Game, Film, Food, htclig.
Long ago, The four channels lived together in harmony.
But then everything changed when the YouTube algorithm attacked.
Only Matpat, master of all four theories, could bring balance to the channels.
But when YouTube needed him most, he vanished.
But I believe that Matpat can save the world.
Hello Internet!
Welcome to Film Theory, the show that's here to reveal your secret power: subscription bending.
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Now, I don't often call a lot of things perfect.
Almost anything can be improved upon in one way or another.
But up there with Chrono Trigger, the Lord of the Rings, and the sweet, delicious burn
of Diet Coke, is Avatar: The Last Airbender.
If ever there was a perfect animated series, it might just be Avatar.
In case you need a bit of a refresher.
In the world of Avatar, people live in one of four nations, each built around one of
the four traditional elements.
You have the water tribes at the North and South Poles, the vast earth kingdom that covers
most of the world's landmass, the industrious and aggressive fire nation, and the elusive
flighty air nomad monks.
Some people are born with the ability to bend one of these four elements, but only one person
can master all four of them.
That one person is known as the Avatar and is tasked with keeping the world in balance
as the very first avatar Wan explains:
Each avatar is born into a cycle, water to earth to fire to air, so that when the previous
avatar dies, a new one is born in the next nation.
And over the course of the various seasons, we watch as this exact cycle plays out.
Avatar Kyoshi from the Earth Kingdom gives way to Roku from the Fire Nation, who then
dies and opens the door to Aang from the Air Nomads and finally Avatar Korra from the Water Tribe.
It's a great set up that allows for stories and characters outside of the original series
to be explored, expanding the world even further.
I mean, that's basically what happened with the sequel series, The Legend of Korra, and
it appears to be Nickelodeon's strategy with the franchise moving forward.
There have been multiple novels and comic books dedicated to other avatars and supporting characters.
They've even established an entire production studio devoted to more Avatar content.
Rumor has it that a bunch of this new stuff is going to focus on different avatars too.
Sure you have the OGs Aang and Korra as well as the fan favorite Kyoshi, but also the next
avatar that we haven't even met yet.
There's even a live action Netflix series on the way.
Here's hoping it goes better than the last one.
Anyway, in my excitement for new Avatar content, I decided to go rewatch the series and catch
up on a bunch of the spinoff stories that they've released over the years.
And you know what, theorists?
The more and more I look, the more and more I realize that having an avatar sucks.
This world is so much worse because of the avatar cycle.
When you really break down what each avatar does during their life and how it compares
to what each avatar is supposed to be doing.
You realize that each and every one of them has largely failed, enough so that you kind
of got to ask, is it even worth having an avatar at all?
Hop aboard your flying bison and pour out some cactus juice, loyal theorist.
I'm about to bend your ear over this broken, ancient tradition.
Let's start by setting our ground rules, shall we?
Remember, the whole thing about the Avatar is that their main goal is to keep the world
in balance, both physically and spiritually.
What exactly that means could be up for debate.
But the way I see it, an Avatar's duties largely break down into four main tasks: 1) helping
keep international peace between the four nations
2) helping keep internal peace within each of those nations.
3) Protecting innocent people and bringing justice to the unjust.
And 4) bridging the gap between the human world and the spirit world.
So let's just start at the beginning of our list.
One of the main parts of an avatar's duty is to help keep international peace between
the four nations.
And admittedly, some of them are good at it.
For instance, we see that Ang has helped to set up an international government to help
the four nations stay at peace with each other.
But literally, from the opening seconds of the show, we know that at least one avatar
had a major oopsie in this field.
The whole premise of the entire franchise starts
with a giant international war, and it all happened because of the failure of the avatars.
On one hand, we could blame Aang who ran away from his duties, which in turn opened up a
power vacuum that allowed the 100 year war to begin.
But he was also literally 12 years old at the time, so it’s kind of hard to fault
him for that one.
Instead, the true failure falls to Aang's predecessor, Avatar Roku.
Roku was childhood friends with Fire Lord Sozin, the Fire Lord who started the war.
And what's worse, Roku knew that Sozin wanted to conquer these other nations.
So what did Roku do to stop it?
He basically gave Sozin a slap on the wrist and a stern talking to, by his own admission,
Roku's indecisiveness, and let's be honest, favoritism to his friend and home nation,
was a huge weakness which ultimately led to tons of unnecessary death.
Instead, his actions led to Sozin's betrayal, his own death, and a war that lasted generations.
His failure led to the complete annihilation of the Air Nation, as well as all the loss
of life that comes with a war of conquest.
It’s not exactly going to be making WatchMojo's top ten list of moments that brought balance
to the world.
