom between Last Airbender and Korra was one of the worst things about Korra (outside of the writing and Korra herself). They need less modern technology if they do a sequel, not more. An Avatar with an ipad? I'm surprised it didn't happen in Korra, and it would almost certainly happen if they did a sequel following the next avatar.

Still, isn't another show extremely unlikely? Didn't Nickelodeon take Korra completely off the air in the last season and only show it online? That seems like a way of abandoning the show, but still getting money back because it was already complete. I don't see them making another show after that.
 
I don't think the "technology boom" was all that ridiculous. In "The Last Airbender" the Fire Nation has airships, a whole naval army, and that big honkin' drill that they used to break the wall at Bah Singh Sei.

It's possible that after Aang and Zuko ended the war that the Fire Nation started sharing technology with the rest of the world. I mean, it wasn't much more than a 100 years ago that we didn't have cars. Now we have billions of them. I mean, what kind of crazy technology did they have in "The Legend of Korra?" Radio? Lightbulbs?

I supposed the Mechs were a little weird, but that's about it.
 
Right once the Fire Nation industrialized. The others following along would have been inevitable.

I mean look at the modern world. Everyone had to industrialize following the UK or else become a colony/vassal to some stronger industrialized state as we saw in Asia and Africa.
 
I always thought of The Last Airbender being around 15-17th century tech, with a few fantasy world exceptions for the fire nation's mechanical devices. Besides the boats and fire nation crawlers, everyone else seemed hundreds of years behind us. By Korra, they're basically in the 1920s and it was a big shock, at least to me.
 
The fact that LoK was more modern was part of what I liked about it. I didn't think the technology jump was that big. Like other posters said, the Fire Nation did have some machines, so it wasn't like there wasn't any kind of technology in the world.
I would love to see a series set in a modern version of the Last Airbender/Korra world.
 
Right once the Fire Nation industrialized. The others following along would have been inevitable.

I mean look at the modern world. Everyone had to industrialize following the UK or else become a colony/vassal to some stronger industrialized state as we saw in Asia and Africa.

It's also worth keeping in mind that having people who can bend (and seemingly bypass the laws of thermodynamics, gravity and who knows what else) is going to throw off the curve a little. Hell, just having access to spirit vines allowed them to make a giant death-ray.

On the one hand, having people that can move huge boulders with their minds is going to hold back earth moving and construction technology somewhat, just as fire and lightning bending might hold back power generation.

Indeed, the fire nation's industrialization may well have been an unintended consequence of the 100 years war. To wipe out the air nomads they would have have to develop early aviation just to access their temples and engage them in the air.
Likewise it's possible that prior to this point, all large scale construction may have been contracted out to earth benders, so without them they would have had to develop large scale smelting both as an alternative building method to masonry and as a defence against people who couldn't (yet) bend metal.
And of course their steam powered navy may have been a necessity in order to rival the sea power of the water tribes.

With a century of technological momentum, frankly it's a wonder that some 70 years later they haven't gotten as far as transistors yet. I'd fully expect Korra's successor to be living in an age or rocketry, television and domestic robots.
 
Just because technology advanced at a certain rate in the real world, that doesn't mean it has to advance at the same rate for everyone else.
 
In a director commentary for the season one finale of ATLA, they say the industrialization of the Fire Nation is largely due to their Fire Bending (I guess discussing capital-labor ratios would be too boring).

I think ATLA as a parable of colonialism makes sense especially with the Fire Nation being Japan and Earth Kingdom being China analogues.
 
The technology jump was equivalent to that in the real world in the corresponding period. A:TLA's technology and culture were comparable to that of the 1860s-80s -- the industrialized world (including Japan, the analog for the Fire Nation) had a boom of innovative technologies, while other societies elsewhere in the world hadn't yet shared in them fully. TLOK was set 70 years later, so its technology and culture were comparable to that of the 1920s-40s, so in the interim they'd gained radio, automobiles, assembly lines, airplanes, etc. There's nothing implausible about the technology jump, because it's the same jump we had in the same interval in real life.
 
So if they did a similar time jump then they should be in an equivalent of the 1990s-2010s?
 
I guess that means Republic City then becomes the lone Superpower, the Fire Nation its ally and subordinate state while the Water Tribes either open up casinos or becomes a resource state exporting oil and extremist religious ideology and the Earth Kingdom unified under a one party Equalist State slowly opens up to the rest of the world after a prolonged Cold War with Republic City.
 
The fact that LoK was more modern was part of what I liked about it. I didn't think the technology jump was that big. Like other posters said, the Fire Nation did have some machines, so it wasn't like there wasn't any kind of technology in the world.
I would love to see a series set in a modern version of the Last Airbender/Korra world.

It just never felt right to me. But, if the show had been better overall I probably would have overlooked the tech. As it is, it just made the show feel alien, which combined with the...less than stellar main cast lead to my generally negative opinion of the show. I guess in my head I tie the idea of less technology and a more old style world with The Last Airbender, which was amazing, and the appearance of technology and more modern stuff with Korra, which is easily the most disappointing show I've ever tried to watch (not the worst by any means, just most disappointing).

Plus, the best character on Legend of Korra, Tenzin, never seemed like a big fan of the modern technology either, which helped cement my thoughts ;)
 
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