And here's the thing.
We don't have to look at Roku or Aang to see the avatar's failures here.
In the prequel novels, we learned that Avatar Szeto the Fire Nation Avatar before Roku was
born into a time of great strife for the nation.
And instead of working internationally, like most other avatars, Szeto decided to focus
on the domestic politics, becoming a bureaucrat within the fire nation to help his people.
Though he helped shepherd the Fire Nation back to prosperity.
He did this at the expense of all the other nations.
This eventually led to an event known as the Platinum Affair shortly after his death, which
saw the fire nation and water tribes secretly backing a challenger to the Earth Kingdom throne.
When this was discovered it led to all three nations becoming incredibly isolationist.
Because of this, Szeto’s immediate successor, the air nomad Avatar Yangchen, would look
back on Szeto's legacy as messy.
So as you can already start to see, having one person solely responsible for policing
the entire bending world is like an impossible task.
Time is going to be the avatar’s most limited resource and the decisions that they make
on how to spend that time inevitably means that they're going to have to sacrifice one
major part of their duty.
Obviously, for Szeto, focusing all of his attention on bringing prosperity to the fire
nation meant that he let conflicts arise within other kingdoms with the Platinum Affair.
We see a similar situation arise in the Avatar Kyoshi books.
The Avatar before her, had a singular focus on dealing with the spiritual duties of the role.
This meant that he neglected his responsibilities as a politician.
His neglect of the physical world allowed the Earth kingdom to become destabilized by
infighting and Kyoshi was basically forced to spend her entire life cleaning up that mess.
But don't feel too bad for her.
She caused even more problems than she solved.
Case in point, Chin the Conqueror.
Now, this guy was a warlord standing up against a corrupted king.
That said, Chin was far from a hero, as Kyoshi herself says.
This seems like the exact sort of situation where an avatar should stand up and help make
peace. Right?
A rebellion is threatening to destabilize an entire kingdom and both sides are led by
awful people.
The keeper of peace and balance should probably be looking into solving this issue.
Even Kyoshi herself says.
There's that word balance.
So what did Kyoshi do to stop Chin?
Nothing.
Literally nothing.
Chin was able to conquer almost the entire continent.
Kyoshi only decided to step in when he showed up at her doorstep to take over the peninsula
that she called home.
Yeah, sure, Kyoshi.
Looks like you were getting right to that.
So now that Chin is literally right in front of her, you would think that this is a good
opportunity to try and stop his conquest and restore balance to the Earth Kingdom.
Nope!
Kyoshi uses her power to disconnect the peninsula from the mainland and then proceeds to yeet
it out into the middle of the ocean.
Seriously, in what's arguably the most impressive display for an avatar is powers that we see
throughout the entire franchise.
All Kyoshi does is pull a giant: “ight, Imma head out”.
Chin's conquest was only stopped because he was too stubborn to get out of Kyoshi his
way, falling to his death as Kyoshi Island was being formed.
Really Kyoshi?
Sure looks like you got some massive revisionist history going on there because you didn't
do a gosh darn thing in the months leading up to him coming to your peninsula.
And that philosophy runs deep in the village that Kyoshi leaves behind.
Towards the beginning of the Last Airbender, Team Avatar lands on Kyoshi Island, where
the guiding wisdom of all the Kyoshi stans is.
“Yeah, it's not my problem”.
Heck, even the Earth Kingdom Capitals catchphrase “There is no war in Ba Sing Se”, follows
the same attitude.
Ignore the problem.
Deny.
Close your eyes and it just goes away.
Admittedly, things seem to go much better under Roku's tenure. And after Aang ends the
hundred year war, things again seem to go smoothly.
But under Korra their civil conflict after civil conflict.
She was Avatar during the water tribe civil war.
Under her watch, the Red Lotus assassinates the Earth Queen and in the aftermath Korra's
inaction due to injury and PTSD lets Kuvira seize control of a great deal of the Earth Kingdom.
Not a great track record in a long sequence of avatars dropping the ball.
So now let's move on to our next criteria protecting the innocent and bringing justice
to the unjust.
This one's a bit harder to judge because we don't see a lot of the day to day lives of
each avatar.
And while yeah, we do see some heroic moments like Aang Fighting Yakone and Korra chasing
down bender criminals in the streets of Republic City.
There's a rotten core here that starts to peek through the deeper we get into the franchise.
Most of The Legend of Korra’s plot revolves around the idea of justice and what it takes
to defend everyone.
Korra’s first major adversary Amon is the leader of a group called the Equalists, who
are all about leveling the playing field between benders and non benders by taking away the
ability to bend.
Sound insane?
It is.
But the movement is shown to resonate with a lot of Republic City's citizens.
Life in the world of Avatar can be incredibly hard for non benders, even in the new supposedly
harmonious society that Aang created.
If you're a bender, you have easy access to jobs.
Power plants use fire benders to operate.
Trains are powered by earth benders and policemen are almost exclusively metal benders.
Benders also have a much easier time committing acts of violence, as we're frequently shown
groups of violent benders like the triple threat triad, the Red Lotus.
Heck, even the Republic City Police who treat the use of force like it's second nature.
Non benders are overlooked.
They're ignored.
They're frequently threatened.
In one particular scene, Republic City's metal bending police force herd a group of non benders
like cattle using force to break up a nonviolent protest.
These people are targeted because the police force has turned off the power to their homes
and they're peacefully resisting being profiled as members of Amon's uprising just because
they aren't benders.
A woman in the crowd makes a desperate plea for Korra’s help, saying:
And Korra does help.
Kinda.
Unfortunately for the common people, Korra considers the issue resolved after she outs
Amon as a bender and a fraud, effectively derailing a movement that began and grew thanks
to a genuine concern from a huge portion of Republic City's non bending population.
So that one doesn't look all that great for Korra.
But when you think about it, this is Aang’s city.
He created the system that Korra inherited.
In fact, this goes well beyond just Korra and Aang.
The imbalance between benders and non benders is a failure of every avatar before them who
popped up or exploited the same system.
Which brings us back to Kyoshi, who honestly might have been the worst of the bunch.
See,Kyoshi had herself a rough childhood.
She was an orphan, working as a servant until it was discovered that she was the avatar.
She later joined a criminal gang that was founded by her parents.
And it's not like they suddenly stopped doing crimes after the Avatar joined.
Nope.
They decided to involve Kyoshi in the crimes.
And that's not all, Kyoshi youthful anger heavily informed her way of thinking.
Even after learning that she was the avatar, her thoughts were more centered on revenge
than duty.
The Rise of Kyoshi states that quote: “Her hunger to learn all four elements had nothing
to do with becoming a fully realized avatar.
Fire, air and water were simply more weapons she could bring to bear on a single target.”
end quote.
And much later in her life, she was so unbothered by taking a life that she didn't see a difference
between accidents and intentional killings.
As for protecting the innocent.
Here again, we have some problems.
In Shadow of Kyoshi, Kyoshi threatens to crush a mother and her adult son to death with a
boulder while trying to squeeze a false confession out of them for something they didn't do.
But her single worst decision is revealed in the canonical flash game Escape From the
Spirit World.
It's here that Kyoshi confesses to Aang her biggest failure.
See, one of the Earth Kings during Kyoshi's life was incredibly unpopular.
His leadership was seen as ineffective and corrupt, and it eventually led to a peasant
uprising against him.
During the riots, the King ordered Kyoshi to put the uprising down, and to her credit,
she refused.
Instead, she encouraged the king to listen to the grievances of the people and find compromise.
Seems pretty good so far, right?
But here's the thing, Kyoshi admits that she didn't like the people standing up against
the kingdom.
In fact, throughout the whole story, Kyoshi seems less concerned about the human rights
abuses committed by the king and more concerned that the peasants are destroying historical
artifacts and upsetting the stability of the monarchy.
So in exchange for the king listening to his people and ending the riots, Kyoshi agrees
to train an elite group of earth benders for him.
They would be, quote, “silent, precise and feared by all”.
It was a force that would eventually be known as the Dai Li.
Yup.
You remember those creepy secret police from the animated series?
the ones with the rock gloves whose loyalty could be bought and sold, and who sided with
Azula and the fire nation during the invasion of Ba Sing Se?
They were Kyoshi's idea.
She even admits that she regrets not foreseeing the long term consequences of giving future
Earth Kingdom monarchs access to an elite secret police force.
But here's the thing, that move didn't make sense even in her time period.
This king, the one that was ready to crush his own people,
he shouldn't have had access to that secret police force either.
Imagine what he would have had them do to the peasants if they were around to begin with.
Then again, when you're as powerful as Kyoshi and you treat your powers like a big ol’
hammer, I guess everything looks like a nail.
So again, for a lot of the avatars, protecting the innocent and bringing justice to the unjust
is just a bust.
So that's three for three where a ton of avatars fail.
But what about our fourth criteria here?
Bridging the gap and keeping the peace between the human and spirit worlds.
This is basically THE thing that avatars are supposed to be good at.
Surely there isn't a legacy of failure here, too.
Well, you would think, and then you would be wrong.
We hear in the prequel novel dedicated to Avatar Yangchen, that when humans and spirits
came into conflict, she would strike bargains that would get the spirits to leave humans
alone so long as they took care of the physical world.
And of course, humans did not live up to their end of the deal.
As a result, spirits wound up committing a lot of violence against humans who broke their oaths.
This, in turn, created a huge mess for the next avatar, Kuruk, to clean up.
We discover in the Kyoshi novels that Avatar Kuruk would end up spending most of his short
life fighting the dark spirits empowered by Yangchen’s decisions.
Finally, let's skip forward to Avatar Korra, who might just have been the avatar to fail
the most at this one.
At the end of the Legend of Korra Season two, Korra’s subdued by her uncle Unalaq, who’s
merged with the Dark Spirit Vaatu.
Unalaq is able to rip the Avatar spirit Raava from Korra's body, severing her connection
to the past avatars forever, thousands of years worth of knowledge snuffed out in an instant.
Additionally, during this battle, we witness a world shifting event called the Harmonic
Convergence.
Basically, a portal opens between the spirit and human worlds, allowing people and spirits
to pass freely between them.
At the end of it, Korra decides to keep the portals to the Spirit World open, a decision
that reverses the stance of the very first avatar and fatefully combines the human and
spirit worlds.
At first glance it seems brilliant, right?
Wouldn’t the peaceful coexistence between humans and spirits create a more meaningful
bond between them?
Well, not necessarily.
The unforeseen consequence of these two vastly different worlds colliding is complicated
and really doesn't scream balance.
First, the overlapping geographies of the world create huge territory issues.
Houses in Republic City are overrun by vines and entire city blocks are destabilized.
It doesn't matter if you're a bender or a non bender, finding your living room destroyed
and your building about to collapse, is definitely on the list of top five worst breakfast time surprises.
And second, harmonic convergence gives Zaheer, one of the most dangerous warriors in the
world, the power of Airbending, which he promptly uses to start assassinating world leaders
and throw the world out of balance.
I'm going to chalk that one up as a big oopsie there Korra.
When you stop and look at the totality of what we know about the Avatars, one thing
becomes clear time and time again.
This is a vicious cycle.
Every single one of these avatars dealt with difficult issues, but their solutions just
wound up creating more problems for the immediate successor.
Szeto focused too much on his own country.
Yangchen has to deal with and break down isolationist policies.
Yangchen helps make peace between the four nations, but at the cost of angering the spirits,
Well, Kuruk has to spend his life battling dark spirits and winds up neglecting the real
world nations.
Kuruk dies early in battle with spirits, leaving an unstable political situation.
Kyoshi creates a secret police to try and paper over the problems of her country.
Roku shows favoritism to his home nation, Aang has to deal with the century long war
and the death of his entire people.
All of them ignore non benders, Korra has to deal with the fallout and the Equalists.
The Avatar cycle is a cycle of violence.
It is a broken system and honestly that makes perfect sense.
Ask yourself, why does the avatar have to have a monopoly on balance in this world?
The very concept of the avatar is imbalanced.
At the end of the day, the avatars possess the power of a god, literally god of light,
but they're still only humans.
Aang was a 12 year old kid faced with solving a 100 year old war.
Kyoshi was a poor orphan.
Eventually, she's going to defend her home so it wasn't ripped away again.
Roku was friends with Sozin.
Of course, he's going to be slow to action and more lenient in his judgment.
One person holding that much power, that much influence, it’s a recipe for disaster.
I feel like I've heard this somewhere before.
In the end, the really successful avatars or maybe the least unsuccessful avatars are
the ones that don't do it alone.
Aang saves the world from Fire Lord Ozai because he trusts his friends to help get the job done.
Sokka, Toph, Suki, Zuko and Katara are all off playing key parts in stopping the Fire Nation.
While Aang has his rad Dragon Ball Z fight against Ozai.
And those friends are just as essential after the war in helping him restore balance too.
His friends helped make and keep the international peace all in ways that Aang wouldn't be able
to do on his own.
It just goes to show that controlling all the elements in this world is meaningless
if you don't also control the element of friendship.
But hey, if you want more Avatar: The Last Airbender content right now, go check out
our previous theory talking about the science of water bending.
Yeah, believe it or not but what you see Katara and Aang doing in the series isn't that far
out of the realm of possibility.
Or if you want something a little different, I actually teamed up with Nickelodeon themselves
and did a video breaking down whether or not a creature as big as Appa could actually fly.
It's different, but it was a really fun collab with the people who made this show happen
in the first place.
As always, don't forget to subscribe with all that new Avatar content.
You know, we're going to have a ton more to cover here on the channel.
But until then, my friends remember it's all just a theory A FILM THEORY!
aaaaaand cut.